Response to Adrienne Rich "Teaching Language in Open Admissions"

"There seemed to be three ways in which the white middle class could live in New York: the paranoiac, the solipsistic, and a third, which I am more hesitant to define (15)."

This essay was so reflective of the current milieu that it felt like it could've been written today. It fits nicely with the current social movements that have manifested over the past two years like Occupy Wall Street. Currently, we see the battle between corporate forces in education that threaten to take over higher education, resulting in a growing tide of students that have been disenfranchised due to the rising costs of student loans. I think Adrienne Rich had her finger on the pulse of the times and this memoiristic piece gives a very personal and honest account of the reasons why a teacher would want to teach at City College during the Open Admission period of the late 1960s. Although Rich admits that her "white liberal guilt" compelled her to teach to "disadvantaged" children, I think she gives her motivations less credit than she should. Rich was fighting to provide an opportunity to learn and experience language in an environment where the only emotion given to students was skepticism. As she points out, these seemingly "ghetto" students would have been able to handle the demands of language and syntax because of their "growing capacity for political analysis" that showed them first-hand the urban blight of their communities; in a classroom setting, this kind of analysis is not granted to them so there is the feeling of powerlessness, yet when they channel that knowledge of their communities, that street knowledge, onto the academic page, they can become savvy rhetors. Adrienne Rich sums it up best: "they came to college with a greater insight into the actual workings of the city and of American racial oppression than most of their teachers or their elite contemporaries." This to me, seems so commonsensical and prompts me to ask "Why don't we find a way to harness that capability, or at least acknowledge students that they are more than capable of becoming capable citizens?" These students know the economic and political realities that we only theorize about in our Adult Education class. Our literacy narratives, I think, ultimately fall short in encapsulating these lives. I don't want to generalize and say all students are like this but we at least have to admit that students are more than capable of this.

Response to "Braiding and Rhetorical Power Players: Transforming Academic Writing through Rhetorical Dialectic

"What message are we sending, to students, to ourselves, and to the broader public, when we police linguistic legitimacy? Nobody comes out of her mama's womb hedging claims and citing precedents. It is trained into us. However, there is a pedagogical futility here. When an overly narrow academic discourse is prescribed, we end up creating parrots who excel in replication, not agents who can enter in, own, and alter the discourse at hand, academic and otherwise (69.)"

I think the above quote sums up the article quite nicely. It also captures the rhetorical strategy that Gunter employs to really bring together this idea of "braiding." Indeed, she uses it in her article and that is one of the elements that really was great to experience. I think she is really intent on giving students power and autonomy and that point really is expressed eloquently. I also appreciated the way that she informed me of the rivalry between the two modes of communication espoused by these two seemingly very different scholars. It piqued my curiosity because Gunter was able to draw upon the research that these two scholars made in a concise and succinct manner without dumbing down their arguments.

While reading the article, I was also able to make connections with another book that I had read for a book report: Basic Writing as a Political Act. I think the author of this article shares the same belief that the "personal is damn sure academic as well." The authors of Basic Writing...Act essentially say that students should be validated for expressing themselves on paper and that it should not be viewed as simply a stepping stone for more "serious" and "academic" types of writing hence the emphasis on the scrutiny of a syllabus and the ways in which these syllabi try to balance and maintain equilibrium between the right of expression and self-validation of students and the bureaucracies of the institution. Gunter also takes issue with this when she asks, "Is the value of personal writing only that it facilitates more proficient use of academic writing? Clearly, it is no. A personal paper written by a students should have the same kind of intellectual heft that an objective academic paper has.

Response to "Composition 2.0: Toward a Multilingual and Multimodal Framework

I can definitely agree for the need to redefine writing for the 21st century. Putting literacy in the global perspective where multilingual writers interact with each other creating a new hybrid style of writing, one that embraces diversity, is a welcome sentiment in the classroom. I feel like students would benefit from this kind of composition that is multi-modal and utilizes the multi-lingual skills of students who bring with them new ways of looking at the world and offer new paradigms for teachers so that they can create adaptable lesson plans. The article itself was very wordy and heavy on jargon, so I felt a little lost trying to keep up with the intellectual discussion that the author is so well versed in. But I like the idea of "code mashing" and think it is a provocative way to engage in a world that is so hyper connected and so readily switching from different forms of communication and social networking mediums like Facebook, Twitter and so on.

