Snowing in Seoul

With the semester coming to its usual tangled end, the snow is falling in Seoul. It looks nice and engenders the typical Seoul "oh mi Gawd!" responses to snow - freak out, get out the brooms(!), toss down some cardboard, halmoni and halbogee (and broken-footed me) walking at even more glacial paces, and cars with bald tires spinning out even on the little snow we have on the mild hills surrounding my house.

This must be shitty for the motorcycle delivery men, for more than one reason.

As to me, I'm still grinding out these writing things... 1200 words on Gyeongju is now off to 10 Magazine Asia and I turn to my photo essay for Education About Asia, which is due Friday. Last night was spent cranking out the last of 14 model essays for some high-school around here. Still, relaxed enough to come into work today for some coffee and strawberries.

Then time to think about re-writing next semester's classes...

Assuming I have the same classes this Spring that I had last Spring, I should be good to go. During the break I'm teaching one of my troublesome classes - "Discussion and Presentation English." The Presentation part is pretty easy - some peformance, some short speeches, and how to do Powerpoint properly.

Like a retard I was thrashing around on what the "Discussion" thing meant?

Last night a thought occured.

"Ok, maybe," decides I, "Discussion is like Converation.. only with... discussion?"

And Bingo.. now the class is writing itself in my head 8 weeks of discussion and 8 weeks of Presentation. Weird, almost like the name of the class!

LOL.. I'm stooopid

Two More Steps Outta Hell....

1) Got a crudload of papers graded.... Academic Writing? Great to teach, a pain to mark.

2) Finished my 250 page textbook edit. Semi-hysterical work and semi-hysterical me. I had to vet, above and beyond the language, if the pages with definitions were correct, and if the fill-in and essay questions were appropriate. Let's just say there was some "thesaurus-using" by whoever created the testing component.

But I R dun....

Prepped for tomorrow's classes and ready to sleeeeeep!

I Love Teaching but...

Grading is a colossal pain in the ass.

Sure, I can apply myself to the enormous stack of ungraded paper on my desk and by engaging in a grueling death march of up to 15-20 minutes I can get through some 3-5 papers before the siren song of Facebook (or the qualuuded threnody of Blogger) pulls me away...

I look up from my relentless clicking through the web look for a friend online, just one lousy friend to come online, and I notice the sun, once rosy in the sky, is now setting in the East (as it does here in Korea) or.. holy crap...it's the next morning...

Which means, without graded papers to return and discuss I'll have to ginn up another writing assignment which I will then bring back to my office, set on top of the towering pile of papers already there..

I will sit down, cup of coffee at hand, green pen in hand (red is a bad color in Korea), and concentrate profoundly.. on trying to find that one Elvis Costello B-side I never tracked down on Pirate's Bay.

And to be sure I'll have a tab open to Facebook..

siiiight...

Marking final assignments and the actual final... Siiiigh..

Now the lamb lies with the lion
He's just a little savage



I can't wait for next week, when I will only have a convo class to deal with.. and that all planned out.

Really.. of course it's sticky-hot, but I'm not compaining

My convo students ambushed me in the hall and gave me a coffee cake.

Well, a Korean version.. so it was coated in saccharined-spackle and close approximations of graveyard scenery.

Still, I took it home.. scraped off all the gunk and had two slices of pretty good spice-cake underneath.

Then I cut it up and put it in the eum shik mul bag as I haven't been in the gym in months, and this is not healthy food. ;-)

Been grading ever since.

It is really the only "chore" to instruction and it is a chore pretty much proportional to the skills of students... as my kids are skilled, I have to sort through their arguments and splay them on the return table. Taxing.



I should say, for my friend Pucay, that retards might also be as taxing, since you'd have no idea where to begin ("Er, excuse me dear student in the United States, did you hit your head on the pier when you landed?"), but Pucay's hatred of the simple.. well.. it bothers me while it pays her.


hopefully that bit of true evil will get her off of Charles' yacht and back to posting. ;-)

Anyway.. so infra dig.... but grading continues... and will be done by Friday, I hope!

