Charpie's Travels

Third Grade Writing Assignment:  Think about a person whose job helps people in your community. Write about what this person does to help your community. Answer:  Sorry to write this answer in my writing, but I have no community at all. How could the children have their own community? I want to have my community, but I can't. If you see my writing, understand me that I don't have any community at all.  Sorry.

My school had an all-day Halloween party.  Halloween

Me: What people are in your family? Robin: Older brother, older brother... Me: How many brothers do you have? Robin: Two. No... four.  Me: What are their names? Robin: ( pause)  No names.  Me: No names or no English names? Robin: No English. Me: Ok, what are their Korean names? Older brothers first. He tells me a name, and I put up one finger. Then he says some more Korean, so I put up a second finger. He pushes it back to my palm.  Me: Who else? Robin rattles off some more syllables, and I put up a second finger again.  Me: And who else? More Korean. But again, when I try to put up a third finger, he pushes it down.  Me: So...hmm. Two older brothers? Robin: Yes. Me: And you have younger brothers. Who are they?  Robin: Younger brother, baby brother... Me: How many younger brothers?  Robin: Two. Me: So, two older brothers and two younger brothers? How many brothers all together? Robin: Many. Me: How many? Robin: I have seven br...

There was a pig but he has a tail as straight as a nail.  He was sad.  He eat noodles a oodles and prizle.  Now he get a tail with curly like the real pig. -by Lewis

They call me RGM. They are my smallest and, somehow, my loudest class.  Jun gave up on participating in class conversation long ago. We move too slowly, and he hates having homework. I can't say I blame him. Then again, something would be wrong if these boys actually got excited about English grammar class. Ethan is incapable of remaining completely silent for longer than 6.5 seconds. Most often, he's speaking to anyone who will listen -- or to the air, if necessary. He speaks more Korean in class than my other 81 students combined. He spends most minutes trying to make the other boys laugh. At the moment, he's singing the Korean soccer song to himself. I prefer the singing, partly because his soft voice puts a funny twist on his tough-jerk persona.  Henry spaces out more than me. I invited him back to Earth once, and the other boys won't let it die. Today, his classmates have failed to inform him about the chunk of tape in his hair. I don't mention it e...

Assignment: Write a poem about a hot dog. Be as creative as possible. Katie's poem: Hot Dog Hot dog that not dog. It's yummy and bummy. Squeeze ketchup or netchup. Put inside sausage mausage. Make bread mread. I like hot dogs. I love hot dogs. But its not bood good for you!

Most days the AC is on at work, though you don't always feel the cool air. This was the case in my first Grade 4 class tonight. Not surprisingly, my cheeks were red. "Teacher," Hanna felt the need to announce the obvious. "Your face is red." "Yeah. Because I'm hot." "Ohhhh yeah!" Kevin instantly hollered. And then he  did a double-take. Hiding behind his grammar book didn't stop the mocking from the rest of the class.

Grade 1 Assignment Write a story to finish this line: " One day, Simone was walking alone in the forest when..." Marisol's story The Marisol princess was crying. So the Jase prince safe her. Jase prince win. Marisol princess was very happy. Jase prince and Marisol princess marry. So they lived happily ever after. Marisol's been kissing one of the boys lately. I'll give you one guess which one it is....

My day ends with fourth grade. Today's class was all boys who all like to eat all the time. Each of them had their own regular-sized tube of Pringles this afternoon. Generally, I make them put the food away, but when one of them placed a generous stack of chips on my desk, I took the bribe. Furthermore, I taught them how to make a duck bill. This was all well and entertaining until Ethan decided to try drinking water through his duck bill. I don't think a single drop made it into his mouth. Instead, he gained a rather embarrassing wet spot on his shorts. So we laughed at Ethan and then sadly put our food away. 

Ann wore her cardigan as a head covering today -- until I'd compliment her for it. Then she'd quickly remove it for 20 minutes or so.  Henry got a perm this weekend. It's nothing out of the ordinary for Korean mothers to get perms for their sons. It's also completely normal for those boys, including Henry, to absolutely hate their freshly permed hair. Jaden had one answer for nearly everything I said to him today. It went something like "be-quiet-and-eat-your-food-and-do-your-work-and-don't-talk-and..." at some point he'd run out of commands and then do whatever it was I'd asked him to do.  JunSeo is nearly an angel as students go. But occasionally he pulls some weird stuff. I glanced back at his row and found him sitting casually and contentedly with a pencil in his right nostril. Andy informed us today that he likes the color Peter. I have a pencil case that looks like a shoe. Clever little Jason decided to try it on, and he didn...

