I Survived Parents Day!!!

Today, my class and I performed for Parents Day. Huh, what? you say. Performed? In a Parents Day? Yeah. Basically a dog and pony show for the parents to see how awesome, or not awesome (but my students are soooo awesome!) their children are in English school.

Two weeks ago, we, as in the English teaching staff, found out this was going to happen with a visit to each of our classrooms by Amy Teacher and then Sunny Teacher (or vice versa) – remember, their two of the Korean staff, aka the bread and the butter that keep the whole meal of our hagwon edible – observing for the day. Both visits went fairly well, in my opinion. Sunny Teacher wanted me to get my little distracted monkeys more excited about our flash cards that dealt with healthy and unhealthy foods. Um, yeah? Really? Because this theme is stupid for four year olds – they can barely recognize themselves in English, let alone foods they eat. But, yes, please more excitement. Okay, I’ll try. And I did, and I’m now happy to report that Sunny Teacher made a comment to our principals/owners, The C’s, and my class is, as of Monday, studying the body – starting with the head/face region. And(!) each student finally got their own theme book, so no more copy-making for me!! This makes me enormously happy. Where was I?

Oh, yes. So, the last two weeks have been used pretty much as prep time for the Parents Day “festivities”? “judgments”? – call them what you will. We start – after hand sanitizer – with a song and dance routine, ours being “Where is Thumbkin?” sung to the tune of “Are you sleeping, Brother John?” It’s a cute song and on most days the kids really enjoy it. Sometimes I have to run around tickling them so they sing, doing different voices for each finger – they really get a kick out of that. We do that, then we just started – after the sit-ins – doing routine questions of, “What is today?” and “What is the weather like?” and then, “How do you feel today?” Their choices on that are yellow smiley faces of: happy (big smile with a piece of lettuce/mint stuck in the teeth), sad (waterspout tears flowing down the face), angry (frowny), hurt (a sad face with a band-aid on the forehead), and tired (yawning face). For a while it started out that everyone was happy, or hurt (a band-aid anywhere was considered hurt), but then it grew to angry – which they would shout, laughing. As soon as one kid changed their answer to angry or sad, they all wanted to change their answer. So it goes. Also, before the questions we pick seats; they were having trouble staying in a certain seat before, always changing and someone would get upset. Blah, blah, blah. So they pick seats from a laminated set of cards that has a match stuck to the table, and that’s where they are for the day. They love it. They also love playing magician and hiding the card when I come around asking for it back. Hilarious, again – so they think.

That’s how we started the morning. Then we had introductions, “Hello, I am Kate Teacher and this is my mother.” My mother wasn’t there L so I used “Koala Baby” as a substitute which, needless to say, got a few giggles. But I only just remembered that on Tuesday, so there was only one day to practice. Oops. They did just fine… in practicing. Then there were flash cards; we do flash cards every day, it takes a while, but it’s worth it, I think. The flash cards sync up with what we are studying in the theme book and after flash cards we do 2-4 pages of worksheets in that. Then there was the Potato book – the one with repetitions of “In the Morning”, “At School”, “At the Park”, or “At Home” (which is where we are now). And there was more time to kill after that, so we read Scary Party (monthly book that comes with a fun read/sing along CD; “Bones, bones! Look at the bones. Dancing in the dark. OH NO!” on and on through arms, hands, eyes, legs, feet, bodies, and then it’s just a Halloween party and not scary at all – the kids like to read it) and did a worksheet in the corresponding workbook.

Okay, so that was the plan for today. Usually the kids are running around singing in the morning, laughing, hiding under the table, and that’s exactly what they were doing before their mothers came in. It was magic when we practiced “Thumbkin” and everyone sang along with motions and everything; I was really excited to show off my kids, like my college playwriting professor would say, “I feel like your proud Jewish mother” (he was Jewish, although a man, he knew about the moms, obviously, right? having one himself and all).