My Students WIN!

Woot!

Just got news that the grant application for overseas scholarship (Germany and England) that I worked on, was funded!

This means that three of my students will travel to Europe this summer to do research on the penetration of Korean literature translation in Germany and England, and what the implications of that level of penetration are (i.e. associated impact). This will, of course, be a comparative study, with the Wae-Pirates as the rubric to judge by. Once it is completed, we will turn it into an academic paper and parade it around the Koreasphere for a year or so.

The only bad news is that I won't be funded to go to Europe, since I'm not a student. ;-)

Still, this is the kind of nifty thing that comes from moving to an academic university and I suppose it won't look bad on a resume or sound bad in an interview.

Now I need to get all packed for Tokyo.

On the Amazing Ability of My Students

So,

There is a strong narrative, both from Koreans and outsiders, that Korean education is broken.

Just, I would say, like education in every country is broken. ;-)

And Korea is far, far TOO oriented on passing the "test" rather than achieving knowledge. The problems of the system are well known.

Still, my kidz are monster little rockers. They are writing in a second language and doing really complicated thinking ("Interrogating" as the lit crit crew would say) cultural issues across races and countries. And the little weasels are sly! If I leave any .. any open space in an assignment, they will take that little crack, bust through it, and write to exactly the question they want to.

Then there are the two students who approached me about a grant (of course the 20-page proposal is due this Friday! Farking "Korean Time!") to go to Europe and study problematic areas of Korean literature translation. They approached me and their concept was so clever that I was rendered stupid.

Duh!, this was how to connect the Korean international marketing problem with literature. Literature is a strong vector of cultural contact and Korea simply does utilize this vector well, for a variety of complicated reasons, some of which these two super-geniuses have identified, and some bits I added in from a crassly marketing POV. And their proposal ties in to Korean obsession with Hallyu (also known as the "Korean Wave" and largely overestimated in Korea) and their bad translation approaches. Both things of which I was completely aware.

It is inspirational and humbling, to have these two kids walk into my office and lay on my table the approach that I hadn't thought to look for! I gave them the 30 minute lecture on research and surveys, and they went off to work. I'm certain I will be presenting, with these kids, at several conferences, and I can see a publication in the offing as well. I also hope they get their paid trip to Europe!

So, I dunno... I've only been at BPU2 for a bit over a month. And the uni cost me a million in fines by not getting me a contract. And the uni can't figure out my pay rate (on the first paycheck I got the bonus that Koreans get for lecturing in English!), so we're trading off electronic transfers of funds. And the uni does essentially no communication to Waegukin.

But the uni is a bunch of 50 year olds (alas, so am I!) and these kids are 20 year old hotshots.

They remind me of the expat Koreans I met in California, except when I talk to them they plan to stay in Korea, work for Korean companies, and use their English in a Korean context.

It's too small of a sample size for me to make any grand assumptions. So I'll just say; "I'm more than pleasantly surpised by how these kids think, and the things they think of."

Oh.. and this is only slightly affected by their good responses on my first informal assessment. ;-)

Getting the Reins

Walked home from work last night and had a brief, but convincing, bout of the Bubonic Plague. The walk home was pretty boring, I was briefly surprised that the route that goes over the top had been walled off with big sheets of metal. Several Ajummas were ignoring that wall (which was pretty easy as you could walk right around it), but I wasn't taking chances with my limited Korean on any kind of kerfuffle.

So I walked a different path and other than a torturous roundabout (the Castle Wall Walk) that lifted my high, high in the sky and then deposited me back about 200 meters above where I had originally been, it was a breeze. About 45-50 minutes, including my partial ascension to heaven.

Got home, started working on some classes, and my bones started to melt. This melting was a direct result of my joints achieving temperatures found in steel mills, burning tungsten, and journeys to the center of the sun.