The use of an Israeli start-up company was useful because it gave me a good visualization of these different practices and terms that the author uses in a more straightforward way. I can understand the need for start-up companies that are young and more fluid in the discourse and rhetoric of our digitally adept generation. Multi-modal composing seems like a pretty conducive approach for these young start-up tech companies.

While reading this, I was reminded of a friend that lived in South Korea who did part-time work translating animation storyboards for a very well known animated T.V. show, "Family Guy." The animation companies that produce these shows are actually pretty fascinating to observe and is quite germane to the topic that this article addresses. Oftentimes, these companies have a team of animators, storyboard artists, translators and assistants that work in different countries, mostly in Asia where the animation is usually done, and they have to work with and facilitate in two or more languages communicating with each other and making sure the animated show gets produced. This is a very complex process and it was interesting watching my friend translate storyboards in English into Korean so that the Korean animators would be able to work on the storyboards further and finally finish a sketch so that it could get inked and colored. Remembering this exchange of information take place resonated with this article. I feel like this will be the future of many kinds of jobs: multilingual environments.

Links to resources for basic writing teachers and professionals in the field

 Some links to websites that offer insightful articles and scholarly work in the field of education and basic writing


www.edutopia.org

http://www.cael.org/home

http://www.voiceofliteracy.org

 http://daln.osu.edu/ Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives

http://www.tycanortheast.org/

Final reflections on ENGL B8104

I think one of the biggest strengths of this class is that it provides a broad historical and social perspective that really puts the basic writing institution in a more clear light. I felt confident enough to understand what the policy makers would do and how they would justify certain actions taken that affected higher education institutions. I think it's great to be able to get information from that vantage point and talk about these different statistics and percentages in the classroom. It's easy to get lost in the quagmire of data about adult education institutions, and I am impressed by the people that handle that data.

My conception of who a basic writer is and how a basic writer is defined has not changed. It remains a very complex picture with students coming from all walks of life. It was an illuminating experience having Reggie Blackwell speak in our class. He had an incredible story and it's important to acknowledge the power that education can have to move people closer to their dreams. However, I think it's also important to not treat Reggie's story as exemplary of every basic writing student. It's also important to acknowledge what Reggie said when he states "It wasn't a lack of education but a lack of formal education" that stopped him. That statement stuck with me and I don't ever want to underestimate my students or walk into a classroom feeling like they are already ill-equipped to handle academic work.

One of the most rewarding aspects of this semester was revisiting my experience in South Korea through a literacy narrative assignment. My literacy narrative was a challenging experience for me. At first I was intent on doing an interview with my mother about her reading and writing experience. I thought it would be easy to do, frankly, because I had heard her tell her story many times; in many ways, it was ingrained in my being. In other words, the story was told to me that I felt it was part of a larger mythology that didn't seem to have a point in time but was timeless. So for these reasons, I thought the interview would be easy to translate onto paper. What I discovered when doing it was how time-consuming the process was. It was also difficult because I felt there was no story to tell really. My mother's answers were brief and I had to keep asking her to expand upon her answers more...The result of this however was a positive one. I switched to the literacy narrative instead and because of my conversation with Barbara before I did the draft, I was able to come up with a narrative that was suitable for the assignment and that was also creatively very stimulating for me. Talking about my story really helped me develop and latch onto the literacy narrative that I could write. I also felt confident that I could write an adequate literacy narrative because Barbara was there listening and guiding me with her questions.

Speaking and telling your story can be an extremely helpful way for students to articulate their literacy narratives in the same way that I had done. The power of oral storytelling is very important and I feel like there is less of that in our day and age where communication tends to favor brevity. If I were a teacher, I would employ this more often because I think it's such an effective tool to engage students with. It allows students to revisit past events and reflect on them in such a way that it creates a meaningful cornerstone from which to draw further experiences from. Combined with a long-term focus and adequate scaffolding, literacy narratives can be a powerful way for students to understand the connection between writing and experience. But this experience can only be understood if one knows that it was important; it seems self-evident but that is not always the case.

I was able to draw on my experiences as an ESL teacher in South Korea and connect it to bodies of knowledge that I was learning from at the time. Had I not talked about my experience teaching ESL in the context of literacy and transformative learning, I don't think I would've been able to understand how important those 3 years of my life were.

I think this was the most important thing take-away from this semester. Looking forward to another semester at City College!

