Packages and precious moments

My birthday package from my parents arrived on Tuesday by lunch time. My schedule on Tuesday includes 6 classes in a row, starting at 2 p.m., the first three of which are phonics classes with small children. Tuesday shocks me out of my weekend orientation, forcing me shift gears from easy living to lesson planning. During the past few weeks, Wednesday became a day to rebound from Tuesday's classroom failures. Assuming this week would be the same, I decided to hold off until after my classes to open the package--a sort of pity token to ease away the quagmires of the day. Fortunately, my classes went well on Tuesday, and instead, I unwrapped it as a reward for a day of modest victories.

Inside the brown box, I found three neatly-wrapped presents and a pink envelope with a singing "Hello Kitty" card. I surmise the cartoon puss was chosen because of it's popularity in Korea rather than any known interest I've ever had in Hello Kitty. (Good one, Dad.) Behind the pink wrapping paper, I uncovered "A Thousand Splendid Suns," Khaled Hosseini's sequel to "The Kite Runner," a nifty book light and a bag of candy corn. I've already started reading the novel, and I'm really enjoying it so far. It's helping me to learn about Afghan culture as well as to incorporate words like "surmise" and "quagmire" into my vocabulary . Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Today, I used the candy corn as carrots to motivate my students to volunteer for reading or sharing their homework aloud. I explained that the candy is popular during the fall and especially around Halloween time in the United States. Many of the students noticed my jar of mysterious orange and yellow triangles and seemed eager to try them. Wide-eyed with curiosity, they held out their hands for a colorful piece of "corn" and then gingerly placed it on their tongue, biting down with equal carefulness. Some of them made suspicious faces. Some thought the taste resembled caramel. Some didn't like it. But most of them responded with "Mashisoyo!" Delicious! And then asked for more.

One cute girl named You Rim asked, "Teacher's mother make?"

"No, no," I explained. "She just bought it."

I'm happy to report that I think I love my job now. There are too many priceless moments to dislike it for any huge length of time. Last night during a vocabulary drill, a few girl students couldn't stop laughing at me as I asked them to repeat after me, "culture...culture." Finally, I asked them why they cracking up, and through much sign language and spotted English, told me that the word culture in English sounds a lot like the word for booger in Korean.

I've been able to recover a lot of the exercises and teaching tools used in my language arts classes when I was in grade school. For two of my conversation classes, I wrote a mad lib and arranged the paragraph so that, when students filled in the blanks with adjectives, verbs and nouns, they were telling a humorous story about their own morning routine. One of the students pushed the snooze button "700" times! Another student "slept" when she looked at herself in the mirror because she looked so "smart."

Yesterday, in another class, I used the Venn diagram (you know, those two overlapping circles) to have students compare themselves to a deaf, Mexican character in one of the stories. I wanted the exercise to demonstrate that although they are different from Rosina in several ways, they are also alike in many ways. After assigning it as homework, I offered a chocolate reward for the student with the highest number of points on their diagram. We listed all of the points from their work on the white board today, and those giant circles were so full of ideas that I had to write more outside the lines. I was so proud of them!

Justin asked me the other day how I get the students to be interested in learning. He said it seems like a lot them are having a really good time in class. I was baffled by the question. Me? Is this the same me that half-hated my job a few weeks ago and managed a zoo-like classroom on most days?

Yet, I have a lot to learn. Justin wants me to teach a research project for some of the reading classes, and I'm really not sure how that will go. Also, it's difficult to balance vocabulary lists, graded homework, online resources and report cards and all of that teacher stuff that teachers do. Heck, I'm trying to get the Korean names straight in two of my classes. But I think loving my work is a good step in the right direction. I'm starting to feel more like a teacher every day.