Here's my essay. Feel free to comment. I had some annoying issues while pasting this from MS Word. Blame any typos on that.
234 LESSTHAN3 KOREA
William Matthew Featherston IV
Yongsan Elementary School (Daegu)
방가방가
From Austin, Texas, my hometown, I drove three hours to Houston, Texas for my interview with the Korean consulate for my visa. In the lobby, the receptionist stood about two meters away behind an enormous sheet of bulletproof glass. I asked her a question and she answered inaudibly through a two-inch hole at the bottom of the glass, which was meant for exchanging money. I thought she was taking me for a ride when she spoke quieter after I asked her to repeat herself, but her stolid expression served as a warning not to ask again. I took a ‘Dynamic Korea’ bumper sticker, sat down to wait, and watched the news on a massive LG flat screen television.
After a few minutes I was called to another room just off the lobby for the interview. A serious looking Korean bureaucrat in a suit accompanied by a younger Korean woman wearing jeans and a t-shirt sat at a table with seating for twelve. Without saying hello, the woman asked me a question. “Where did you go to college?” When I answered, “The University of Texas at Austin” she squealed, “Me too! You passed the interview.” The next five minutes were full of questions that were to be a prelude to many future encounters with Koreans. “Are you married?” “Do you like Korean food?” “Oh, what is your favorite dish?” No, Yes, 청국장비빔밥. The man in the suit never spoke.
Now, almost three years later, when I have a student stand up to read something off of the board in class, I feel like I’m in that Consulate office again, but now I’m the one giving people the power to travel the world (but my co-teachers are more beautiful^^). The student stands up to mumble and whisper while his friends provide words in much louder voices whenever he struggles. When I think of how to react to situations like these, I try to put myself in my student’s shoes, even though they are literally and metaphorically too small.
Years ago, I was taking a vocabulary quiz in a middle school English class. The teacher had a rule: if you spoke during the quiz, you failed the quiz. With no intention of cheating, I asked someone a question unrelated to the quiz and the teacher proclaimed that I had gotten a zero. Indignant, I began telling her that she had made a stupid move because now that I had no points, I had no reason to not talk! I talked to her until she left the classroom in tears. There were consequences. For the next few days I sat in a small bright white room with only a desk and a chair, not even a clock, holding my Game Boy under the desk so that nobody could see me playing. I didn’t learn my lesson that time.
So, to that student standing up in my class, I might tell him that his listening skills are very good. Calling the student who fed him the answers by name, I might comment that his speaking skills are very good. Then I might ask the class “How do these two students improve so quickly? They must study together all the time.” I would make a point of communicating with these two students more outside of class, if I hadn’t already.
What would you do if I sang out of tune?
I read the winning essays from last year’s contest. Most of them mentioned something about being a cultural ambassador. I certainly appreciate my students’ habit of silence. The part of my culture that led me to make that poor teacher cry is not something I want my students to be aware of. Not because that story is personal, but, selfishly, because I don’t want them to try to make me cry, and I don’t want them to try to make any other teacher cry. It’s not part of my American culture that I am proud of, nor is it something that I want Korean culture to adopt. Who would want to see the most beautiful co-teachers in Korea cry, anyways?
I have yet to cry in class, and I’d like to keep it that way. I have certainly shed a tear or two in private over whether my teaching is effective or not. When I find my spirits low, and I retrace the events that led me there, I usually find myself thinking about the purpose of my job. What I know about people and culture can help my students learn by showing them that humanity encompasses more than what they can see on television or read in books, and it is my aim to use this to motivate them to become independent learners. Although I don’t expect them to pick up my habit of reading the dictionary any time soon, my culture can help me inspire. In Texas itself culture is an end; in my classroom it is just a means to an end.
