Shame and Scandal in the Family ♫
Some time near the beginning of autumn we had one of our teachers take a day off due to the death of her grandfather. This came on short notice - perhaps unsurprisingly - and resulted in everyone scrambling to work out a schedule on how best to cover her classes. I mean ... it's not like you actually want something like that to happen, and familial duties are important to uphold.
However, while sharing dinner with our academy director later in the week, I heard that another academy director in town had seen this teacher's name show up on the list of interviewees for local public school positions. Naming conventions in Korea are such that the majority of given names come from a set list of Chinese characters (hanja), while all ~250 family names present today are associated with a particular hanja character, and my coworker's family name is one of the less common ones in the country. This list on Wikipedia - based on the 2000 South Korean census results published by the National Statistical Office - ranks her family name as falling somewhere between nos. 90-95, with an estimated distribution of less than 9,000. (The ambiguity is to afford some protection over her real identity.) In other words, very noticeable when coupled with her given name.
Our academy director went on to add that he wanted to send memorial flowers to her family and, as memorial services are typically conducted through a hospital, asked which hospital would be appropriate for their delivery. At first our coworker said that flowers were unnecessary, but eventually relented and said they should be sent to her family's home address -- which struck our director as a little unusual, although apparently not out of the realm of possibility. (He said that only ultra-traditional families take care of funeral arrangements on their own these days.) This situation put our academy director in an awkward position: he didn't want to pry into an employee's personal life and raise potential trust issues, but it was also important to have enough time to find and train a replacement should our current teacher be looking for work elsewhere.
I never did hear whether our director chose to speak with this teacher or not, but during my first period break today I heard from another teacher that she will definitely be leaving for a public elementary school position at the end of the month. The woman who told me said that she had only recently heard about the news and wasn't sure if any of the other teachers had known earlier than the start of the week. She also mentioned that our coworker had completely fabricated the news about her grandfather's death. Funny to see that we were both keeping the news secret over a fear of spreading untrue rumors. In a way this kind of works out well for our academy; we've had quite a few students drop out over the past couple of months - mostly to attend academies focused directly at middle school students - so this change lets our vice-director consolidate classes (and schedules) going into the winter vacation period.
♫ While the title of this entry may be seen as a reference to my coworker's lie about her grandfather's death, I don't mean to come across as so damning in my opinion. However, it was hard to pass up the chance to quote an awesome calypso song from the 1940s, albeit one focusing on a completely different type of scandal. You can check out a cover of the song at this link and the lyrics are posted online here.
However, while sharing dinner with our academy director later in the week, I heard that another academy director in town had seen this teacher's name show up on the list of interviewees for local public school positions. Naming conventions in Korea are such that the majority of given names come from a set list of Chinese characters (hanja), while all ~250 family names present today are associated with a particular hanja character, and my coworker's family name is one of the less common ones in the country. This list on Wikipedia - based on the 2000 South Korean census results published by the National Statistical Office - ranks her family name as falling somewhere between nos. 90-95, with an estimated distribution of less than 9,000. (The ambiguity is to afford some protection over her real identity.) In other words, very noticeable when coupled with her given name.
Our academy director went on to add that he wanted to send memorial flowers to her family and, as memorial services are typically conducted through a hospital, asked which hospital would be appropriate for their delivery. At first our coworker said that flowers were unnecessary, but eventually relented and said they should be sent to her family's home address -- which struck our director as a little unusual, although apparently not out of the realm of possibility. (He said that only ultra-traditional families take care of funeral arrangements on their own these days.) This situation put our academy director in an awkward position: he didn't want to pry into an employee's personal life and raise potential trust issues, but it was also important to have enough time to find and train a replacement should our current teacher be looking for work elsewhere.
I never did hear whether our director chose to speak with this teacher or not, but during my first period break today I heard from another teacher that she will definitely be leaving for a public elementary school position at the end of the month. The woman who told me said that she had only recently heard about the news and wasn't sure if any of the other teachers had known earlier than the start of the week. She also mentioned that our coworker had completely fabricated the news about her grandfather's death. Funny to see that we were both keeping the news secret over a fear of spreading untrue rumors. In a way this kind of works out well for our academy; we've had quite a few students drop out over the past couple of months - mostly to attend academies focused directly at middle school students - so this change lets our vice-director consolidate classes (and schedules) going into the winter vacation period.
♫ While the title of this entry may be seen as a reference to my coworker's lie about her grandfather's death, I don't mean to come across as so damning in my opinion. However, it was hard to pass up the chance to quote an awesome calypso song from the 1940s, albeit one focusing on a completely different type of scandal. You can check out a cover of the song at this link and the lyrics are posted online here.