Last week, I was teaching one of my kindergarten classes. This is one of my rowdier, funnier but subsequently more obnoxious classes. It's also one of my youngest classes, a class where I use most of my Korean and where the least amount of English gets spoken.
I had them answering questions in their notebooks about a very phonetically potent English story that concerned a lox and a fox, who live in box and get the pox. While they answered these questions, I was going around the class and having each student read me the story in turn, checking their pronunciation, etc.
John Two wanted to go get water. John Two, you ask? Why would a Korean student pick such a silly English name? As an aside, I should point out, if I have not already, that the Korean kids pick an English name that they use in English school or class or apparently with English speaking people because they believe their names are too complicated for us moron Westerners. Apparently, according to Elli teacher, the closest thing I have to a Korean friend, this continues into adulthood. You have a Korean name and you have an English name.
In any case, Chris Teacher and I make an concerted effort to not give students in the same class the same name. The problem is that the classes get moved around or students come in from other English academies and are very attached to their fake English names and we end up with two Johns in one class and neither boy is willing to changee. Changee, as another aside, is Korean for change.
Thus, this kid's English name is John Two. I prefer John Two to John One. Both Johns are terribly behaved, not especially studious, loud as hell and, where possible given our substantial language barriers, exceptionally lewd. Between John One and John Two, I have learned the Korean for gas, poop, diarrhea and vomit.
John Two is my favorite because he is just so much more cunning with his mischief than John One. He also looks absolutely ridiculous due to the fact that his mother made the unfortunate decision to put tons of and tons of blond streaks in his black hair. You see a lot of little boys subjected to strange feminine hair decisions in Korea.
Blond doesn't come out especially blond in black hair. So John Two has strange, random orange streaks all about his little head. Add to that head the steadily toothier and toothier grin of a boy rapidly loosing baby teeth and he just looks like a goddamn tiger. And I dig that. I teach a tiger English.
Because John Two had finished the questions and the reading, I let him go get water. Flushed with hydration and five seconds of freedom from English work, he ran back from getting water and slammed into the shut door. I turned and glared at him through the glass, motioning for him to come in and to (as all my students are able to say almost perfectly) "Cut it out!"
He tried to open the door and let himself in, but the door wouldn't open. Seeing this and thinking he was up to his usual tomfoolery, I commanded him, with a bit of a raised voice, to come in. He said "Teacher!" and looked sorrowful. It was clear he was trying to tell me something but that "Teacher!" was the extent of his English language abilities on this front.
I went over and tried the door, thinking that perhaps John One or Tom or Jerry had locked it while my back was turned. But they hadn't.
I had them answering questions in their notebooks about a very phonetically potent English story that concerned a lox and a fox, who live in box and get the pox. While they answered these questions, I was going around the class and having each student read me the story in turn, checking their pronunciation, etc.
John Two wanted to go get water. John Two, you ask? Why would a Korean student pick such a silly English name? As an aside, I should point out, if I have not already, that the Korean kids pick an English name that they use in English school or class or apparently with English speaking people because they believe their names are too complicated for us moron Westerners. Apparently, according to Elli teacher, the closest thing I have to a Korean friend, this continues into adulthood. You have a Korean name and you have an English name.
In any case, Chris Teacher and I make an concerted effort to not give students in the same class the same name. The problem is that the classes get moved around or students come in from other English academies and are very attached to their fake English names and we end up with two Johns in one class and neither boy is willing to changee. Changee, as another aside, is Korean for change.
Thus, this kid's English name is John Two. I prefer John Two to John One. Both Johns are terribly behaved, not especially studious, loud as hell and, where possible given our substantial language barriers, exceptionally lewd. Between John One and John Two, I have learned the Korean for gas, poop, diarrhea and vomit.
John Two is my favorite because he is just so much more cunning with his mischief than John One. He also looks absolutely ridiculous due to the fact that his mother made the unfortunate decision to put tons of and tons of blond streaks in his black hair. You see a lot of little boys subjected to strange feminine hair decisions in Korea.