The first time I came to Korea I felt a bout of homesickness after a couple of months. Several nights of dreams were filled with images and even tastes of Mexican food -- mangoes, avocados, chicken mole, tamarind paste, and paletas. Mexico is not my home country, but it happens to be Texas’ neighbor. Plenty of streets in my hometown have Spanish names, and it is not uncommon for my family to greet each other in Spanish, even though none of us are fluent Spanish speakers. Two year later, after leaving Korea and moving to Spain, I had my first dream about kimchi. It was delicious.
As a child I played lots of video games. Some of the ones I spent the most time with were Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 3, and Pokemon. These are all role-playing games that were created in Japan. As a teenager I listened to French electronic and Brazilian metal music. A Czechoslovak wrote my favorite novel. Now, I make grilled cheese sandwiches with kimchi inside for dinner. Somehow I missed out on cliché Texas pastimes like riding horses or drilling for oil, but I do occasionally don bolo ties and shirts with pearl snap buttons.
Americans who pass themselves off as ‘normal’ misrepresent the United States. There is no ‘normal.’ For instance my family’s home has no kitchen table; in fact it has very few chairs at all. I call my parents by their first names. After multiple rounds of marriage and divorce in my immediate family, there are too many people in what are now overlapping families for me to keep track of. Sometimes in a single holiday season there are three sessions of Thanksgiving, three bouts of Christmas, and one day of Hanukah. The simplicity of a Chuseok traffic jam is a delight in comparison.
Austin, Texas has one of the lowest crime rates of any big city in the United States. But anytime the police end up shooting someone, inevitably that person is black. Even though segregation ended a long time ago, and everyone can vote, a highway still divides whites from Hispanics and blacks. Despite global warming and everyone’s constant complaints about traffic, plenty of people drive around in huge cars by themselves. And lots of people are overweight. Even if I did or could represent my culture, I might not want to.
Lead by examining examples
I interact with my students on a regular basis outside of class. But I don’t have an ulterior motive for speaking to them. I’m not trying to befriend them to make them easier to deal with in class, nor am I trying to prove to them that foreigners are approachable (these are just positive side effects). Usually I’m just curious about why they are sharing headphones and dancing in the hallway or what several eager second graders are going to do with the school’s broadcast system. Practicing for the school dance contest and showing the entire school an educational cartoon about how fun it is to have flashing hair, respectively. Seeking understanding is an important part of the communication process. Again, I think back to my own experience with a foreign language to decide how to act.
I once considered jumping out of a moving car. After asking me how long I had been in Korea, my cab driver began to chant ‘janun-ja-ri’. The chant became more shrill and fast paced. The driver took this chant very seriously, freeing his hands to ruffle through things in between the passenger and driver seat while driving with one knee and running red lights. That's when I considered bailing out. I thought it might not be so bad to lose most of the skin from my arms and legs. Thankfully, I wasn’t going very far. Hoping to exit as soon as possible, I took out my wallet a few blocks away from my destination and the driver reached over and dove his hand in and grabbed a several 천원 bills while he was still driving.
If this were a tale about people in America, I think this would be the part in the story where somebody got hurt. He waved the bills in my face and kept up his chant while he pulled over, somehow making it clear that he needed more than what he’d already taken.
Later, after a clumsy consultation with a Korean friend I learned that he was saying “천원 짜리,” or thousand-won bill. I guess he didn't have change. If only he would have said something like “천원 짜리, 오천원 짜리, 만원 짜리.” Maybe controlling his temper and using those four extra words would have communicated his idea much better. Or maybe if I’d studied more Korean, I could have diffused the situation.
After a year of teaching, I read about using lots of synonyms and providing extra context clues to try to help convey meaning to someone studying English as a second language. Of course a sentence like “I like apples, they are red, they are round like a ball, and they taste good,” is fairly unnatural, but it can help to build listeners’ confidence. Speaking in this manner can help prevent those dead stares that students are never too shy to share with a teacher.
