First time teaching in Korea (part 2)

My very first class. A large classroom, with two long rectangle shaped, knee high tables placed together aligned with orange and blue knee high chairs. The kids, aged 7-9 were also about knee high, though this is a slight exaggeration. They were small and at first quiet. I had the impression this job was going to be easy and that the kids would want to learn.

I stood in front of them next to a white board that sat on a stand. I may have written my name on the white board but I don’t remember. I do remember sitting down at the head of the tables in a knee high, blue chair, and opened a very thin and simple English text book. Things like, “Hello, what’s your name?” “My name is Tom,” were in the book, mostly as a form of bubble speaking from animated characters, like a cat and mouse, some kind of Tom and Jerry look a likes perhaps. A song that went, “busy, busy, busy, everyday, busy on Monday, busy on Tuesday, busy, busy, busy, everyday,” which was played from a small cassette player and may never be removed from my head.

I believe the first class was more or less trying to keep kids from talking too loud, as they had started to pick up the noise a few minutes into class. I may have tried to have them read and repeat some words but that was it. Some kids didn’t have a text book, some began to fight with others, an eraser was thrown and hit a small boy. He cried and yelled and threw it back. Another two knee/waist high kids began a small tug of war over a small plastic toy. The small plastic and seemingly perhaps most insignificant thing in this world, to an adult, was a prize possession and much sought after thing by the two boys, The tug of war went on with a few high pitched shrieks and yells and wining from boy boys and finally one got it away from the other, only to fly backwards onto the floor. This was proceeded with crying and the highly regarded plastic possession was recaptured by the still sitting boy. This became a full on hitting battle.

Other boys talked quietly, and some loudly, some to themselves. One boy may have sang to himself. I believe there were no girls in that first class. I don’t even remember when it finished. It seemed to lag on into a memory of never ending classes and blur for the first two months in Korea before disagreements and my own self doing lead to my dismissal.

Jacob