I teach 1st-3rd ( the equivalent of 7th -9th in the States) grade at an all-boys middle school here in Busan. I have 18 classes of about 35 students each during the week (six of each grade), so that’s three lessons a week, plus after-school classes of anywhere from two to 15 students (depending on who shows up) three times a week. These after-school classes are where I am allowed to be more creative in my methods, but I also have to take into account the varying levels of the students who attend the after school classes because they are made up of students from all three grade levels.
I have sort of made it my mission to try to eke some imagination out of the kids in my after-school class since being given the chance to be creative is apparently pretty uncommon in the Korean school system (or maybe Korea in general, I’m not sure), and this is where I can give the students the most one-on-one attention. I say this because when I first began teaching I had many lofty ideas involving creative drawing, story-telling, and play-acting, only to be disappointed time and again that I could not get a shred of original thought from them out of the exercises I thought would be really fun. I found that ANY time I gave any sort of example of what I would want, they would all copy exactly what I had written word for word. Literally. Now that I have the hang of things, I can usually see beforehand how they will interpret the lesson and what they will come up with, so I have to plan accordingly and basically force their hand as best I can.
Today’s extra class lesson was called Crazy Pictures. The gist was that I would show a picture that was sort of "crazy" and they had to write a story about what was happening in the picture. Then we would read the stories and vote, and the funniest story would win cookies (American Girl Scout cookies, courtesy of my former history teacher and current friend Scott Bush, thankyouverymuch). I gave them a couple of key words that I thought would be useful – mainly for spelling purposes - but that’s all, because I didn’t want to lead them in ANY direction. I was trying to make them be creative, as ridiculous as that might sound. But I’ve learned that that’s the name of the game here.
So for the first picture I started off with this:
And the key words I gave them were Birthday (sort of obvious) and Golden Retriever.
My co-teacher Mrs. Kim came up after about 12 seconds and said, “They want more key words” with a giggle. (I find that Korean women giggle a lot, many times when they are nervous. It’s an interesting cultural nuance that really throws me off-sides sometimes because it’s so different from the Western behavior that I am used to. One of those things you have to re-align in your head almost every time.) I was almost immediately frustrated because of course they want more key words. But I told her, “If I give them more key words, all of their stories are going to be exactly the same.” (which they probably will be anyway), “The point is that they be creative.”
These are the responses I got on the first picture:
That G.R.s are twins. And today is their birthday. So they wearing birthday hat. Celebrate Birthday.
Okay… so this could not be a more straightforward representation of what is in the picture. Did I mention that the stories are supposed to be funny? Oh, yes, it was in the instructions, and I repeated them numerous times. I thought at least there would be something about death and gore in there (because all my students’ stories usually have “He is died” in them somewhere. All my friends’ students do too. Not sure what the obsession with killing is). But I tried not to be discouraged as I went on to the next student. (I also taught them the word triplets after this.)
Today three Golden Retrievers Birthday ~! Two Golden Retrievers are happy but one (Golden Retrievers) is sad. Why? Because he know
Okay, so you didn’t have enough time to finish. Still pretty basic, but at least you noticed that the one on the left isn’t smiling like the other two.
A dog which has three heads am Birthday.
Now I won’t ever make fun of my students. I am not heartless, and they are really great. This kid really tries hard and can hardly sound out English words, (a fact I don’t understand because these students have had English at least five days a week since they were eight years old, but that’s a whole different conversation), and I really admire his determination. And you can tell he was trying to be funny with the whole three heads thing, which I really appreciate, given the theme of this blog post. But the sentence does make my head a little insane if I look at it too much.
This a my pet. My pet birthday is today. So three Golden Retriever’s. The host took them to the park, but the Golden Retriever’s want a dog food, and meet.
Boring, but you were at least trying to think of a new location, the park. Thank you, kid.
Today is three Golden Retriever’s birthday. So they wearing birthday hat. And their host is give a steak. But they are sad. Because they want dog food. So they bark to host. So the host give a water. But they bark to host.
This is actually extremely creative because I don’t know any Golden Retrievers who would be sad when given a steak because they actually wanted dog food. And it’s one of the longest stories. Bravo kid!
Here was the winner (not entirely based on funny, but also because his was the longest and I was thankful for his effort):
Today my Golden Retriever birthday. How do birthday party. It is easy. Just, dog head cover. The birthday hat. They are have scared teeth. It’s very sharp. They are eat fish. They look like cat. Ka ka ka ka ka ka ka (laughing noise). But they are dog. They eat the ham. They look like crazy dog. They look like happy. But they want to eat ham. They have sharp teeth. At last they eat the ham. They look crazy.
