About school
As a new teacher, I am not qualified to comprehensively compare the school environments of Korea and Canada, however, even the lay observer would certainly not fail to notice some of the starker differences. The school I am referring to has over 1000 students.
The students are responsible for day to day cleaning of the school, although there is also a janitor. Seeing teams of children sweeping the stairs or mopping the bathroom floors, without adult supervision, is still surprising. Also still surprising and completely delightful is having children bow when the say hello.
The students in Korea enjoy a large of freedom at school. Their outside play is completely unsupervised and probably at times dangerous. At lunch time, even the youngest child carries his or her own tray of hot soup or bone laden fish without a care in the world. Most of the students carry small exacto knives in their pencil cases with which to sharpen their pencils. The knives are also great for carving the desks, which does not appear to ever arouse the ire of the teachers. Yelling and running in the hallways is tolerated, although if a teacher is ran into they may mildly scold. In the classroom, the students touch each other a lot, holding hands or arms around each others necks, rough playing, boys with boys and girls with girls, usually. Often girls see the need to hit a boy several times to get him to stop bothering her, which usually resolves the situation. Dealing with all of the talking, talking, talking is the biggest disciplinary challenge for the teacher. Especially the grade 6's are much more interestd in their own conversations than anything the teacher could possibley be saying. teachers can hit the students and often do, ranging from a swap on the palms with a ruler to whacking over the head with a book.
But for all the exuberance and noise, the students mostly have an earnest desire to do well. The energy is overwhelmingly happy energy. The artwork produced in class is extremely creative and seems advanced for their ages.
1 comment:
Awe, to be an Elementary teacher. I'd say 4 of my 16 classes have that same drive and desire to do well... in the other 12 classes, the drive is limited to a select few.
And don't you remember grade 6? That was when the first dating started to happen (not for me, granted). There was the infamous "Dating club" in my class (so dubbed by those of us not involved) which was 3 boys and 3 girls who were coupled and would only hang around with other couples (due to the fact that all they talked about was coupleship) :P lol
I really liked your entry though. IT was a pretty good summation of School life in Korea. Maybe you could've gone deeper in to "skinship" (touching) though :P Since it's really quite an interesting thing.
I loved your uber-correct grammar when you said "...with which.." thusly not ending the sentence with a preposition :)
Post a Comment