Basic Writing as a Political Act Book review

Review: Basic Writing as a Political Act. Hampton Press, 2002. New Jersey. Print

            Basic Writing as a Political Act by Linda Adler-Kassner and Susanmarie Harrington focuses on the bigger issues of basic writing. Specifically, it shows how literacy practices are not neutral in the classroom setting, and argues that in order to make basic writing a “political act” one has to understand the ideological forces at play perpetuating views of literacy that are stripped of social context. The authors of the book challenge the place of autonomous literacy in the classroom and champion social literacy practices that incorporate a student’s social context into the academic setting. One of the strongest analyses of the book is that it provides a new paradigm on how to see basic writing as a truly political act.  

            Making basic writing political may seem synonymous with grassroots activism, and with the recent noteworthy attempts of people like Elizabeth Warren who has railed against the corporate takeover of higher education, educators may mistakenly see this book as a kind of blueprint for political activism. However, the book stays clear with engaging in any kind of heated debate of that nature and instead focuses on what teachers can do in the classroom, and more importantly how students in the basic writing community can incorporate their literacy practices into the classroom and make it valued, steering it away from the practices of autonomous literacy with its emphasis on quantifiable date and aggregate skill building.

            The authors argue that the autonomous model of literacy emphasizes skills-based learning and de-emphasizes the context of how that learning takes place; it doesn’t allow basic writing students to ask questions about how they became “basic writing” students and what led them there to begin with. This fundamental challenge is what gives Basic Writing as a Political Act its whole purpose. However, there is a spectrum of thoughts and ideas that animate the conversation about basic writing. Educators like Ira Shor argued that basic writing classrooms are suspect to begin with, and that any meaningful change cannot be reached in the classroom unless the basic writing institution is itself abolished.

            Kassner and Harrington first lay out their argument and contrast it with the position of Ira Shor. They do not want to abolish basic writing because they agree that in doing so the inherent framing of basic writing students as problems will not be addressed. The framing of how basic writing students are defined is what drives the crux of this book and Kassner and Harrington look at the models that institutions use to effectively transition basic writing students into the mainstream.

            The question of mainstreaming students, the authors assert, is actually laden with assumptions about what students can and cannot do. In its systemic critique, the question is placed front and center and made point blank: what are the forces that mainstream basic writing students, and how do those powers affect what is being taught in the classroom? To more narrowly understand and exploit these issues, there are key features of a basic writing classroom that the authors look at. One involves the students’ literacy practices, their actual voices that educators must work to use authentically in the classroom, and the other is the syllabus used in the classroom.

            The authors interviewed 38 students about their literacy contexts outside of school; the main concerns of the authors was to try to understand how basic writers thought of themselves in terms of writing. It was revealed that they actually cared deeply about their writing and used it to connect meaningful events in their lives. However, if students shared a common concept of being a writer as developing ideas from mind to paper, their conceptions of writing well, or school writing differed dramatically.

            For the students, learning to write well was associated with purely discrete components of writing such as grammar, sentence structure, syntax, subject-object agreement and spelling. This focus on the discrete components of writing, the authors argue, ends up alienating the students from the classroom. This model of learning is not a new revelation, and authors such as Mike Rose in his work Back to School, paint a picture of the writing correction guidelines established by early 20^th century educators that treated common writing errors more as symptoms of some overall deficiency, hence the character of “remedial education” became synonymous with treating writing difficulties that students had with that of mental deficiency.

            In order to counteract this, the authors argue that professors have a lot of leeway when it comes to controlling the tone of a basic writing class through how they choose to highlight students’ skills.  Although there is an acknowledgment that instructors of basic writing courses try to implement creative ways that allow students to express themselves and show themselves capable of connecting their literacies to the classroom, there is still a constraint placed upon academic institutions that limit the potential of students. This constraint places students’ skills as simply a means to an end: the end result is writing an academic paper successfully, but this doesn’t value their literacies for what they are. In order to rectify this, the authors suggest incorporating a more social-oriented model of literacy into the syllabus.

            The authors posit that syllabi are important markers in determining the way that basic writing is conceived. A syllabus is a document that is written in the moment and that can shape students’ literacy practices.  These practices are established within the students’ social contexts, but if a syllabus simply treats skill building as a way to transition into the academic world without explaining the context to students then it perpetuates an autonomous form of literacy.

