South Korean students..

Half of my students are elementary 4-6. Originally I was pretty bad at controlling them. I relied on trying to placate them and nurture their various needs and wants. I maintained control only by sudden volume swells of my voice and hollow threats which the kids would start seeing through after about 20 minutes.

I've been through all kinds of different approaches since then and I undoubtably will be through many more, however; I am particularily enjoying my current strategy. It involves an inner struggle between two polar opposites within me. This dichotomy, the "Snape/Dumbledorf" or the Evil Thomas/Angel Thomas as I refer to it in front of the kids (...oh yeah, I fully keep them involved), is a daily, even hourly struggle between unfairness/cruelty and kindness/compassion.

In the class, it would go something like; "Oh no, the power of evil Thomas is rising...I must fight it, but I am not strong enough." And so the kids will rally with all kinds of support and cheers to keep Angel Thomas in control. Basically, they stop screwing around for ten minutes so I can get on with a lesson. At least once a class "Evil" Thomas does in fact take over quite suddenly, and he usually is pretty mean. He takes aways test points for no reason, doubles up homework, and makes the students act out CNN dialogues.

Anyway.. enough of my schizoid teaching practices (they'll only be effective with this bunch for another week or so anyway). It is really about the kids. I think I have a reasonable straight relationship with them. They are really responsive to reason and often give very sincere and untainted opinions. (Quite unlike adults) Here is an example of some writing my students did for me last week. The topic was "One Korea" and they had to discuss what it would be like if the North and South unified.

One student named Anne wrote about how wonderfull it would be for South korean students to visit the North and the Northerners to come south to exchange ideas and learn each others dialects.

Another kid, Ricky, wrote "Of course there must be confusion but after 5 years it will be good and our country will be strong. We have an advantage over other sides in that we have skills, money, and many peoples. I want no one became a dominant form of our life."

Allen writes "...these days more and more countries says that the North Korea is not our alliance and the North Korea did experiment of Newclear, So world and North Korea is now more and more far...if the situation is worst, unfortunately we should fight for the North Korean citizen and our future."


The last one is from Brad who is a little younger. He wrote, "South dominated all parts of democracy and North dominated all parts of communism. And ideology is still a powerful facter in Koreas. We can be one by persuading if we be one. We will be often worse off than before IMF and we will be can found it difficult to escape from low money. But we're same people. So we have to be one, not separating two country. And they may have nuclear, so no country will attack our country too."

Clearly Brad has had his hands in the ole' cookie jar of Historical Materialism. Still, quite remarkable for a young man of 9. They are all quite brilliant.

The week before, their assignment was to imagine they had kidnapped me and had to write a ransom letter to our school. I have never had kids stay after the bell on their own to finish something. Let's just say that bombs were implanted in my brain, my body parts were mailed out one at a time after the deadline wasn't met, my life is worth an average of about 50$US, and whatever you do...DO NOT contact the police.