I drank as much water as I could, gobbled half a pain pill, and turned the Ondol up to a zillion. I rolled sadly on the floor for about an hour, then headed into the bedroom and crawled into bed with the window open. I had a series of weird dreams about attempting, in various ways, to smuggle packets of heat.

But sometime in the early AM, I woke up and felt a lot better - even as if the cough that has been dogging me since the US would go away. Well enough, in fact, that I walked to work. With the advantage of not getting lost this only took 40 minutes and I'm still confused why my landlady-ajumma and Mrs. Kim were so astonished when I told them I planned to walk to or from work at least once a day. I suspect their fear is on account of my Western corpulence.

But got to work early and worked more on the classes. I've found the cafe, so now it's coffee powered as well. Got to a point I think I'm ok in all the classes and also think I've connected with the students. There were a few days there, where that did not seem to be happening, but now I've more or less figured out the room, and adopted a couple of strategies for the less English-savvy student. Primary among these is that I'm letting students take their questions home, and I'm posting all the sound files and videos to my website. That way the slower students can play and replay them as often as they want.

As a bonus, in my convo class a worried student came up to me to discuss how he would do in the class. I gave him my usual rah-rah and reminded him that a Conversation Class includes the possibility that he ask for clarification, repeats, slower speed, etc.

Somehow this mini-conference turned into a conversation (nearly unheard of in a conversation class but, to be fair, this did happen afterwards) and I discovered that he is a big fan of filming and photography. He showed me the world's most awesome video camera and we talked a bit about lenses. We walked to the subway together and discussed possible plans for film projects.

Plans, it is certain, that will fall through!

But he also mentioned he has a bottle of bourbon, so there's a plan that might well work out.

Things get off to a Smashing Start!

Except for that one t hing that was pretty smashed (me!).

I'm in my office and it is absolutely gigantic: a desk, a 10 foot by 7 foot bookcase, a conference table with four chairs, and a sink and mirror. And there's still probably space to play a turn (round? go?) of crickeet. The computer is now hooked up to the intarwebs, though I have no printer yet.

I did receive a phone call at about 11 asking, "don't you have a class now?" As it turns out, this was kind of a trick question as I did have a class at that time, it was just a class that wasn't on the schedule they sent me. Oh well, I suppose that means one class down, with no work at all on my part.

My classes are relatively small except for the auditory ones, one of which has 60 (!) students and the other only 26. I might have arranged that a bit differently. ;-)

Still, everything seems to be on track - I think the kids will like me for not requiring a textbook, but we shall see.

Building the courses…

So I have two courses that are quite intertwined in my mind, mainly because I ran them similarly at BPU’s “Nearly a Bizness Skool” (BPUNBS). This was a culture class and an auditory class. At BPUNBS, the students in these classes were entirely different and so I could run the classes with considerable overlap – in fact the visual media I used were almost always the same, with the focus being different (and the level of instruction being entirely different). BPU2 gave me two auditory classes initially, so I began with the pieces I had from BPU1. Then, I started understanding the third class I got from BPU2, which they called “British English Regional Studies” which turns out to be a class on culture.
I can’t guarantee that I won’t have students overlapping in these courses, as they are both in the Translation Division, so I can’t merely run the same videos. OTOH I do want to include as much cultural content in the auditory class as I can, because translators need this content. This means I don’t want to just run random videos in the Auditory class, just because they are in English. Consequently I’m sorting back through all of my videos to see which are the richest in cultural explanation.

In order to make the sorting between the classes easier, I had to come up with an outline for the culture class. This process has been fun, though it will necessitate my writing actual lectures for each class and then piecing together the media to back them up. In order to do this, I came up with a list of cultural representations/summations that apply to each country.

