#seogyeong

[hellisempty]

SeoJun + Jugyeong l What's love [+1x10; True Beauty]

[onlychanwoo]

ଘ1004찬우 | DO NOT EDIT

[andreagoesabroad]

쌤~ 청고 그만두고 다시 여기서 선생님하세요~ 너무 보고싶어요...

My high school students have been taking midterm exams since yesterday, which means that I have no classes to teach for the rest of the week! Good news for me, not-so-good news for them.

Today, at the invitation of a co-teacher from last semester, I visited my old middle school to say some hellos. To be completely honest, I was expecting the students to not really pay any attention to me (especially with a brand new foreign teacher in their midst) -- but I received one of the warmest (and most celebrity-esque) welcomes that I've seen coming from those kids. Groups of students stopped in the hallway (or crowded around the windows, or yelled from the stairwells) to stare and burst out into their familiar "HELLO TEACHER!"s or somewhat-less-familiar "STILL KOREA?"s. Some of them, who had finally managed to pick up on my Korean language abilities, asked me to please please please just say one thing in Korean -- and, after a year and some change of holding out on them, I obliged. Girls and boys alike were screaming and shrieking and clutching their heads in sheer confusion. A lot of boys, in particular, went around yelling "사기당했어!" ("We got scammed!").

My high school -- students, teachers, and administrators alike -- has been so unbelievably good to me this semester, but this afternoon, I felt myself really, really, really missing the other set of students and teachers who had defined my life for the past year. I got so many hugs and so many high fives and so many "ANDREA! ANDREA! ANDREA!"s that I thought my heart was legitimately going to burst.

[andreagoesabroad]

Ever since I've switched schools at the start of the semester, I've wondered about how my middle schoolers are doing. I run into old students all the time, and they are often surprised to see that I am still alive and still in Korea. Because I chose to stay with my homestay family (with a homestay sister who still attends said middle school and homestay parents who run a math academy that many of said old students attend), I hear bits and pieces of middle school gossip that keep my curiosity at bay.

Just yesterday at dinner, my homestay mom shared a conversation with me that I think I will (secretly) hold close to my heart. In the middle of class, one particular student who attends the academy, a rather well-known third-year girl who already knew about my homestay arrangement, asked about me and how I was doing. Does Andrea 쌤 teach high school now? Does she still live at your house? Does she REALLY speak Korean? After my homestay mom responded with the obligatory yes-yes-yes (with the third "yes" resulting in unexpected peals of nervous laughter from some male students who I know have tested my language ability throughout the year), she commented that she had heard the new male ETA at my school (who happens to be another second-year ETA and friend of mine) was really popular, especially with the girls.

"We do like the new teacher! He's very nice and his class is fun. But Andrea was always trying to teach us one more extra or interesting thing until the very end, even if it cut into her own break time. I don't think we realized it before, but she worked really, really hard for us."

Words alone cannot express how glad I am that there is a new ETA at my school -- and that he is a much different teacher from me in many different ways. I loved my old middle school students, although they caused me grief at times, but in the end, I realize I wasn't the best match for teaching middle school (high school is where I feel more at home). And I know a lot of my old female students pay much more attention in class now that a young male teacher is standing at the front of the room. (Which is a good thing, I think.) But at the same time, I'm glad that at least some of them are starting to realize that I put in everything I could to have a good year with them. That makes everything worth it.

[andreagoesabroad]

I already posted this particular gem of my life on Facebook, but it's too good to not immortalize in the annals of Tumblr -- today, after eavesdropping on their conversations post-speaking tests, I discovered that my 2-6 boys legitimately think that I am a Korean who is pretending to be an American. If this doesn't shake up my identity crisis already, I don't know what will.

[andreagoesabroad]

Dear 2-8 반,

I'd like to thank your class for always finishing our lessons five minutes early and then begging me to play music videos and songs by bands I'd never even dreamed of listening to, such as Teen Top ("Supa Luv", "향수 뿌리지마") or INFINITE ("Paradise"). Sometimes when I lesson plan at home, I realize that the aforementioned songs are mysteriously stuck in my head. What have you done?! ㅠㅠ

Somewhat sincerely yours, Andrea 샘

[andreagoesabroad]

At Seogyeong Middle School, students turn their cell phones/iPods in to their homeroom teachers in the morning and pick them up at the end of the day. As a result, if a student is caught with a phone/iPod during class, the teacher gets to keep the phone/iPod for one full month (ouch!). Last week, I snatched my first iPod and was unnaturally gleeful about it -- but now that I scroll back through old tumblr posts of mine, I realize that said iPod belonged to one of the boys who wrote my name down as his "favorite celebrity". Okay, so -- I feel a little bad. (But I'll get over it.)

[andreagoesabroad]

Tomorrow, second period has been scheduled as an "open class" -- in which the students' parents crowd into the back of the classroom and (a) observe the teacher and students and (b) evaluate the teacher (I do believe that I am literally given a numerical score). Oh, boy!