            Indeed, skills that we deem useful in the academic world are explicitly laid out in the syllabi and therefore the authors argue, our syllabi is a public document that sets the cornerstone of what kind of classroom we want to teach, including how we would like to frame the issue of basic writing, and whether or not those students that we teach to are allowed to validate their own experiences without feeling like their literacy practices are simply meant to be transferred to an academic setting.

            That academic setting in principle, the authors argue, excludes basic writers. What the authors recommend is that the syllabus reflect a core principal that basic writers need in order to frame basic writing as a political act. In order to do this then there has to be an emphasis on making students be responsible for their writing so that they understand that literacy practices are meaningful in a social setting where everyone is contributing. The questions that must be asked when creating a syllabus are to ask self-consciously, “What does it mean to be a basic writer at this local institution at this time?”

            While the battlefield where political writing is fought takes place center-stage on the national level, the authors understand that in order to make basic writing a political act one has to understand what the forces are at the local levels that converge to create basic writing programs in each state. To understand what these forces are means to acknowledge the historical factors that have created “basic writing” and it gives students autonomy and understanding of their place in the institution.

            It is fraught with ideas of what basic writing is and what steps should be taken to fix a system that is seemingly perpetually broken. The question remains though about how students can talk about basic writing as a political act without somehow regarding the broader institutional forces that give funding, take funding away and generally set the tone of how these adult education centers are framed. On this count, the authors make a very cogent point about the implicit judgment that newspapers and media sources carry when they talk about community colleges and the “school-success narrative.”

            This narrative basically champions the basic writing student that often comes from a poor economic background. This success narrative is used as a way to reinforce the value of education as a means to access traditional middle-class standing. Students in basic writing classes are seen as falling from the traditional path of education but are on their way to trying to make it again. In this narrative, middle class values are valued and the objectives of literacy as a means to achieve success is faithfully left untouched. It validates the importance of education in attaining middle-class status without questioning the forces that made the conditions that basic writing students have to live with.

            The challenge of educators is to now try to make basic writing a political act but the book’s solutions leave something to be desired. How do we face the institutional forces that dictate how much money basic writing students should get? The book raises more questions than answers and perhaps it wasn’t the authors’ intentions to create a blueprint for any kind of structural change. Normally, one would think of grassroots activism led by students as being political, but the authors don’t raise that possibility or perhaps see that kind of activism as premature without asking about the political potentials of a classroom.

            I believe that this book is a good way for teachers to measure something that can be quite divisive and rancorous. We as educators obviously want to help our basic writing students move freely into the academic writing community. At the same time, we don’t intend on alienating them from their literacy practices at home that are varied, complex and give so much self-understanding to these students. This is the heart of the dilemma that we as educators face today.

Reflections on writing the literacy narrative

                                                My literacy narrative reflection      

            Writing this literacy narrative made me reflect on my experiential learning in South Korea and how important it was to my development as not only a teacher but as a person as well. Teaching requires a lot of maintenance, hard work and dedication. My first year as an ESL teacher was a defining moment for me. Even though I didn’t have any of the tools and expertise to fully immerse myself in my job, I was given an extraordinary chance to witness a culture that was very different from mine. It wasn’t just South Korean culture that was new to me. The entire practice of hiring native English speakers as English instructors was a very peculiar phenomenon in South Korea. I didn’t make the connection at first, but I realized that learning English for South Koreans was pushed so aggressively that it alienated many of my students.

            From this experience I became aware of the political context that students learn under. Obviously this not only applies to an ESL classroom but to every classroom. At any given moment there are institutional forces that shape what you do and don’t do in the classroom. This is why it is so important to understand the context of the students that you teach. Questions like “what are the economic or political forces that shape how English is learned?” and “what kind of English learning is being valued more?” are important questions that only now come to mind.

            I realized that teaching English in South Korea was not a neutral act. I also realized that teaching there implicated me in that system.

This wasn’t made apparent right away and only through uncovering the layers of experience that I felt there made me more aware of it. Perhaps I owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Jung who was a central part of my literacy narrative. I can honestly say that without him I wouldn’t have made the same kind of assessment of South Korea’s education politics.

            Mr. Jung was very aware of what was going on around him and he was curious to know more about Western culture and values. It was truly a pleasure to talk to him and exchange information about our lives. I don’t think I would’ve known so much about the history of South Korea if it weren’t for him. From him, I was also keenly aware of the value placed on English education in the country because he was so wholly against it.