The fifteen weeks looks something like this (and if anyone has suggestions, I’m wide open to them):

1) General remarks about culture and myths; Demographics and a cultural overview of the UK and US

2) Rock and Roll (and a bit of its pre-history)

3) Cowboys and Shopkeepers

4) Manifest Destiny vs The White Man’s Burden

5) Economic systems – Capitalism vs. Semi-socialism (and of course, the explanation that neither system is what it claims to be)

6) Sports

7) Violence

8) Love

9) International Relations

10) Imperialism

11) Food and Drinks

12) Literature

13) Cars (Dodge vs Jaguar)

14) Religions

15) Political systems (Wit and Wisdom)


I hope I can get all my shit together before the classes come (and I’m still figuring out what to do in my communication and presentation class.. some debate, some speech, some powerpoint, I guess..)

Semi-Well

Teh ague is almost gone and consequently I’m much more optimistic. I made it to the office today and got a new swipe-card to get in my apartment building. The lovely OAF, for some reason in her alien head, took my card to Busan and left it in a restaurant. So I’ve been getting in on the charity of friends or, worse, leaving the basement windows jimmied and crawling back through them. This was not much of a problem when I was sick, as I stayed in most of the time, but now that I’m recovering I wanted out.

Talked to the Brit-going-to-China and he regaled me with stories of talking (on the internet) Chinese girls out of their underpants and into sending him pictures. Rather classic tales, particularly from a man who is going to China to get married to another woman. Canadians may have pot-smoking and child-abuse down pat, but no one beats the English for promiscuity.

Semi-relatted, this evening I finally got the notion for my Brit-Am Culture class. It’s going to be based on shared generative myths, like manifest destiny in the US and the white mans’ burden in the UK, and I will use lecture and media (primarily videos and music) to tie the thing together. It may be a bit raggedy as I work it out, but it will be a thing of beauty by the time I’m through the first semester. It’s also an approach which will maximize the impact of my devious bullshittery and give me plenty of time to sit on my keister and watch movies.

So.. that makes the auditory and the culture class well into the bag. Now I have to figure out how to combine the speech and debate classes… it might not be too difficult.

My first set of classes are in and they are..

BPU2 has given me...

Two English Listening Classes for majors
Discussion & Presentation English
British and American Regional Studies

and the possibility of two more conversation classes. Which I actually think I want, since that would pump me up to nearly 18 hours, which would be a butload (to use the vernacular English for which I am so well known) or overtime and I'm all about the Sejongs (that would be "the Benjamins" in Korea).

The listening classes should be a snap.. I have the syllabus done already and all the content lined up. Discusssion and Presentation English means basically "Speech." And the last is a culture class which I think I can make quite interesting.

Already sounds way more interesting than most of what I've done at BPU1

That was the week that was

I’ve been a shitty blogger, since this was intensive week, I’ve been house hunting, and I’ve been struggling with my stupid New Year’s resolution.

Schedule
The classes were all pretty good, but all but one of them were new to me and one was new to PBU. This was the TESL class, which is teaching theory and theory-application to Korean elementary school teachers. The students were very good, although they complained about how much work was given them (a very Korean thing in my experience). The odd thing about that complaint was that no matter how we tried to dial them back on specific assignments the crazier they seemed to get. You could say “I only want you to discuss how to teach using multiple learning styles – just a discussion,” and you would be completely un-comprehended. They would get in their groups and go absolutely mad creating theoretical frameworks, lesson plans, physical props, and assignments of all stripes. We just couldn’t get them to NOT do this. And the work was just outstanding. In both writing classes we gave perfect scores to ALL groups. I mean they took the assignments out behind the shed, strapped them to a pole and beat them until they gave everything up. Then they made them tea, slapped on some bactine, an made them beautiful for presentation. Given this student approach (an offshoot, I think, of the BKF’s “what the fuck” theory of Korean behaviour) I think that dialing back the assignments was all we could do.

