A Whole New Ball Game

A little change can go a long way, and my school just went through a massive change, making this semester completely unlike the last 17 months I've spent teaching at school. I'm not sure whether things are going to be better or worse, but they certainly are different now.

For starters, I'm now the 3rd longest tenured teacher at my school. Of course, I still have to get help when I need toilet paper for the bathroom, but all but two of the teachers who were here when I arrived have since rotated schools, something teachers do here on usually a 4-year basis, but I guess working at Jungang Elementary speeds that up a bit. Mostly I don't mind, some new faces are nice to see and meet at school, and no one gets tired of my strange English teacher antics this way. Unfortunately, my principal has left, and I'm now faced with a new, much more "by-the-traditional-book" kind of guy.


My New Principal

It took two days for my principal to speak to me (he has zilch for English skills). Before that, he asked others while right in front of me "Does the English teacher not have a cell phone?" and later on (while I wasn't around) make sure I was given proper instructions for saying hello and bowing in the morning. I now need to not only ensure I say "Please be peaceful honourable sir" each morning, but I was given a second round of instruction to remind me to enter the room fully, face my principal, and bow directly at him. I also need to do this for my vice-principal, and again for both when I leave school.

My vice-principal, who gets along much better with this new style of leader, now feels more comfortable guiding me towards becoming a better and honourable Korean. All ready he's begun informing me at lunch that I must eat everything given to me on my plate, something he would only mutter under his breath last semester. In reponse, I've changed times I eat lunch, and am much better at preventing the cafeteria workers from putting nasty foods on my tray.

Volleyball has also taken on new levels of importance, which is awesomely horrible since our teachers are even worse volleyball players than before. Last week we played 3 or 4 times, and most staff meetings revolved around how to improve our volleyball skills. When we do play, I'm trapped in this grey void of not knowing whether to impress the few male teachers and play hard, or have fun with the female teachers and not violently crush balls at them. It's degenerated for me into this silly dance where I spend 80% of the time with my hands in my pockets, then leap up to knock one or two balls down so I can get a high-five from my principal. Then, back to twiddling my thumbs and trying not to act too ridiculous on the court.

Well, I should wrap this up here. I didn't teach at all last week, setting a new personal record for internet surfing and time wasting. The British term for it is WILFing (What was I Looking For?) when you surf online without any real direction. I'm teacher a few extra classes per week now though, so perhaps I'll be moderately busy this semester.

Oh, while I don't mean to drag this out into another epicly long blog, but here's a funny tale from teaching. Last year my students were getting a little... over-excited... about certain body parts and human activites that start to get interesting once you're around 12 or so year old. During my teaching of parts of the body, they demanded very much to know the words for "penis", so they could use it in ways not ideal for speaking to me or other students. Well, I didn't feel good having them saying penis so rudely, but I didn't want them to be clueless or wrong about body parts, so I just gave them "groin" as a suitable and useable word. Now I've got kids yelling groin around the school left right and centre, making strange hand gestures and talking about "groin-groin-go", it gets so ridiculous I end up laughing with them and at them at the same time. That of course only encourages is, but hey, whatever gets them speaking English, right?