Our school has two locations: one is for 5 and 6 year old kindergarten kids and for our afternoon English school (the one we had been teaching at all day) and the other location is for 3, 4 and 5 year old kindergarten kids. Next Monday I will start teaching at the other location, in the mornings, to the really young kids. I will be teaching mostly four and five year old kids.
It is the start of a new school year here and many of these young kids are leaving their parents for the first time. So the Korean teachers have to spend a lot of time dealing with crying children, upset children, sad children (especially for the first few weeks). So yesterday I went to the school for a while and introduced myself. I sat in the classes observing, so that the kids could get used to my presence at the school.
Here are a couple of funny stories:
In one of the classrooms, I noticed a girl from the window with tears in her eyes, she looked overwhelmed to be there. Then when I entered the classroom to greet the kids, it completely set her off. She started screaming and shouting things in Korean and clearly did not want me to be there. After some quick greetings, I left the classroom and almost instantly she started to settle down. Clearly I had freaked her out. I am not sure if it was my height, my skin color, my gender (all the Korean teachers are women) or what. Maybe a combination of all three. It is quite possible I am the first foreigner she has ever seen. I guess you could say I left an impression.
At another point in the early afternoon, a boy came into the teacher's office crying and saying things in Korean. A Korean teacher was trying to calm him down. I got a loose translation from a bilingual co-worker of what the boy was saying. It went something like this..."My father is not here. My mother is not here. What is this?" Poor guy.
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