Schadenfreude – the only Freudian thing worth a shite.
The last assignment in this class was a Writing Storm and I asked my students to write about their experiences in the class. This resulted in something unexpected. I came out fine, but the students absolutely unloaded on the “Games” instructor. In very un-Korean form several named her by name, the rest mentioned “a instructor” and if words could kill she’d be under a lovely bit of turf and marble right now with Jesus shining her up for use as a sunbeam. It was brutal. John and I read them together and giggled like schoolgirls (albeit fat male schoolgirls in our 50s) that someone else had gotten it. This may not be very adult, but it sure was fun.

Chilluns
I also got two chilluns classes, which I have historically hated, but these were good. I was a bit consterned when I arrived at my “(CAMP NAME REDACTED) 2” to discover that the 2 did not mean 2^nd grade, in fact pretty much meant nothing. I had two sixth grade boys, but it was for only an hour a day, MWF, and only for this week. I pulled out some old lesson plans and showed some videos. That was that. The other class is twice a week with a handful of 7-year olds, but they are the best-behaved little suckers ever, and just as prone to short videos as any other class.

Academic Writing.
I got to this class and there was only one student in it, an extremely Pointdexter-ish male high-school senior. For the entire first class, every time I spoke he jerked visibly and then slowly subsided into lesser spasms, tremors and twitches. Still, as it turns out, he put himself in this class, not his parents. I assumed it was his parents and was confirmed in this assumption when, with the first class ending, he asked where the homework was. “So,” thought I, “if he doesn’t show his parents homework, they won’t be satisfied with how much work he is doing.”

Second class comes and I hand out the homework and ask him if I need to mark it in any way to impress his parents. After he stops his little impersonation of jello on a hot waffle griddle, he figures out what I am asking and says.. “Homework? No show parents. Homework is for ME.” So, you know, I was wrong about that whole domineering parent thing. Turns out he’s just a kid with a plan. Must have been the twitching that confused me.

Anyway, next week gets lighter and easier…

Home is anywhere, that you hang your head
The Korean listing habit, at least for houses listed on foreigner boards, is to list them when they become available; as available immediately. And Koreans expect something called “key money” or Jeonse (젼새 I’m guessing), which is a substantial down-payment (in fact, if you put enough down you don’t pay rent, the landlord just gets to invest your money. This strikes me as a risky thing, but I guess it works). Consequently I’ve watched two places I would have really liked, in, say, 6 weeks, go away. Oh well, I look at a place tomorrow.

My stupid resolution
When I got to Korea I swore I’d start running again. As I was an jelly-filled fat fuck (with an order of extra jelly), there was no way I could start immediately. So I set a weight that I would hit and then start running. I got to that particular weight and celebrated by sitting down. Didn’t quite start running. So, to jumpstart the whole thing, I resolved that in January I would just run one lap of the local field for the number of each day. One on the 1^st, ywo on the 2^nd, three on the 3^rd, etc. Of course on New Year’s day I was hung-over. Day after I was lazy. I started on day three with already 6 laps to do, which was not quite my brilliant plan. Then I realized that if I was going up to Seoul on Saturday (the 10^th, so ten laps) I’d have to get ahead a few laps as I wouldn’t run that day. Suffice it to say that I’m dizzy from running in circles, but will be able to take tomorrow off and still go into the truly daunting part of this whole scheme a couple laps ahead of schedule.

Next week should be a bit lighter, then one more week and I’m going back to Cali.

Sweet!

Do I get the Laziness Now?

I think I’m an official professor now.

Why?

Because I waited until the absolutely last day to do my grading – in fact I did it on the train up to Seoul. I even took the Mugunggwha so that I would:

a) be bored enough, and
b) have time enough to do them

Now they are done and my only concern is that for some reason the spreadsheet isn’t properly calculating my performance grades into the final result. This means that, currently, everyone failed my class. While I might have occasionally wanted to do that, it wouldn’t look good to the head office, so I’ll need to head back there and work out whatever the kinks are.

