Progress Report

I know I wasn’t the best student throughout my school years. There were teachers I harassed continually from the back of the room, thinking that what I was yapping about was infinitely more interesting and funny than anything they could possibly be going on about up by the blackboard. My math teachers got the brunt of my misbehavior, principally because I decided somewhere along the line that I wasn’t good at math. I like to think this was a decision, because the alternative version of history is that I genuinely am not good at math, and this doesn’t quite square with the “I’m good at everything” mentality I’ve been carefully cultivating over the past twenty-five years.

When I moved to Korea, I honestly didn’t give that much thought to the job of teaching: there would be training, I would figure it out and it wouldn’t be that bad. And it hasn’t been. Quite the contrary, for the first time in a long time I legitimately enjoy walking to work every morning. Well, ok, technically I don’t walk into work until the 4:30 in the afternoon, but it feels like morning when you’ve only been up for an hour. Same difference.

Except only for English.

But it didn’t really hit me until I was writing the required notes to my student’s parents before work tonight that I’m actually a teacher. That what I wrote down (Austin is a very hard working and motivated student. Mary needs to work on getting to class on time. I haven’t heard Jake speak a single word of English yet…) would end up in the hands of parents, who would then decide on appropriate rewards or punishments for their kids. I am now in a position to judge the progress of these little munchkins; moreover, I’m the one who is actually supposed to be spurring the progress in these kids. Frightening.

I remember parent-teacher conferences growing up – mostly because we got half the day off from school and I could finally get back to perfecting my performances of Les Miserables in the basement. I mean, playing baseball. Whatever. From what I recall, a majority of the comments were basically positive:

        Travis is a good student, but needs to talk less.
        Travis has a lot of potential, but should concentrate more on his math than making jokes.
        Travis is a joy to have in class, but sometimes breaks out into show tunes. What’s that about?

 As I sat at my desk tonight and went through kid after kid, I imagined the parents opening my note and looking down at their child, reading what I wrote and trying to find the appropriate reaction to help guide their kid along to greatness. Knowing that Korean parents place an inordinate amount of pressure on their children to perform in school, and even more (if possible) when it comes to their English education, I realized my words held more weight than probably anything I’ve ever written before in my life.

Parents pay a hefty fee for their kids to attend my school, and the kids in turn pay a hefty price for their parents’ dedication to this type of education. As if going to class until 10:30 at night wasn’t enough, my classes each come with one to four hours of homework in their various textbooks. Students then have to complete written essays that they submit online and get feedback from online tutors. Done yet? Not quite. Every day, five days a week, they also have their “mobile learning” component – a unique feature where the kids have a daily speaking topic that they need to phone in and discuss for one minute on an answering machine that I then listen to. Keep in mind this is not their regular school – they come to me after attending classes all day. And in most cases, this is not their only private academy that they’re going to; some kids have academies for English, Science, Music, Dance, Math, French…the list goes on and on. And remember: they start all this around age eight.

So as I wrote note after note, I tried to keep in mind that maybe a kid was two minutes late because they were grabbing something to eat in order to endure this marathon of education. Or maybe a kid was goofing off for twelve seconds because he’s ten, and that’s what ten year-olds do from time to time. As far as progress, I’m proud to report that almost all of my students have shown measurable improvement in the short time I’ve been with them. Where blank stares were three weeks ago is now a group of little kids that understand what I’m rambling about. And I think they might even be enjoying it.

And me? Well, I still burst into show tunes from time to time. Haven’t made much progress there.