Teacher Teacher

I am a Teacher, that’s right, the fate of the Korean youth’s tomorrow lay squarely in my hands. Not really fate, but I am now officially teaching. I am an official Speaking Expert English Language Teacher, pretty important sounding title, at Camp Korea, which happens to be the #1 English camp in Korea. I teach six 11-12 year olds for roughly 12 hours a day, a pretty long time. I have three girls and three boys, and a rotation class.

I am a bit of an oddity. My students are blown away by my “yellow” hair, green eyes, and, well, my hairiness in general. I guess in Korea men don’t have facial hair and for that matter any body hair at all. I’m gonna scar these kids for life when we have our swimming pool day and they see me with my shirt off. Anyways, all the kids keep coming up and wanting to feel my hairy arms, which is funny. One kid actually likes to hug my arm like a teddy bear and not let go for like 5 minutes, which is interesting. A fun fact about Korean kids is that they are very openly affectionate. The boys hold hands, the girls hang all over each other, and when I take them to lunch I hold hands with everyone and lead them along like a mother duck.

Sometimes when I’m working 1 on 1 with them and correcting grammar in their notebooks they will get distracted and start rubbing the “fur” on my face.
They don’t call me Mr. Bischoff or Mr. Stephen, they call me Teacher Teacher. All kids do this. For the most part they are pretty good… for the most part. I have three girls, Ramona, Sunny, and Cindy, and they are all in love with me, have crushes on me, and follow me around like little puppy dogs. I also have three boys, James, who is a tough nut to crack, he’s smart, but definitely has some some social and learning disabilities, Jason, who is about average, and John, who is a brilliant little fellow and the other two will probably be working in his factory one day.

I teach a rotation class, which is a class in which I teach one subject to all the other teachers’ students in my level. Guess what? I’m teaching an art class, and it is awesome. I’m teaching printmaking, which as some of you may know, I kick a little ass at, so my kids are actually learning something. My original lesson plan I was provided for the class sucked ass, so I wrote a new and better one (just high-fived myself). It is pretty great, I love teaching, I almost forgot how much.

So, basically, I teach from 8:40am – 8:50pm most days, it’s exhausting, but I’m sleeping great and my co-teachers are from everywhere. They are mostly Canadian, which I forgive them for, just kidding if any of them are reading this, but there are also some Irish, Aussies, English, and Jamaicans. I must say the Aussies are my favorite. We may speak in different accents, but there is a definite kindred spirit they share with Americans. I have a co-teacher from Queens, New York, and he is about as NY as they come. Whenever I need a fresh breath of America again I go talk to him or Steve and forget all about Korea for awhile. Well, as always, this has gone on and on, so until next time, see you around the world…