The kids did ok – 8 As; 4 B’s: 4 Cs; 1D, and; 2 Fs, with one F earned by getting caught cheating on the final. That kid was gonna fail anyway, so I guess he thought the gamble couldn’t cost him too much.

The Best Class EVAR ends

Friday was the last meeting of the volunteer lab class. We watched a Stephen Fry documentary about the West Coast states. This made me a bit homesick, but as I will soon be home, and sick of it, this doesn't really matter. They brought me a piece of paper card/art work from China and we all hung around after class, a bit unsure of how to say goodbye.

As the title (subtlely?) indicates, this was the best class evar.

That picture to the left is one of the many I was forced to participate in, although it is quite useful inasmuch as it demonstrates all the places I will need plastic surgery, when I finally vacation in Thailand.

Then it was off to an Italian restaurant in the old downtown. Entirely run by Koreans, but with pretty good Italian food and some reasonable wine. We were celebrating the marriage engagement of two of our friends. After dinner we moved on to a bar and blabbered until nearly one.

All good, but upon returning home I couldn't sleep and tossed and turned for several hours before giving in and taking a sleeping pill from back home. When the OAF woke up at 8 and began on her usual morning routine of raising alarums, clanging pots and pans, playing unfriendly rubbers of bridge with the horsemen of the apocalypse, and raising the dead from their sweet, sweet, quiet graves, it all turned quite bad.

On the plus side, the conference panel I will be presenting in and moderating, has been accepted, so this will be another publication. Of course I will have to look back at my abstract and see exactly what it is that I have claimed to have knowledge of.

Tonight, some more red wine, and some sleep.

sweeeet!

10000 hours....

It is now the end of my second complete semester here at BPU and as good a time as any to take stock of what I’ve learned. I’ve been reading (about) Malcolm Gladwell and have recently been amused to see that his reputation as smartest hipster around has begun to make him a target (here, here, and here are some representative attacks). It was inevitable.

His latest “work” includes the theory that you can become good at something if you work at it for more than 10,000 hours. That’s over 400 days and I think it’s fair to say that the only thing I’ve worked at that long is drinking.

And I’m still not quite at the level I want to achieve!

Oh.. I should add in sleep.. and again.. I just haven’t got it quite right.

I had this 10,000 hour thought after walking down the stairs from the final exam of my Japanese Studies class. They all moaned and groaned when I did the listening part of the test, but to my surprise all did well on it. They had a bit more trouble on other aspects of the test, but part of that was due to really poor test-design. The test included instructions that were difficult for me to decipher, and vocabulary that had never been covered in the class or the workbook. This semester I decided to use the test provided by BPU, as opposed to last semester when I wrote my own. This was a mistake and leads to learned thing #1: Take as much control of the course content as you can. Sadly this conflicts with LIFE-LEARNED lesson number one: Be lazy. Still, it makes me glad I’m moving on the BPU2 and close to complete control of the syllabus and methodology. Some time soon I’ll post the rather detailed syllabi I’m compiling (replete with works stolen from very many of my betters).

Anyway, I was walking down the steps feeling I’d given it a fair go, when Gladwell’s equation popped into my head. I did some quick figuring, and so far I’ve taught 525 hours at this level. I’ll give myself about half of that in preparation time, grading, and reworking things for a closer fit in the classroom. So that puts me at 787.5 or so.

On the other end of things, I’m not sure what to assign all that time I worked as an IA in the CC system. I should certainly get full credit for time in Mass Comm 6 at Chabot, since I not only wrote the thing but taught it; I’m not sure what I should assess for doing the tutor training; all the pedagogy work I did on the ESL/CALL interface should count for something; heck, I might even count in time spent as being student, both for myself and others; Time spent researching and writing academic papers and presentations, and; I suppose, some things I forget. Optimistically, and giving myself full credit for things that were in fact half-assed, I have about 5,000 hours. Probably far fewer.