Blond doesn't come out especially blond in black hair. So John Two has strange, random orange streaks all about his little head. Add to that head the steadily toothier and toothier grin of a boy rapidly loosing baby teeth and he just looks like a goddamn tiger. And I dig that. I teach a tiger English.
Because John Two had finished the questions and the reading, I let him go get water. Flushed with hydration and five seconds of freedom from English work, he ran back from getting water and slammed into the shut door. I turned and glared at him through the glass, motioning for him to come in and to (as all my students are able to say almost perfectly) "Cut it out!"
He tried to open the door and let himself in, but the door wouldn't open. Seeing this and thinking he was up to his usual tomfoolery, I commanded him, with a bit of a raised voice, to come in. He said "Teacher!" and looked sorrowful. It was clear he was trying to tell me something but that "Teacher!" was the extent of his English language abilities on this front.
I went over and tried the door, thinking that perhaps John One or Tom or Jerry had locked it while my back was turned. But they hadn't.
There is no other way to exit the room, besides the door. I motioned to John Two and pointed to Sean Teacher, who was a mere 10 feet or so from us, telling him to get Sean Teacher. Because I am loyal to the cause and the validity of why I am here and what I do, I told him first in English. And then when I realized I didn't want to die in this room, I told him in Korean.
For a second, I saw him consider the position of power and freedom he had mistakenly won himself and I was very, very worried. But luckily the good nature of John Two somehow won out and he went and got Sean.
I like Sean Teacher very much. He is a wiry, constantly smoking, very thin and gentle Korean man with nothing to prove. If that doesn't sound interesting to you, it means you haven't met many Korean men. But Sean Teacher was not an ideal man to deal with this door. I needed someone bulkier and more angry. Someone with fists and fury.
Sean teacher futilely tried to knock the metal back into place with a folder. But that didn't work and so he went to get Rei Teacher. "Aha," I thought, "Now we are in business."
Rei Teacher is an relatively angry Korean man. He clocked one of my students for walking too loud. Seriously. He punched a kid because he found offensive with how soundly his feet were hitting the floor as he walked. While this may not sound like an ideal temperament for working with children, it struck me as an ideal person to get a door down.
Meanwhile, my class had started to notice something was amiss. The more I work with them, the more I find that children can appreciate and get unrealistically excited about anything. Seeing three teachers unable to do something set them off. They were delighted.
The bell signaling the end of first period rang and Elli Teacher showed up to teach second period, during which she had planned upon administering a test. She was displeased to find that she couldn't access her classroom.
Meanwhile, my and her students couldn't get enough of it. They danced, they pointed, they waved, they mocked and they laughed at Elli through the glass. Elli, enraged (she is often enraged), yelled at them in Korean through the glass and issued all kinds of unreasonable demands about them stopping, sitting down, being quiet. This just made them dance with increased ferocity.
I should have been disciplining them, obviously, but I didn't have the nerve or the stamina. Firstly, it was hilarious and I didn't begrudge them their merriment. And secondly, if ever children have had an adult wholly at their mercy...it was then.
Luckily, Rei somehow pried the door open and I was freed. The other teachers took me gently into the teacher's lounge, while I praised Rei and Sean and spoke of my fears that I was going to have to live the rest of my life in that room with those children.
The door remained broken. Everyone teaching in that room was strictly told not to shut the door.
I taught a class later that day in the same broken doored classroom. Before beginning my class I sternly informed everyone that the door was to remain open. I made every single student repeat it back to me and was convinced that they understood.
Then June (the same June who sings about gimchi, mugeo dong and Hagwon) returned from the bathroom, where he had been apparently camped for the last twelve minutes and slammed the door shut behind him while shouting, "Teacher! Hello!" in the express way I so frequently ask him not to shout. And so we repeated the entire thing.
It wasn't a bad day.
