THE BUCK STOPS HERE, AND SO DOES ANDREW

Khaled Hosseini's narrator in The Kite Runner on cliches--

"I always thought that cliches got a bum rap. Because, often, they're dead-on. But the aptness of the cliched saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliche."

그래, as you get older, time seems to skip a gear. What seems like yesterday, now 3 weeks ago, was the midpoint of my first year in Korea. There would be no halftime show worthy of a nipple-slip, here. I've already admitted that I may have been somewhat distracted...But honestly, the weeks seem to taunt me with the same smirk that my kids get when they think they've pulled one over my head with their 한국말 in class, as if they're leaving me behind. The only difference is, the pace of the weeks are coming to give me that feeling more than the kids are. 

At the same time, I've gone in and out of certain routines, with the most recent making me feel like I haven't experienced anything new, in terms of my job. Most people have already endured my raucous desire to hear "a certain somebody's" swan song. And, most people have heard that the turnover rate of my current place of employment is probably higher than that of a fast food joint. So other than a) passing off the ridiculousness that is my boss as normalcy, and b) seeing the routine of personnel changes, I've felt like I've been coasting for a while.

But a few days ago, I came upon another first--something that I haven't seen in months. 

With the obligatory business attire I have to wear each day, among an abundance of other indicators, it didn't take long for me to become hip to the fact that all hogwans, especially ones like mine, are foremost BUSINESSES. Matthew teacher reminded us of that as he used an anecdote from his other life. 

"I was once asked, in a questionnaire upon entering the world of sales, if it mattered whether or not my clients liked me on a personal level. Though at the time I knew the answer they were looking for was "no", in this atmosphere, it does matter."

It's not such a distant memory that I was forewarned of the power parents and their children have on our positions, but I've failed to really keep that in the foreground of my daily thought process.

I may be giving kids a little too much credit for being perceptive, but I would go as far as to think that some students are aware of this matter and exploit their position, so to do as they please. Furthermore, they bring what little motivation they have after hours of studying all day long with the mindset that they are being pawned off.

I've seen the kids wandering the halls because their parents know that THIS daycare has the upside of making them look like guardians concerned with education. While I know that statistically, Koreans spend a great deal more on education than much of the world, often it is more about the appearance of progress than actually learning. Theses business-schools (I would've said "school-business", but it would've have been disingenuous to put "school" before "business") know this all too well, and the teachers often end up pandering to parents instead of sticking to what little substance lies in their provided curriculum.1 For example, shitty "middle school prep courses" are established because OTHER hogwans are doing it.2 Then we end up piling on inappropriate assignments that value quantity of quality3 because, well, I'm not quite sure. In any case, the point is that it's hard to come across a student that stays engaged long enough to pin a tail on, let alone share a lesson with.

Students come and go. The ebb and flow of enrollment is at a pivotal moment in late spring '09 (i.e. this wavering economic 3rd quarter, although I'm not exactly sure when the fiscal year starts in Korea) as parents are deciding whether or not to keep their mini-clones in for the summer, or jump ship to try out another hogwan. It's slightly ironic that I am currently in the market for a new gym. It seems that my thought process isn't much different than these parents. Ideally, so I may naively have once thought, these two spheres would be completely different--it would be too destabilizing to toss kids around schools as if it were merely a choice as insignificant as which gym to enroll, without regard to how children adjust to their peers and teachers--but I am now more informed.

Now that I've scratched my ass to get to my elbow...the point. I was sitting in my M-W-F class with one of my favorite students, one of the few who doesn't come to class with the attitude one might assume from the given conditions, the other day. I had the good fortune of having one child in one of my classes, or in other words, a rare opportunity to sit during teaching hours. But they benefits weren't completely selfish. Andrew was a legit student, and I genuinely enjoyed spending time with this kid. He had the greatest imagination and came up with some really original stories with a little push. We had some interesting discussions of his travels to the Phillipines, his grandmother's house, drawing contests in which he was involved (he was an excellent little artist as many of my students are), and the like. 

So when he told me that he was quitting, I found myself, for the first time, emotionally challenged by one of these little humans. I had developed several little attachments leading up to this point but had not yet felt a ping such as this. I would sincerely miss this dude. First number...?

1 - if i had a dime for every mistake i sawed in readingTown book...
2 - if i had a quarter for every time i've seen the apathetic stares of the kids who've been dragged from school to school, having to endure the pitches made by directors, at some point falling under the spell of the king of car salesmen...
3 - vocab quizzes: either too many/not enough...
as I like to say, I would have at least three...MILLION...drum roll... . . .won.(approximately $2.40)