Making Teaching FUN!

So, I know that I have not been the king of updates, and that those of you who were reading the blog regularly have probably grown frustrated and moved on to more reliably updated pastures.
Truth is, I've been too busy. Last year was a year of boredom and being in need of venting, whereas this year I am frighteningly content, and finding lots of ways to fill my time. Unfortunately, many of these activities cost money, which means that my saving thus far has been less than spectacular. Far less. They haven't even been "Spook-tacular", which is abysmal.

One thing that has really changed is the teaching. Last year, it was a matter of getting through it, with the payoff of that huge vacation constantly on the horizon to brighten even the darkest days. At Munhwa, the classes are smaller, the kids have more ability, but there is NOTHING coming. Just more of the same. For a year.
As a result, I have had to find ways to make teaching more interesting. This usually means making jokes at the students' expense, which is terrible.

Terribly fun, that is.

There's a kid in my grade six class who looks like a photo of my dad from the early seventies. ie, a little hoodlum. So of course, I call him "Dad", and I talk about how proud I am all the time when he gets something right, and say "Come on Dad!!!" when he's struggling, which usually rouses a chorus of laughter form the rest of the class. So, that's fun.
There's my new grade seven class too, which had an awesome happening last week. One of the girls had a new red lib balm, which she used to write "First kiss tonight" or something in her notebook. I caught a glimpse of the writing, but not the content, and attempted to grab the notebook to check it out and show off the artwork to the rest of the class. But she was not having it. Finally, I got the notebook later, by which time the page had been torn out and presumably eaten to destroy the evidence. Unfortunately for her (and amusingly for me) the reverse page had an imprint which was quite legible. So... that led to lots of fun in class. I should qualify this whole story by saying that it was just that girl and her friends in the class that day, so the embarrassment was not too extensive. But still fun to refer to on later dates when more people were around.
My grade fours are just painfully cute, and in an awesome coincidence, the easiest to win over. If a kid is mad at me (because I yelled at him or her for doing something stupid/annoying), I'll just walk up behind him and do an entire exercise with my hand/book/board marker resting on his or her head. Suddenly, they're all smiles, and they love me. Actually, I almost started crying in class one day, because this really loud kid started hugging my arm when I did it to him and he wouldn't let go. He wasn't being annoying, it was genuinely affectionate. I felt really good that day.
It's funny, but being a disciplinarian teacher hasn't seemed to affect how the students feel about me too much. I punish them regularly, but I think these kids are even friendlier to me than the students in Yeongam ever were. Well, most of the Yeongam students, anyways.

Anyways, that's just some of the things that I do at school to keep myself from getting too bored with the situation. I have a lot of nicknames for individual student. Some they will understand, some they will have no clue about. Examples are "Mr Corner", "Grandpa Corner" (classroom geography references), TKO (always wears a Tae Kwan Do outfit), Judge Reinhold (Why not? he want's to be a judge!), "Street Legal" (he wants to be a lawyer), "Handsome Guy" (because he's always dressed nicely), "Favourite Lady" (when I asked a boy to choose his favourite lady to continue reading the story, he chose his male friend), "Han Solo" (his name is Han Sol). Anyways, as you can see, there's a lot of fun to have, and the kids seem to respond well to the nicknames.
There's one kid named Chan who is a real handful, and he has a long list of nick names. He started off as "Chan", but he quickly became "Jackie Chan", then "Channarammadingdong", then "BaChanarramma", then "Chan Gang"... and I'm sure more will come to me as time goes on.

Another huge change that has happened is that Jessie and I have broken up. It's been quite strange being here alone, but the bigger adjustment has actually been trying to think of myself as unconnected. I spent two months establishing myself as the "long distance relationship guy", and suddenly I have to reintroduce myself to everyone. Not literally, but I'm sure you understand. It's a total reworking of the headspace, and one that is going to take a good deal of time, I think.

In other news... I almost killed Sam on Christmas. There's a little storage area off the kitchen of my apartment that is not insulated. I used to have the litterbox for the cat in there, but I've recently moved it into the bathroom so that I could keep that room closed. The door to the room is this heavy steel thing that has been painted just too small for the frame. This means that in order to close it, it really has to be slammed hard. Basically, it's a big ugly cat guillotine. On Christmas I was putting my bag into the storage room, and as I slammed the door shut, Sam ran in, because a room full of bags is a room full of super fun straps and zippers. I heard a sickening scream from her, and she stumbled away. I was sure that I had broken some ribs or something, so I picked her up and cradled her, poking around to see if anything got a response. Her paw hung weakly, and I was worried that I had broken it, but in the day since, she has started to walk normally again, and is pawing with it like normal again. So, that is great news. But man, my stomach was absolutely churning with guilt and worry while I tried to figure out if she was okay.

That's all for now.