little fascinations

1. Kids in Korea are trained to call their Korean teachers 'teacher,' as a sign of respect for the elders. Teachers at some hogwans are known by their first name combined with 'teacher,' as in 'Tony-teacher' or 'Megan-teacher.' At my school, we use the western style 'Mr.' 'Ms.' etc., but can choose to use our first or last name, depending on our preference. Saying teacher is so deeply ingrained, of course, that even my youngest kids still say 'teacher' every five seconds when they need help.

'Teach-ah, octopus spelling is what?'

2. Knowing literally nothing about Korean grammar, my guess is that either question words go at the end of the sentence or there is just inflection to indicate a question. That inflection is, of course, still necessary in English, and sometimes takes the place of a question word. Working with my kids, though, to get them to practice putting question words at the beginning of a question sentence is not easy. Not easy simply because I'm already so used to hearing the way they construct those sentences that it's starting to sound normal.

'Teach-ah, this is why?'

3. Daily, I hear 'Teach-ah, he is boyfriend?' in regards to any and every male teacher my kids see me talking to. One kid writes 'Ms. Blake *heart* Mr. Wall' on the white board every break time. I wear a ring on my right hand, and my students on Friday asked me if my boyfriend gave it to me. This doesn't cease to crack me up.

4. Lots of the little kids really like to climb on the male teachers during break time, to get lifted up and to see how strong the teachers are. I'll bet all the teachers seem really big, in comparison to these little ones, not to mention the stature of their parents, for the most part. I finally had one kid do it to me on Friday, grab onto my arm to lift her up, so I did, and she was pretty impressed.

'Wow! Strong!'

Yeah, and you way, like, 25 pounds.

5. I have one student who, every time we use crayons to color the pictures that start with a certain sound, reminds me very loudly, 'Ms. Blake, I don't like color,' to which I say, 'I know, Matthew, just write instead.' He always uses his pencil to write the words of each picture, and he's well on his way to being a better speller than some of my 4th grade age kids. I asked him once why he doesn't like to color, and he gave me a very long-winded, complex answer about how colors are too messy that I didn't really understand, so I just let him be.

So, no colors because they're messy, and even better, he hates sweets. One day, when I asked what their favorite ice cream was, Matthew answered, 'I don't like ice cream. I like vegetable.' On the day we talked about favorite foods, most kids said a fruit (which is really cool), but Matthew said, 'My favorite food is vegetable.' When we talk about apples, he talks about vegetables.

Needless to say, I like to encourage his quirks.

6. I was asking some of my students what kind of animal they would write a story about, if they could write about anything.

'Rabbit.' 'Rhinoceros beetle.' 'Shark.'

Tommy's response?

'I like lion and tiger, white tiger, liger, lion, tiger.'

That's right. One of Tommy's favorite animals is the liger.

7. 'Teach-ah, what minute?' seems to mean some combination of 'What time is it?' and 'How long until the end of class?' My standard answer to this somewhat infuriating question is the equally infuriating 'many minutes.'