tumultous friday
Friday was an emotional day for me at the academy. The day started out with our annual English Speech Contest, where students who had volunteered for the event recited speeches they had memorized. Besides the teachers - who served as a judging panel - a few parents and other students were also in the audience. We had participants with a wide range of abilities and it was interesting to see what topic each student picked for his or her speech and how well they did. I don't want to get into the details of how our academy organizes students into different levels, but it was surprising to see that the majority of participants came from the lower level classes, and that most of the upper level students forgot their lines.
Two boys who chose to recite the Korean folktale Dangun (단군) didn't get further than three lines, while a girl from an A2 class (just above the point where students are learning the sounds of the Roman alphabet) successfully retold the English fairytale Jack & the Beanstalk. My favorite speech came from one of my former students who enthusiastically shared her 'dream' with us. She spoke about how she'd wanted to be a singer until she was seven, because it always looked like a exciting profession based on what she saw on television. However, realizing one day that she could use English to communicate with her teacher totally blew her away and increased her passion for studying the subject. Her new dream is to be an English teacher so she can share that feeling with others. She pointed out that achieving one's dreams is never an easy feat but, given her positive attitude and eagerness to chat with me outside of class, I don't see any reason why she shouldn't be able to achieve this goal.
Now, despite what I may have lead you to believe with the opening sentence, the speech contest is not what made Friday such an emotional day. Instead, it was something that happened a little later.
There is a girl, Susan, who has been attending our academy since at least October of last year - based on this photo - and probably longer than that. Considering her current level, I believe our institute is where she first started learning English. During this time she has never been my student, but over the past couple of months we've started to chat. She usually shows up at least an hour before her class - for reasons unknown to me - and since I'm free for the first class three times a week we'll often hang out in the academy lobby. Talking in either English or Korean, studying Hanja characters together, reading English books, or just goofing off at times. Friday wasn't any different. But, after her class was over, the academy vice-director brought Susan into the teacher's office and said it was her last day.
"진짜? Really!?" Susan slowly nodded her head. Then she lowered her gaze to the floor and I could hear her start sniffling. When I walked over to where she stood I could see tears pouring down her cheeks.
Having majored in anthropology instead of education the effectiveness of my teaching methods may be open to debate. I have experience working with international students, and I'd like to think that I care about my work and about education in general. I often wonder if I'll have any lasting influence on my students. Oh sure, my advanced class liked talking about platypuses and other rare mammals, but apart from them and a select few other students it's unclear if all the other students would miss having me as their teacher were I to leave. There have been many other students who have left over the past eleven months - some of them mine - but most of them seemed to be indifferent to the whole thing. I'm sure you can understand then how surprising it was to see Susan's reaction. She's that upset about saying goodbye?
I tried to comfort her. I said that she could come back and visit me whenever she wanted. Her tears eventually dried up, but when I think about how she looked that afternoon it hurts my heart. It never occurred to me before, but despite the language barrier, despite the age barrier, despite the cultural barrier (i.e., the relationship between teachers and students here), and despite how little we knew about each other, I suppose at some point we became friends. And it's never easy when friends part ways.
I walked with Susan from the teacher's office to the lobby. She started crying again when we reached the outer doors so I walked with her to the elevator; delaying that final moment just a little bit longer. I really wish I'd had something unique that I could have given her as a memento. A Washington State quarter, perhaps. It's hard to prepare for an event you don't know is happening until the last minute. One of my former students who no longer attends our institute stops by to visit me every once in a while. I hope Susan will do the same.
