Caveat: I know zilch about horses. But I think this says something worth saying, just the same. Been a long time in coming, too. # You wonder, how could a cowboy be so much like the zen monk in that strange book your auntie from San Francisco sent you? He rides up as the sun is coming up, serene on his old stallion, a faint half-smile on his face, and dismounts. Hoisting the saddle off the horse’s back, he rubs the horse down and smiles at you. It’s the only greeting he ever gives anyone, but friendly enough. You ask …
Category: teaching in Korea
“Hakwon Teachers”
In a recent post, I made a disparaging comment about being talked to like some hakwon teacher: And it’s even worse when it’s nine at night and a couple of people come in wanting to sample the beer, just see what it’s like, and they’ve clearly just eaten dinner and tell you so, and you say, with the smarmiest look possible, “Well, I don’t sell draft beer without anju,” as if you’re talking to some hakwon teacher or something, and to top it all off, the anju on your menu is a ridiculously overpriced joke — even moreso than the …
Film List… Thoughts, Anyone?
So, I have just had a lit class dropped from my schedule and a film classes added, and while I cannot complain — the film class is an interesting opportunity, and a block of 3 hours which makes watching and discussing a film in a single go quite a lot easier — I am hurrying to put together a list of films we’ll be watching. It’s a mix of British and American films, through which students are supposed to be able to get a better handle on culture, history, and the commercial context of films. So far, my list includes …
Chew on This…
A teacher is a man who must talk for an hour. — Ezra Pound, in (I think it was) Guide to Kulchur. And he is, gender-exclusivity aside — plenty of women must talk for an hour too — quite right in this observation. The teacher must talk whether talking educates, or does not educate. The teacher is employed as one who “teaches” and there are all kinds of expectations that may make teaching a rather different endeavour from educating. Not that one should take Pound at his word all the time; he was a nut. But he also claims somewhere in …
Students: Do They Have Human Rights?
The answer to the above question is such that one would hope everyone working with kids would say, “Yes.” And to their credit, some teachers, parents, and students agree, as they showed by hosting an event back in July: Seven chapters of the progressive Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union, the Parents Association for True Education, and the youth human rights group Asunaro will host an event Wednesday to launch the Seoul headquarters for rules on students’ human rights. Can you imagine who disagreed? In response, the conservative Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations released a commentary Tuesday saying, “Legislating laws on …
A Notice That Was Should Have Been Up in the Laundry Room
Actually, it wasn’t. But it should be, except in English because Google Translate doesn’t work on non-digital texts and nobody would know what it says: Товарищи на жилье для чужих учителей: Ошибка пришло мое внимание. Ебаный в рот, который “фиксированной” из коммунальной стиральные машины убрали ручки. Без ручки, мы не можем изменить настройки температуры воды. Конечно, это не было преднамеренным. Может быть, Ебаный в рот были по приказу пьяного комиссара? Возможно, они были пьяными себя, и забыл, чтобы заменить ручки? Машины являются новыми. Я не верю, они могут быть настолько бесчеловечными, чтобы сказать: “Ах, эти животные, пусть вымоют одежды в …
“Where Did I Lose Marks?” & “I Got a C+, But I Expected a D+”: Conversations With Two Students
[Note: This is a coda to a series of posts titled “On Teaching Writing in a Korean University. You’ll probably get more out of this if you start at part 1.] I had an email exchange the other day with one student, and a phone conversation with another. Both threw some interesting light onto the problems I’ve discussed in this ongoing series and in other posts about teaching in Korea, so I figured I’d share. (And my next post, maybe later this week, will touch on the question of what I have to say about essays and alternative projects after having done …
“Beauty, Sleeping” & Thoughts on This Semester’s Creative Writing Class
I write this on Friday evening, at 10:30pm, in a coffee shop I’m likely to be kicked out of in half an hour. The only other people who’ve been here as long as I have are a couple who seem to be locked into one of those fights that involve no actual fighting, just a pretty woman sitting silently with a frown on her face, and a handsome, baffled-looking young man who is sitting across the table from her with a frustrated look on his face, learning that sometimes, a pretty woman is also the hardest sort of girlfriend to …
Korean Use of Footnotes?
Could someone out there please do me a favor and explain the proper use of footnotes in Korean? While the majority of essays I’ve received use footnotes in the familiar way, there’s apersistent minority of essays where footnotes are applied not at the end of cited material, but in fact the opposite, like this: There are, of course, many possible explanations for this particular type of argument. 1 According to Miller, there is no difference between transplantation and assimilation. Furthermore, it is unclear what Brownhill is attempting to demonstrate with her example…. (…) 1) Miller, James. Arguments About Culture. (돼지꿈출판사: Seoul, …
Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex (video), and Grading Adventures
Interesting thing: I am typing up the response sheets to the final essays for students in my Understanding English & American Pop Cultures course, and I actually had occasion to pass along the link to this video to one student who discussed Superman: (It is, of course, based very closely on Larry Niven’s original story.) I am not going to say more about superheroes, because I feel as if I’m a bit superhero-ed out, to be honest. It’s a huge genre, and there’s so much I don’t know about it… but I imagine it’d be fun to teach a whole …