Which means I have 5,000 to go.

I won’t live that fucking long. ;-)

Doesn't matter anyway - BKF is gonna become a world-famous translator and then I can retire from the teaching fray to the more gentile world of text-editing, canapes, and the occasional caress of the rattan cane.

Today was also the second-to-last day of my International Student Lab Class. They have three finals between today and our final class on Friday at 10:30. They go from that class directly to another final. I asked if they would rather study during my class, or have another presentation and discussion on Western Culture. There was a 100% response in favor of one last day of work. This means at least two things. First, they feel prepared for their finals. No surprise, as they actually study and learn. Second, it means they like my class, since they had a free pass to not come to it. Which leads to learned thing #2: I prefer to work with motivated students, “good” ones, even (though we aren’t supposed to make such invidious distinctions). To be honest, I’m not drawing a line that would mean much back in the States. In the CC’s in California, even the most basic of remedial classes contain students better at English than the Korean kids at BPU. The Korean kids at BPU aren’t, largely, interested in English, nor do they have reason to be or should be.

Additionally, today was my second-to-last “running all over the fuck” day. My morning class is at the “Nearly a Bizness Skool,” then I run up the hill to the University, finally scramble back down to the Institute for my night class. These days are always hectic, even if I have brilliant and complete lesson plans (or, I imagine they would be hectic if I ever did!). Which brings me to learned thing #3: I don’t like working all over the known Learniverse.

Which brings me to learned thing #4: I should really prepare my classes better (this is strongly related to learned thing #1, but slightly different). Which, as I will post later, I think I already have started to do.

I hope this all adds up to BPU2 being a better school for me. The fact that I get to make all the content up should naturally lead to better answers to learned things #1 and #4. I don’t think I will be sent off campus, so I should have more time spent working. Finally, the students in a translation program will probably have to be better than the average ones at BPU.

Also, I hope, BPU2 will give me an office computer that works. ;-)

And, to be fair, that trading grades for sex thing never really worked out here at BPU and I need to give it another shot at BPU2.

More from the front lines..

This week marked the beginning of my "Administrative" classes here at BPU. These are something like Staff Development classes in the states - employees take them to get some kind of credit with their managers. Employees get off work at 6 and are expected to be in class by 6:10.

The first day of my class, only 3 of my 12 students showed up, so I had a chance to talk to them pretty extensively. I went through my basic intro routine and then started asking them some questions. The first thing I said was that they wouldn't have to buy books. They nodded their heads in relief and one even said, "that's good." Which was why it was odd to discover, about 5 minutes later, that each of my students already had their books. As I followed up why that was the case, I discovered that the three doughty lads before me had taken this particular B level class, the one I am teaching them in now, last semester. They then launched into some rather personal attacks on the previous professor (who, of course, I knew) which gave me the disheartening feeling that they weren't inclined to like ANY professor. As I began asking about the missing students, who it turned out were missing because they know the first day of any class at BPU is administrivia, it became clear that ALL 12 of my students had been in the class at the B level the previous term. ALL 12 of them had also been in the class at the B level the term before the last one.

And, of course, they had all been through the exact same book in those two previous terms. I went for the inspirational speech; something along the lines of, "Well, if you've been in here two terms and you're in your third, now is the time for us to work together to move you up to level C."

You might have thought I had asked them to eat cold bricks of pig-shit without kimchi on the side. All three physically recoiled in their seats and two threw up their arms in front of themselves. Larry, Curly, and Moe all yelled, "no teacher!" in high voices and then hastily proposed various arguments as to why they were in the B level and that was where they were supposed to be, and that was where they intended to stay.

This was a bit dis-spiriting, though it did allow me to mentally start adjusting the bar.... down a bit.

The next class 10 students showed up and they all had books.... excellent! I began on my lessons and these guys were fast and accurate. When we did the readbacks everyone's answers were perfect. Which made me pretty suspicious, since they didn't understand English very well.

