kiddies wids

Alright, it’s time I told you all about some kids.

The first thing you need to know about Korean kids is that they love to poke you in the ass. Generally speaking, whenever someone loves to poke you in the ass, that’s the first thing you need to know. Ass poking is a major pasttime for the children, and there is a certain form to it, just like there is a correct form for diving or throwing a baseball. Basically start out with your hands folded, fingers crossed over each other, like you would do in elementary school when you wanted the teacher to know you were being really good. Then pull back your thumbs like the hammers on a pistol. Last, extend your index fingers and keep them together. This is your ram. Make it strong.

Now… poke! Bonus points if you catch someone off guard while they’re standing at a urinal.
OK, so now that you know that most important point, we can talk about a few kids who stand out in my mind in some way.

My first class of the day is Madrid class. 8 students. 6 year olds. (This means they are 5. Koreans reckon age differently. All these kids will turn a year older on Korean New Year’s, and they were all 1 year old when they born. It can be confusing.) Erica, Carrie, Henny, Sally, Elliott, Jade, Amy, Jasmine. We used to have a 9th, Rachel, but she has now left the school because Erica kept punching her. True story. Erica is going to be a mob enforcer one day, I swear.
It’s hard to pick a favorite, because almost all of them can be really funny and cute, but I think Henny stands out as a great example of why it can be great to teach kindergarteners. Henny is ALWAYS happy. He always has a huge grin on his face, no matter what. Even when something is bothering him, like the time I told him I had to confiscate a toy from him for the rest of the class period, he still smiles. I could see by looking at his eyes he was concerned about this toy, kinda worried when he would see it again, but whatever anxiety he was feeling about that, it didn’t reach his smile. He can be happy-go-lucky while protesting someone taking his toy.

He was so hilarious in this month’s “phone teaching”. We call up the kids and talk to them for about 3 minutes, asking them questions about that month’s topic. Sometimes the kids don’t understand what you’re saying, either because they aren’t used to the phone, or the question is just beyond their level. Usually when they don’t understand what you said, you get a long awkward silence followed by a quiet “I don’t know”. Not Henny. Henny was somehow more enthusiastic about not knowing. He seemed to really enjoy not knowing the answer, because then he got to shout “WHAT?!?” into the phone. Kid cracks me up.

I also teach one of the school’s legendary students, the dreaded Michael. He’s one of those kids who’s pretty smart, gets along pretty well with his class mates, but needs to be shouted at roughly six hundred million times a day. He proudly declared to one of his other teachers, (my friendly neighbor, Mark) “Everyone in school knows my name, teacher!”. And Mark told him, “Michael, that is NOT a good thing.” He’s a big time attention seeker, and he knows how to get it. I do really like this kid, though. He’s amazingly creative. One time we had an arts and crafts project that was supposed to teach some basic civics stuff, like what a police officer does. As if they need any help on that one. As all seven year olds will tell you, and show you, police officers shoot people. Duh.

Anyway, the kids were supposed to make some 3d buildings out of these paper cut-outs. Michael wanted to do something a little different with his. Since my job is teaching English, and you don’t learn any more or less English if you make the 3D building model or if you set it on fire instead, I said he could do as he pleased. Three minutes later he had made a box kite with a decorative tail, and was demonstrating it by floating it over our classrooms portable AC. It floated so perfectly, like he’d made dozens of these things before. I was really impressed. Maybe he was just doing it to get people to pay attention to him, but dammit, he did a really good job. He frequently surprises me with his creativity. He’s a great kid, he’s just a pain in the ass to teach.

I feel a lot of affection for the kids overall. Little children are so different from adults. It’s almost like interacting with another species or something. And yet, working with them like this, it struck me almost right away how much kids everywhere are exactly the same. They’re just like I was at that age, just like my friends were. If everyone in the world was required to teach kindergarten for a year to children from a foreign culture, I think racism would be eradicated pretty fast. When you do a job like this, you see how fundamentally similar people are across cultures. No matter where your from, looking into a kindergarten class is like looking into your own past.

Till next time, I love you all,
Randy