Karate

I started taking Karate on monday.  There are some free lessons going on for foreigners, and despite looking korean, they let me in.  The master’s a really cool guy.  He tells me he tried Taekwondo a long time ago, but found it to be too much of a sport.  People these days do Taekwondo for fun.  He was more into the discipline, the art, the mind-body synergy type of thing.

Anyways, everything is coming back to me quite quickly.  My flexibility wasn’t as far gone as I had assumed.  My agility is definitly gone though.  Kicking with my left foot seems foreign again.  I can’t do any jumping reverse kicks.  But it feels good to be doing it again.

Something I always liked about martial arts was the respect and discipline involved.

At my hagwon, my classrooms are often absolute chaos.  The students are often disrespectful, giving me the finger, and saying bad things in Korean because they think they can get away with it.

I remmeber back in the day, when I was doing Taekwondo, I’d often run the first half of the class while Master George was finishing up the previous class.  Everyone would listen.  Even the kids.  They never asked ‘WHY?!’ or said ‘NO!’ or ignored me or any of that bullshit I deal with every day.

I was thinking about how I wish that kind of discipline and respect transferred over into the classroom.  I was curious if elementary schools and high schools were substantially different then hagwons.

A lot of these kids don’t really give a shit about their hagwon marks.  I was running tests last week, and it happened to be around the same time elementary schools, and middle schools were running some of their big tests.  The kids would be like “Hey, don’t worry so much about this test.   You have to worry about your SCHOOL marks.”

Which I suppose is true.  But that just makes it even harder for me, as a teacher.  How do you teach a bunch of kids who don’t give a shit?

This entry was posted on Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Life, Life in Korea. You can feed this entry. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • I have the same problem with my kids. I try not to let it get to me, but more often than not, it does. I like to think of how I was when I was young. I loved school. I liked my teachers, my friends were there, I loved learning. However, I didn't go to another school after school. I got to go outside and play and run around. Kids here don't really get that. Hogwans are sort of their free time. After hogwan they have to go home and do their homework.
    Try to think of ways to make learning fun. Make up "games" to play that involve learning English but allow them to play a little too. I've found that they learn more through games than just repetition and writing. When I say games, I don't mean card games but games that involve a lot of English speaking. I like to give each team 5-10 starter points at the beginning, depending on level, and when they speak Korean, they lose a point. This does 2 things--keeps them quiet AND forces them to speak English. Also explain to them that if they don't do what they are told, the game is finished and they'll go back to the book or writing or whatever. The key is to stick to it.
  • You could use the truth: that if they don't start caring now then anything that their life will always be like that... waiting for something bigger to care about. If they start caring now, then they will always care about school and they will always be successful.
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