Today was completely devoid of green clothing, pinching and cabbage soup. It was business as usual over here in Korea-ville. I'm sure if we lived in Seoul there would be bars advertising special drinks and more people willing to party in the middle of the week.
Our St. Patty's Day acknowlegements will happen on Friday night. Chelsie is having people over for a "sports wear" themed get together for the holiday (I believe it's also her birthday). We often crap out when it comes to getting together with most of the other teachers, so we figured it was time to say hi to everyone again. Afterall, a few people will be leaving in the next couple of months.
Today stretched on into eternity for me. I teach a full 6 classes on Wednesdays and three of them are Beginner 2. So, every other class is 8-10 year olds. They're my favorite, but it's pretty exhausting. Plus, teaching exactly the same lesson plan three times in six hours is enough to make me want to crawl into a hole. What's worse, I get to teach that Beginner 2 lesson plan at least twice more this week (I taught it twice before today, as well). Long story short, Yoon's doesn't organize it's schedules very well. Come to think of it, that sentence sums up my last 200 posts pretty well. Thank you for bearing with us.
You may have read an interesting episode on Ian's Facebook yesterday. He had a ten year old student continuously put his hands down his pants, root around, and then pull out his hands to smell them. The other students didn't even notice. Or if they did, they ignored him. Though, when Ian forced him to use hand sanitizer after each episode, they did beg for some of their own. My aunt replied to his story by telling him about one case in which they managed a kid's similar behavior with coveralls and a private room. If only behavior management was even a thought in Korea. Just to give you some perspective, this kid is also the sticker eater. Koreans write off young kids as "strange" very quickly. It isn't until middle school that the school system begins to strip them down to just what is necessary for their society. From that time on they are fed a steady diet of "Study and work hard and you will get everything you need in life. Nothing else will ever be as important."
That's about it for today. We're pretty worn out.
Good night!
I don't think we handle disruptive behavior or mental health issues very well in our society either. We may not sweep it under the rug or pretend it does not exist, but for the most part they are treated unjustly. All we have to do is look at the homeless on the streets around us, the majority of them have mental health issues. However, nothing will change until we look at mental illness with the same eyes that we look at any other illness or disease.
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