A closer look and, DUH!, after two semesters with the same books, they already had the correct answers written in them. ;-) Thank god I had some worksheets from the workbook to hand out. The class also demanded that the class end at 7:30, and I accomodated them in that wish.

Still, pretty emblematic of BPU and the Korean English Language Education Enterprise in general. The students are forced to be in my class because their employer "wants" them to learn English, but no one cares in the slightest if they are learning English.

Oh well, it won't be a tough class, but still...

The Worst Lesson EVAR!

I decided to try a couple of new things with my Chinese students, all of which failed miserably. There are three hours to fill, so I'm always looking to try something new. They wanted more conversation and listening, but I think all they'll go away with today is a group headache.
First I had them to read an article about China's increasing economic clout. They read it just fine, but trying to get a class of 18 students to discuss the thing was like pulling teeth. They wouldn't even answer simple questions like, "what makes China so powerful?" I had assumed that playing to their chauvinism would get them going, but instead in clammed them up like, well, clams.

I finally just punted on that part of the lecture (thank god there had been an institutional questionnaire to fill up 10 minutes of the first hour).

I returned to the second segmentof the lecture with the "What Am I" game, which went somewhat better, and the lesson was sort of back on track and I knew I had a strong finish coming because it was a video. To end the second segment of class I introduced the questions for that video. The video is from the "No Reservations" TV series by Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain talks quickly, and with a NY accent, so I wanted the kids prepped for each question. With 15 minutes to go until the computer HAD to be wheeled in, I was starting to get nervous and headed down to see where it was.

Turns out that all (by which I mean two) laptops had been checked out to other instructors, even though I had requested mine last week. The office did, however, have a projector.

I was too polite to ask what good a projector was without a laptop.

This was a non-starter, so I asked if a computer lab was available. It was, and I rushed up to it, to discover that it was unequipped to play mkv files. Not quite cutting edge. "No problem," sez I, as I quickly downloaded VLC and had that part of the puzzle fixed in about two minutes.

More alarming was that the connection to the ceiling projector was not attached to the computer, and there was no remote for the projector in any case. I hooked up the projector, but there was no way to operate it. Worse, the sound cables to the projector were RCA and there were only the standard 1/4" outlets on the back.

No video AND no audio for the complete win!

Now, I sit here with my students happily surfing the internet and not learning a lick of English.

Pretty much of a total disaster of a lesson.

Ordinal Rankings, New Classes...

I went in and got my ordinal ranking this morning. I was the 7th-highest rated professor out of 58 here at BPU. That kind of sucks.. just outside being able to say I was in the top 10%. :-(

The new classes have begun and the familiar (well, ok, it is only my second semester) groove is settling back in. I have the Japanese Study kids, who I love, and some Chinese students who have really good English, the other class is BPU administrators, and it hasn't met yet. Rumour is that I might have to take some more of the Chinese hours.... Only downside to those classes is I have to wear a tie, which I kind of hate.

This week I'm teaching 19.5 hours, but it is pretty spread out... one nice thing about the next Uni is that it only has a 12 hour work-week. A lazy man could get used to that!

I always forget how fun the students are when you are really rocking a class. I subbed this morning for a great chemistry class and other than the fact that my fat self was drenched in sweat from the trip up the hill, it went perfectly.. high English levels in that class as well as students who didn't mind being there. Even the stupidity of the textbook didn't break the vibe, which is when things are really working.

HOLY CRAP!

Just received a rather outstanding (but tentative, in Seoul, Korean language training built in, and the possible promise of another degree) job offer that would increase my stay in Korea.

Which I don't mind terribly, if there's plenty of vacation time to visit the two friends and 2.5 family members I still love. ;-p

OAF is down with it...

Korea, love it or leave it

Exclamation point to end that sentence, or question mark?

Heh, a nice calm weekend with the OAF erased by this mental turmoil...