C O N T E N T S :
T e a c h i n g L e a r n i n g S i n g i n g
I . T e a c h i n g
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| We got some fans! |
T H E F I R S T thing on our agenda was a return to Gwangnam Elementary in Busan to teach some more English. Everything went infinitely faster and smoother this second time around, due in no small part to the fact that I got to teach the older students instead of the younger ones. Our running, yelling, and games were replaced with conversations, which I hope was as rewarding for the students as it was for me! I got to talk to my group about what they wanted to be in the future, which really flaunted their language proficiency with tenses, professions, and the like.
There were two students whose stories stuck out to me, both of them young women. The first was obsessed with marriage and family life, and wouldn't stop talking about how excited she was despite her young age. I must have run into such people in my years in elementary school and either not realized it or not remembered them, because for some reason the thought of such a young person having such an adult focus caught me completely off guard. I don't know that many people with similar aims even now in college! I found myself wondering about gender roles in American and Korean culture while I fought back the urge to tell the first young woman about all the exciting possibilities out there for someone like her beyond marriage when the next student--also a young woman--spoke with equal excitement about her bright future as an astronaut. It felt good to encourage both of them after realizing that women can dream just as freely in Korea as in America.