The room is familiar. Desks arranged in rows face the front of the room. They are covered with papers, pencils, markers, erasers. A dry-erase board hangs from a wall. I’ve been in hundreds of rooms that look just like this one.
But something’s different this time. For one thing, the dry-erase board is to my back. Huh. I’m wearing a tie. I never wear ties. Wait, why is a marker in my hand? Where am I?
In the height of my three-second long burst of delirium, I remember that I am in South Korea, that I flew in only three days before, that I’ve been given the task of teaching English to kids who live several thousand miles away from the place that I usually call home.
Time to get to it, then. Let’s see what the kids know.
“My name is Chris,” I say, scribbling my name on the dry-erase board. “I am from Georgia, a state in the southeast part of the United States. Do any of you know other people from Georgia?”
I ask the question deliberately, conscious of the fact that there are already at least two other teachers from Georgia at the hagwon, or private school. My friend David from high school got me the job, and he’s been teaching at the hagwon for a year. Then there’s Alex, one of David’s friends from undergrad who came over after David reported how much fun there was to be had in Korea.
The students are silent. I decide to go for a more basic question. “Ok, does anyone have any questions for me? Or should we resume learning about the things your usual teacher left for you?” I was filling in for another teacher who was on a one-week vacation back in the States, and she had left a detailed lesson plan.
I survey the class. The students look like they are waiting for me to do something. Picking up on what I believe to be a cue to start lecturing, I start describing the material we are scheduled to read for the day. It’s not really what I want to do. It’s my first day; I want to hear them speak. What are these kids going to be like?
I make them talk. I assign each student a few sentences to read, and everyone in the class gets a turn. I worry. This seems too formulaic. Will I be able to have fun in the classroom? Is it going to be top-down teaching all of the time? It’s only my first day. Should I even care right now?
Before I can entertain another question, one of the students thrusts his hand into the air, his face lighting up with anticipation as a result of thinking about what he is going to say. I forget to mask my shock and respond with just as much as enthusiasm as the nine year old student; I stop mid-sentence and point at him immediately.
“I got it!” he exclaims. “Teacher, you are like Harry Potter, but kimchi! Kimchi!” The boy rubs his cheeks and kept repeating himself. “Kimchi, kimchi Harry Potter!”
The entire class breathes a sigh of relief, as if the boy had just demonstrated how to find the answer to a math problem that everyone was trying to solve. They laugh, finding the comparison of Korea’s national dish to my flushed face hilarious, appropriate, comforting; they point to my glasses and my brown hair and repeat the oft-mentioned comparison to pop culture’s teenage wizard.
I am not Harry Potter. But I’ve heard the comparison before, and the sound of something recognizable is, for this one occasion at least, unexpectedly comforting, even if it drives me crazy most other times.
Because hey, at least this means that kids are the same no matter where you go, right?
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