I’ve had disasters in English. Once, while I was in New York City there was a large storm that delayed lots of flights, the airport was filling up, and people were sleeping underneath benches. I asked a flight agent at my gate what time it was. She looked at me and smashed both fists on her desk and yelled “God Dammit!” and walked away yelling “I can’t take it anymore!” None of her co-workers skipped a beat, I felt like someone was going to come out from behind the scenes to tell me that I had been secretly filmed for a TV show.
I decided that day that I never wanted to teach English to anyone who works at an airport. But seriously, that woman’s outburst showed me that what people bring to a conversation can overwhelm everything else. Showing the humorous side of things is my favorite approach to dealing with the apprehension and anxiety that students usually exhibit. When my students in the hallway say “Hello,” I usually reply “Goodbye.” I sometimes wonder if I wouldn't be doing my students a service if I cut them off and clicked my tongue more often, instead of being patient, polite, and cracking jokes.
Putting the ‘love’ in ‘love shot’
At her insistence, at the welcoming dinner for our new principal I joined arms and took a so-called ‘love shot’ with my vice principal. Later that night in the 노래방, when I was allowed to take a one-song break from singing, she asked me “Are you porn?” I knew I had found my new favorite anecdote on the importance of pronunciation as I nervously and hastily replied, “Yes, I’m having fun.” This was the preparation I had had when she told me that she needed to teach me “Korean sexual customs.” Oh, the irony.
Even though I knew my Vice Principal’s choice of the phrase “Korean sexual customs” did not capture what she was trying to say I couldn’t help but blush and fall silent. While preparing for this essay I once brought my copy of the ‘EPIK Counseling Booklet’ to school, instead of the 원어민 영여보조교사. Most of the case studies that I read within the booklet were informative and applicable, but none dealt with sexual harassment in the Korean workplace. Even a page or two would have saved a lot of awkward conversation with my Vice Principal, and she hasn’t even enlightened me yet.
If manuals worked all the time we wouldn’t need teachers. I was confused and surprised when one of my co-teachers joked that she had the fastest computer in the office because she was the cutest. Coincidentally several other teachers later that afternoon made similar jokes, and I realized that even though this set off alarm bells in terms of appropriate workplace conversation, this was culturally acceptable, at least in my school. Yet it seemed like my co-workers had forgotten the importance of seniority and the role of Confucian ideals in Korean culture. Clearly, the Principal is the prettiest. I think it has something to do with his former job as a P.E. teacher.
The brother test
I too learn by example. A teacher at my school named Mr. Jeong illustrates the value of comparison, and the benefit of multitasking. His hobby is to compare the advice of two talking GPS navigational devices while driving and carrying on conversations in English and Korean, all at the same time. Let us channel his cognitive power, and his patience, for my next metaphor.
My brother Witt knows me well. He can upset me just as easily as he can make me happy. Having an impact, both good and bad, is a sign of great rapport. Through my time in Korea I have come to understand that many Koreans are passionate about Dokdo. I once saw an ad about Dokdo wrapped around a toilet-paper dispenser. I guess it was meant to give you something to think about while you sit. Even those who aren’t interested in the dispute itself usually get riled up at all the fuss that the hardliners make. Nearly every Korean will agree that the Koreans living on Dokdo substantiate Korea’s claim to ownership of those islands. So what about the American soldiers living in Korea? 독도는 나의 땅! Just kidding.
After dispensing with 큰안경 (big glasses) and 천기억 (1 thousand memory) as Korean names for myself I settled on 이삼사 (234). If you read Korean you might be testing it out right now, “삼사씨?” I chose 234 because of the suffix on my name, IV. I’m the fourth person in my family to be called William Matthew Featherston. Three of us are alive, Junior, the 3rd, and me, the 4th. My great grandfather, W.M.F. senior, was killed when he was struck by lightning while riding a tractor. Madonna wasn’t inspired by my time in Korea to write ‘Like a Prayer,’ but she might as well have:
Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone.
I hear you call my name and it feels like