We ate lunch outside in front of the coffee shop that gets a decent chunk of my income. I had tuna bibimbap . Like most rice dishes, this one is supposed to be eaten with a spoon. I was too lazy, however, to pull out chopsticks AND a spoon. A few minutes into my lunch, one of the baristas came outside, stuck a small plastic spoon in my bowl, and returned to her work.  When I arrived in my first grade class, quiet Shiyoo proudly held out her shiny, gray fingertips for me to see. She used her break wisely to color them with her pencil. Jason did the same but clearly forgot about it. He didn't make it ten minutes before his cheeks and nose were varying shades of pencil gray. 

Because of the no-food-in-class rule, I made Henry put away the remainder of his kimbap. In turn, he walked to the open window, pushed his face as close to the outside as possible, and yelled "My teacher is a green-eyed monster!" We encountered the word "myriad" during vocab class, so I asked if anyone knew what the word meant. One student confidently replied, "it's punctuation." Harry got distracted while taking out a pencil. While everyone else started on the worksheet, Harry held his pencils like chopsticks and used them to rearrange the contents of his pencil case.

English names are fluid here. Today Annabelle informed me that she wants me to spell her name now without the last 'e'. Andy regularly alters his name... Jandy, Pandy, Mandy (until I told him I know a girl with that name). And, just for today, Justin decided to be Bustin. It's the best when said with a Korean accent.   It's not only the kindergarten kids. Jenny is also Jinny, and Alice is the same person as Sarah. My friend Dawna said that, a day after she started teaching, a girl at that school changed her name to Dawna. I think I'm going to start dropping letters out of my name, too. Or swapping them. Tomorrow you may call me Zabeth.

Kindergarten Phonics dealt with phonographs today. I want to know how many adults even know what a phonograph is. For one question, we were supposed to find words containing "ell". Elizabeth, my quietest girl, raised her hand rather quickly. Her word? Hell. Judging by the smile on her face afterward, I'd say she was pretty pleased with herself for that answer. My fourth graders wanted to open a window because they were all hot. I protested because I was cold.  Hanna and Kevin pulled out their coats, draped them over my shoulders, pulled the hoods over my head, and even buttoned them around my neck so as to keep them from falling off. No one ever got around to opening a window. At least then we all roasted together. One of the mothers bought smoothies for all the teachers today. Just for the record, that's a lot of smoothie. I happened to get a tomato smoothie. It was more bizarre than last week's "fruit salad" (tangerines, sunflower seeds, grape to...

Some kids seem to think their intelligence exempts them from homework. Ryan informed me, when he started first grade, that he didn't have to do the homework because it was "too easy." Sunwoo is a fourth-grader with a steady supply of words and jokes and random trivia. While he didn't tell me he was too smart for homework, I pegged him as having that mentality. He did, however, complete the three journals that I assigned for writing class. And he didn't just write them, either. He wrapped the three pages individually in green X-Files paper, and he wouldn't let anyone near them except me.  "These are for the queen!" he announced as he proudly presented them. "Do not let anyone else see!"

Today in first grade science, we drew pictures of ourselves. Then we labeled body parts and discussed how they help us. In the middle of this discussion, Robin pointed at me and announced, "you are a princess." Not certain how that pertained to body parts, I asked how he figured. Hyun-Joon looked at Robin with this odd smile on his face and explained, "you are pretty girl." And since, apparently, I left my crown at home today, Yeji rolled up her paper to make one for me.  I still don't know what any of that had to do with body parts. But if you ever want to feel better about yourself, feel free to come visit me in second-hour first grade!

Mid-lecture, one of my fourth graders asked me, "Teacher, can you do eggs?" My expression effectively conveyed my lostness, and so she demonstrated.  Step One: Smile as big as you possibly can. Step Two: With your forefingers and thumbs, "pinch" as much of your cheeks as possible.  Step Three: Compare among your friends. The winner is the one with the biggest cheek "eggs."

At the bottom of his science homework, Robin wrote The End  and drew a box around it. And just in case I might still be unsure, he followed that up with the words "means it is over."

Should you ever decide to teach elementary children in Korea, there are two questions you must be prepared to answer. Some students will confront you right away. Others must warm up to you for a few days or weeks. But they will ask. And they will do so mid-lecture, or mid-sentence, or pretty much anytime they like. 1. Are you married? 2. How old are you? (best guess so far: 36 years old)

I've spent a considerable amount of time testing different threats and bribes and rewards and punishments on my different classes over the last two months. Some succeed, some flop. Some work for a day or week and then nosedive. I suppose that's half the fun of working with kids...figuring out a million different ways to deal with 60 very different little people. I hope I'm not speaking too soon, but I think I have found IT. The one thing works on every one of my classes. Even the rowdy kids are suddenly very interested in completing their work and answering questions. My students are magically more alert, quieter, and still.  Ann in Pre-K first spotted IT in its hiding spot when she ventured somewhere she shouldn't have been. "There's a very ugly toy in there!" she announced. In most of my classes, kids stared for a moment before a light went on. Then they exclaimed, "Ah! Toy Story!" Thank you, Pixar, for introducing Mr. Potato Head to my...