Pretty funny. And a good, long story. This kid came away with 2 Do-si-dos.
Here is the next picture, with the key words Fire and Scream:
When I chose this picture and the key words, I clearly underestimated the Korean child’s obsession with and disgust of underarm hair. I wrongly thought the burning headpiece would be the central theme of their interest.
When he wears a hat, he gets a lightning.
Not surprisingly, this is the same kid whose sentence made my head insane before.
He is crazy boy. I see underarm hair. It’s dirty. Ka ka ka ka ka (laughing noise again). I think he head is fire. I think no have hair. He head is twink twink. He head is flute. Ka ka ka ka ka. Also he eyes fire. Ka ka ka ka. He is doing yawning.
This is the student who won the first round. Clearly he thinks in order for the story to be funny it must include laughing, which I don’t dispute. Also, when I saw “twink twink”, I thought he meant gay… but it turns out he meant “twinkling”, like a star. Oops. My mistake. I also explained that you don’t have to ‘do’ yawning. I did like his story though.
He is Gay. He is play with fire. His house is fire. He body fire.
My response was, “What about this makes him gay?” And the kid just gestured like I was stupid if I couldn’t tell what about him was gay. I thought, kid, you hold hands with boys… you don’t know from gay. And I’m still unsure exactly what it was that made him think that. I bet it was the underarm hair. Maybe the fact that dude’s not wearing a shirt. I hardly think he could have made the connection with the word “flamer” and the fact that the man has a flaming headpiece on, but that would have been pretty clever.
He is burning now. But he’s speak “I’m happy, I’m cold.” The reason is He’s makali one shot and he is die.
Now there’s the reference to death I was expecting. Makali is a Korean rice wine that is really delicious. As far as I can tell, the man got drunk on one shot of Makali and caught on fire and died…?
He is crazy boy. He wears fire hat. He look like very very very crazy. I’m look he underarm hair. It’s very dirty. Now I know he is dirty and crazy. I don’t like to be his friend.
Yep, don’t befriend the crazy, dirty fire-hat guy with underarm hair! I don’t know, to me he looks kind of like he knows how to have a good time. But to each his own.
And here’s the winning story:
One stupid man burning himself. But he looks so funny. What a idiot! Oh-yeah!
Clear. To the point. And it’s really hard to read that without laughing, so here’s a couple of Do-si-dos kid.
Here’s the last picture, which they really went wild for. The key words were Rat, Evil, and Truck.
That little rat wanna play with people but people don’t like rat. So that rat is mad! He will destroy everything!
Everything. Damn.
Toe evil rat invade Earth rule.
Guess whose story that one was? Yep, insane-head strikes again.
There is the evil mouse. But he is so small, so onlooker don’t care. But evil mouse is bigger than mouse. So he is very big and look scary and one citizen kill the evil rat. Evil rat is die.
Now that is more what I was expecting. Evil rat is die, obviously. Also, I think my co-teacher taught them the word citizen during class because more than one kid used it and I know it’s not in their basic vocabulary.
It has very big ears. It has very big teeth. It has very big head. It has very short arm. It has short legs. It has big body. It is fat. It is boom body. It is die. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Descriptive, but not a whole lot of plot twists. And of course the rat must die. Also, the evil rat starts to sound an awful lot like the Big Bad Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood, does it not? Pretty good one.
Here is my favorite, mostly because of the use of a lot of dialogue. And I like the idea of pleading with someone to believe that you are cute.
“Oh! Monster! Help me ~!” Evil rat say “No I’m very cute and good…” but citizen continuous “Help me ~ Help me Evil rat eating me ~!” Evil rat say “Oh ~ No….”
So the moral of the story is either Korean kids find dogs in hats boring or that Korean kids hate underarm hair. But the stories did get better each time. Perhaps I just needed to give them a little time to get the creative juices flowing? Or maybe, just maybe, it was the underarm hair that did it… What if somehow that’s the key that opens the door to the mind? Maybe I’ll test this theory by introducing more underarm hair into the lesson next time I want to evoke creativity. I guess it’s more likely that they’ll just start to think that I’m weird underarm-hair-obsession-girl… but there’s only one way to find out.
Never enough underarm hair.
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