Dilemma. As soon as the mothers came in, the kids waved to them and stayed in their seats. Time to sing, and they’re all glued to their seats, mouths zipped. Oh no! I’m thinking as the sweat is pouring down my neck and back, and forming at the top of my forehead (I’m coming down with something, maybe? or perhaps it was all the nerves). And I’m running around to each kid trying to get them to go along with me. No go. The introductions weren’t so terrible (I think that’s what we did next, even though I wrote otherwise above… it would just make more sense, and it does in my memory, too) except after the first three, the second three really didn’t want to go, especially Arthur and Roy. Arthur totally froze up and it took about three minutes or six of him rolling around on his mother’s lap to whisper out, “Hello, my name is Arthur and this is my mother.” Roy (or as the Koreans sometimes call him, “Loy”) had been confused in the practicing and instead of repeating what I said, “Hello, my name is Roy” he would mumble something about his mother. No, no, no. We tired many times, and the other children would try to help as well. Oh, poor, sweet, confused Roy. He did a pretty good job and I heard both, “Hello, Roy and tis mother.” So, they all got stars which I’m sure the moms loved.

Flash cards and theme book were both successes, and Potato, too, minus Arthur’s rolling around on the mat and Danny hiding and giggling behind me after he held my hand and snuggled his face on it. Strange, but adorable, kids. Scary Party, too. And I finally stopped sweating after the theme book and other routines. Oh, yeah, the routine questions were alright, Arthur didn’t answer, and most of the boys laughingly said they were angry – I’m going to take that option away.

After the whole shebang – which I thought was going to end in flames (I had dreams about completely sleeping through it, which lead all the parents to remove their children from the school, which led to my being sent home on a slow boat) – I had 5 minute “conferences” with each mother. For half of them, Sunny was with me and translated for us, but their were three who spoke pretty good English and it was nice to talk to them, directly. Eric’s mother worried (he spent two years in America) that class isn’t challenging enough for him, and I have to agree as much as I hate to, but he already knows everything we’re going over, and I talk with him, but he’s on a whole other level than the rest of the class – so y’know, I told his mom that she had to do what’s best for Eric, all the while hoping that he stays, because he’s a great kid and she said he loves me. Aw. These kids are little rays of sunshine and always make me laugh, and I love watching them finally grasp ideas that they’ve struggled with, or just act like goofballs. So, yeah, that was a bumming talk, but then Olivia’s mother had no complaints and just wanted to tell me how satisfied she was that I was her daughter’s teacher J (last week she called because in the memo book from the week before the mother wrote that Olivia would sometimes come home saying, “I got another “X” today [in the workbook] and I’m always wrong. I am so sad.” So I wrote back, “Oh no! I feel so bad.” and explained that it was okay to make mistakes and that I would reinforce that to the kids. So she called to tell me not to feel bad and she understood – and blah, blah, blah, she’s a nice lady and we laughed about sweet Olivia’s shenanigans). Roy’s mother also told me that after the first day of school Roy said that I “scares” him, and I was so shocked and saddened to hear this, but then she said it was because he said my eyes were so big! Hilarious! I thought that might happen sometime while I’m over here, but at the same time figured it was just a stereotype on my part. The other mothers were pretty good, nothing really to report, I thanked them all for their lovely children and they thanked me for teaching them. It was nice to finally put a person the words in the memo books (I have to write reports on each student at the end of each week to send home – taxing to say the least, and I only have six kids). Although Arthur’s mother did want me to use playroom time more effectively and come up with some sort of English-speaking game… I took it into consideration and then dismissed it, because c’mon, lady, these kids are four and being forced to speak in English all day long. Let us just say “Lion!” and recently added “angry dinosaur”, “tickle dinosaur” and call it good, okay?

So, yeah. All in all it went well and I survived and didn’t ruin my sweater from sweat. Unrelated, I bought a guitar on the streets of Itaewon (in Seoul) over the weekend. It was also my first experiencing with haggling, I talked him down to 85,000 won… from 90,000. Yeah, I know, I’ve got some work to do, but it’s hard to talk someone down more than that after my first response was squealing with delight while jumping and clapping. I’m learning every day. It’s a Yamaha – and(!) I got a bag with it – and I haven’t really had a chance to play it yet because I don’t really know how to tune without a tuner and I don’t have a cell to call my guy friends here who have guitars to be like, “Hey. Come tune my guitar.” So, hopefully I’ll get that taken care of in the coming days of this week, or weekend. Yeah, this post turned out to be a long one, eh? Sheesh. No real time to read before I hit the sheets – I just started “The Fountainhead” and so far I’m torn as to whether or not I like it… but it’s such a classic, right? So I’m going to give it a try… we shall see, we shall see.

For now… peace and love from across the sea.

**I know I wrote “today” and it is, right now, as I type, actually today, which is Wednesday, but I’m posting on Thursday, which, incidentally, is your Wednesday… so it works out, I guess – either way. Just throwing that in there for you. Just so you know, y’know?