Mind. Blown.

Today is the first day of kindergarten!!!

This is, of course, exciting in and of itself, but it also means NO MORE RECORDING!!!

In my mind, the Harlem Gospel Choir sang a stirring rendition of Handel's Messiah to celebrate the end of the recording era.

Anyways.

Some law passed in Korea that changed how our kindergarten works. For kids that are 7 years old (Korean age, so really 5 or 6), they are now required to go to Korean school as their primary education. So now, these kids come to EOS (my school) for a couple of hours in the afternoon instead.

Which I am not thrilled about.

My primary class is 7 years old-- GO SEALION!!!-- so I essentially have giant breaks in the morning. Which is obnoxious.

Especially when you understand what I'm giving up to have these dinky morning breaks where I camp out in the computer room trying to convince Internet Explorer 6 that it IS in fact compatible with Facebook.

Note: it's not, unless you consider 30 seconds of timeline followed by a crash "compatible".

So this new break situation is a major downgrade.

7 year old kindergarten is now during what used to be our salvation, the mid-day break. It was the perfect amount of time to take a nap, shower, go to the grocery store, do the laundry, paint your nails, watch 3 episodes of Friends...

A very productive time.

Anyways.

The 7 year olds don't start until Friday, so today was just with my "sister class", Tuna.

Their primary teacher is one of the new Korean teachers. Her name is Jackie and I'm pretty sure she thinks I should be committed.

... She has a point.

They're 6 years old (again, Korean age), and for some of them, this is the first time they've ever been to school. We had a couple of criers this morning, thank GOD it was on a break. We all know how well I deal with crying children (see: http://ruhrohrok.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-to-not-deal-with-blood-geyser-in.html).

But they're adorable. They were all wearing their little blazers and button downs and plaid school uniforms looking like minature grown ups and I about died when I walked in from sheer cuteness overload.

I'm certainly not saying that they were a bunch of kittens in party hats but I just wanted you to get an idea of the scale of preciousness I'm dealing with here.

The bad news is that they basically speak no English.

We spent an hour learning the following:

• "My name is ____"
• "What class are you in?" (me) "Tuna class" (them)
• Stand up
• Sit down
• Push in your chair
• Line up

Which, when typed out seems like a lot, but really it was mostly them learning to recognize my cracked out pantomimes.

ANYWAYS.

What this post was supposed to be about is my mind being blown.

Which it is.

I just can't believe that kids who literally don't even know their own names of the first day of school will be able to read and speak in relatively complete sentences in just a YEAR!

My sister class last year was the same age group and about the same level as the kids I have now, and they can read and have conversations and make jokes and understand rules to games and all sorts of other things.

One would hope they'd be able to, given the fact that they're in an English school, but still.

I never saw Jellyfish class at the beginning of the year; I only saw them when they were like halfway through and I have to say that as much as I complain about my school, it turns out that the kids really do learn their English!

Go team!

How to Squander a College Education

Lately, I've been feeling pretty down about work.

Don't get me wrong, I still really like teaching and somehow the cuteness of Asian babies hasn't worn off yet.

But this past week has been tedious to the point of delirium.

Since last week was kindergarten graduation, the kids have had this week off. Of course, our beloved King and Queen Teachers couldn't bear to bring a single shred of happiness into the teachers' lives by giving us the mornings off, but have instead invented a series of repulsively boring and repetitive tasks for us to do.

For 4 hours.

Every.

Day.

The trained monkey task I've been given is recording myself reading children's books out loud.

I know what you're thinking: that doesn't sound so bad!


And it doesn't.

But oh dear GOD, it is.

It's worse.

Our school has a Book Club for the kindergartners. They check out a book, read it at home, and do a super short report ("This book was silly," "I did not like this book," or, as one of my more challenged students wrote, "This book is bed" (sic)).

It actually does really help their reading; I can definitely tell among my students who is and is not in Book Club. But a lot of their parents don't speak good enough English to help them read or sound out more challenging words, so each book has a CD of an American teacher reading it.

It makes sense why they do it this way, but making those CDs is like Chinese water torture-- doesn't sound especially harsh, but after an hour you'll be crying for your mommy.

Sometimes I get lucky and it's a nonfiction book about the migratory patterns of Blue Whales ("A Year in the Life of a Blue Whale") or about the history of silk and I get to learn something new (coughNERDcough), but usually it's some totally bogus story about a dog named Biscuit or a cat named Fabian.

....FABIAN.

Literally, I couldn't make this up if I tried.

Also, when is a Korean 5-year-old EVER going to need to know how to read "Fabian"?!?

And of course I can't just read the darn book and move on the the next.

Ooooh no.

King Teacher has decided it would be most beneficial for the kids if they "echo read" the books.

For me, this means I read a line:

     "Tinky Winky found Dipsy's hat."

Then wait, presumably for the kids to parrot the line back.

Then I read the next line:

     "Teletubbies loooove Tubby toast!"

And wait some more.

Whenever there's a page turn, I have to say "turn the page!"

There's also a long introduction shpeil at the beginning, which I will now type from memory:

          "Let's echo read! I will read, and you repeat. When you hear me say 'turn the page!' please go to the next page. At the end, there will be three questions about the story. Please choose the correct answer."

Heaven forbid you record any of this in a normal speaking voice. The goal is to sound as much like a Disney character/cheerleader on some serious uppers as possible.

My alter ego.

And no, copies of these CDs will not be available to the general public. 

Each of these recordings takes at least 10 minutes, but some of the longer books (usually alphabet or counting books-- "A is for apple! Red, juicy apple!" or "There are 9 sheep on the farm. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9!") can take over 20 minutes.

Gruesome but accurate.

I counted today-- 57 books. In 4 days. 

The worst parts are the animal sounds. Farm books are an especially high risk genre.

"Meow." Bangs head on desk.

"Woof, woof." Woof my life.

"Oink, oink." ......... There are no words.

Hillary, one of the other teachers here, actually had to howl. I shudder at the thought.

Just so everyone (I am very much included in this category) remembers:

I HAVE A COLLEGE DEGREE. I AM A SMART PERSON. I MOST CERTAINLY CAN READ "MONSTER MATH: WHAT TIME IS IT?"

On days like today, it can be a little hard to remember. 

Oh, and did I mention that if you sneeze during a recording you have to start over? 

Yeah, that's a thing.

It happened THREE TIMES. 

I'm not saying I did throw the book across the room, but I'm certainly also not saying that I didn't.