Culture in the Classroom

Celebrating with a pizza dinner!

In March I was told that I needed to write a skit so our school could participate in the city wide English play contest. The only guidelines I was given was that it needed to have some sort of message and could be no longer than the allotted five-minutes. Belle told me that last year popular topics included bullying, taking care of the Earth, and Dokdo Island rightfully belonging to Korea and not Japan. With all of these pretty serious topics in mind, I decided to take a risk and go the lighthearted route.

I decided to make my skit about things I experienced as a foreign teacher in Korea. Easy enough right? I mean, I am a primary source for information on this topic. Being that it was only five-minutes and I had never written a play before I approached it like an essay. I mapped out my three main topics, wrote a thesis statement and a concluding line to wrap up my ideas; then, all I would have to do is fill in the details.

The basis of my skit was as follows:

• There are five characters: The foreign teacher, an exchange student from America (Britney), and three Korean students.
• The Setting: The first day of school at a Korean elementary school
• The First Issue: The teacher is wearing her "outdoor shoes" inside and didn't know that "indoor shoes" were a thing. --Korean students politely explain the significance
• The Second Issue: Exacto knives. In Korea, students carry exacto knives around instead of scissors. Something that catches ALL foreign teachers off guard the first time you tell them to "cut something out." --Again, Korean students explain why.
• The Third Issue: Fan death. The foreign teacher turns on the fan because the students are hot but she does not open the window. The Korean students act dramatically about how they are going to die because there is a fan on and no window open to circulate the air so they fear their own fan death (TRUE Korean theory). --The teacher secretly closes the window and Britney points out that the Korean students are all alive.
• The Theme: Explaining differences to other cultures helps us learn new things. You are not right and I'm not wrong in the way we do things, it's just different

Then, Belle thought we needed a song at the end. I agreed so she sent me a popular 30-second commercial in Korea and asked me to change the words. I obliged and it actually turned out really cute! The cheesy song lyrics are below. Feel free to click the link and sing my lyrics instead :)

You and me, you and me.

Korean, Thai, American, cultures are unique.

I'm not right and you're not wrong no matter the technique.

I might think one way is best and you might disagree,

If you are confused I want you to just ask me.

Exacto knives? Alight!

Changing shoes? Allllright.

You and me, you and me, oh ya, ya

You and me, you and me!  Hooray!

Okay, now that you have the gist of the play, let's talk about the casting and practices. In  May, my school had their own speech contest for 3rd-6th graders. Being the only native English speaker I had to judge the three day after school event. Anyone who knows me knows how sensitive I can be. Well, I was beaming like a proud mama while my other co's sat with their stern, serious faces. I cringed and held back tears for the kids that were obviously pushed into the contest by their parents, and lacked all confidence in their abilities.

Their ending pose :)

They were fidgeting, sweating and holding back embarrassed tears of their own. I made it to the last day without tears. And then one of the sweetest sixth grade boys walked in all dressed up. He handed us his full paged English script and began. He made it through about a sentence before what little confidence he had escaped him. I spent the rest of the time feeding him his lines one word at a time, and then when he teared up, I lost it. We were both sweaty (bc there is no AC) and wiping the endless streams of tears that were running down our cheeks.

It took me back to my own speech failures. I relived 7th grade speech and drama class where I had to perform a 5 min skit on my own in front of the class. I didn't eat for like three days prior. I started crying in the middle of it because of my nerves and tried to play it off like it was part of the skit (which no one bought). But we've all been there, and bless his little heart I wanted to show as much compassion and support as I could. However, looking back, I'm sure he was like, "What the heck is wrong with Sarah Teacher? I'm the one messing up here..."

One of our many practices

Ok, anyways, so it was from this pool of participants that we casted our five member play. We had two fourth graders, He Young and Seung Min, two fifth graders, In Ah and Seo Jeong, and one sixth grader Chae Eun. Our practices started May 27th and everyday after school, we spent TWO HOURS rehearsing this five min play. Oh, ya, I not only wrote it but I had to DIRECT it as well. Not my forte but the kids were good sports with me constantly changing my mind. 

My biggest complaint was that other teachers from my school would just wander in, knowing nothing of the plot because it's all in English, and began correcting my students' actions and offering their opinions. The student's were given so many different directions from different people that I could feel their frustration. But in Korean society, the older the person, the more their opinion matters. I had to play the "foreigner card" and wave everyone off. The student's were getting nothing but criticism from people that DIDN'T SPEAK ENGLISH! I really had to hold in my emotions (and vent to Andrew later).

I didn't realize that every elementary school in Pohang would be competing in the June 27th event. Belle told me that last year they did horrible and the other schools were amazing. She said other schools had students that spoke perfect English and they had awesome costumes. I'm thinking, "Oh great." And the kicker, the Principal is putting a lot of pressure on my two co-teachers to make sure we get a medal. We were competing against 28 OTHER SCHOOLS!

Performance time! -Mi Young and I with our "cast".

Fast forward to June 27th, performance day. We arrived at the auditorium, homemade props in hand and nervous butterflies in our stomachs. I tried my best to give as much confidence to the students as I could because two days earlier one of my co teachers went off on the students about how bad they looked and we wold never win a medal...ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! We were as ready as we were going to get. When it was our turn, I put on my proud mama smile and my over done cheerleader facial expressions and encouraged them all the way! THEY DID AMAZING! I was so proud and they felt so good afterwards which was the best reaction I could have hoped for. Their confidence level was so high and their smiles were so big that all that hard work had paid off. So naturally, we headed to get pizza and celebrate. 

We won't know the results for a couple of weeks so keep your fingers crossed! You can watch their performance below :)