            Mr. Jung believed there needs to be mutual respect and understanding between people if any kind of learning will ever happen. I extend this further; through my learning and understanding of basic writing contexts, I realize that a learning environment that doesn’t take into account students experiences and values is doomed to fail. Hopefully, as a teacher I can remember this important caveat and not walk into a basic writing classroom filled with doubt and mistrust.

“Frequency of Formal Errors in Current College Writing, or Ma an Pa Kettle Do Research"

Interesting stuff in this article related to how teachers viewed errors in student papers. The authors actually collected a wide range of papers that were marked by teachers and tallied up the kinds of errors that they annotated. There is also an interesting background to all of this that raises many questions about the social construction of error: Are the errors commonly cited in student writing today the same as the kinds of errors cited 50 years ago? It turns out that there isn’t much research on the large-scale analysis side of student mistakes. The first such project was done by John C. Hodges in the late 1930s. What’s interesting is noting the kinds of errors patterns prevalent in that study. The first on the list was “comma” followed by “spelling.” Now however, because of the lack of familiarity of the written page and the shift of print from book form to digital forms the frequency of spelling mistakes according to the authors, have gone up. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Students aren’t actually making more mistakes than they used to. This is reassuring because even though the media and other forms of authoritative figures keep insisting on the dumbing down of 21st century students that this is actually not true.

The process of revision and the "hamburger model" of writing essays

Nancy Sommer’s essay “Intentions and Revisions” really was great because it spurred discussion about the nature of  revision: an issue that affects basic writers very much not so much because they commit they are told to revise papers but because teachers emphasize revision as a tool to fix mistakes such as grammar and punctuations. How we approach that matter affects our communication with our students. I think this is especially true of revision and Sommers argues that revision should be used as an important tool in the writer’s toolbox. The difference between an unskilled and a skilled writer, Sommer argues, depends on how well they employ revision. One of the other great points made by Sommer is how students overly use the revision process in a mechanical way without attention to meaning. We are all taught in grade school to use a model of “the five paragraph essay” each paragraph having its own distinct purpose and goal. I remember the hamburger model being used: The two buns were the introduction and conclusion and of course the meat of the essay—the body—was the core of the essay. Although this method was helpful at that time of our lives because of its unchanging permanence—when you are a young an inexperienced writer you need something stable to latch onto! Perhaps this model should be scrapped and updated for the twenty first century?

Eliminating remedial writing at Highland College

In one of our classes we had to role-play where each student was put into a group that represented a different group or interest in a community college setting. Our group represented the administrators of a remedial college that wants to transition to a four year college. This comes with two choices: one is to mainstream all the existing basic writing students and expand all of the credit-bearing writing courses in order to absorb all the new incoming students that place into basic writing, or eliminate basic writing altogether. This ended up getting everyone into a heated discussion, which challenged what we had only read about in theory. Students were very much invested in their roles and this made for heated discussion on which priority should be considered first. Our group was the “administrators” and the choice we made depended on the context of each role. As the administrators, our job was to look at the issue from a managerial perspective and figure out what decision we would take if we were the administrators. We decided that the basic writing program at this fictional community college would be eliminated in order to facilitate the ease of many undergraduate traditional 4 year students into the college. This ended up being an easier action to take then anticipated, and I think sums up the power of the administrative forces in a system like CUNY. If the administrators can easily put into place a top-down decision that influences millions of students and yet makes decisions based purely on how they are going to expand and grow while at the same time cutting students from this process, doesn’t something have to give before enough is enough? Why aren’t the students involved in this process? 

The Community College Writer: Making predictions and questioning assumptions

One of the more challenging aspects of teaching is figuring out the kinds of students that will be placed in our classes. It is always easy to assume one knows enough about the demographics of our student body in order to teach the most effective way possible. But there are many assumptions that teachers may carry that can affect our disposition in the classroom. It’s great once in a while to have different kinds of role-playing games to help us think critically about the various types of students we have. I believe it allows us to make imaginative leaps which could be very useful in the practical aspects of the classroom setting. We know that the bulk of community college students are non-traditional, meaning they will bring a lot of new experiences to the table, and it’s time for teacher to adapt to that. As part of our classmates’ presentation handouts were distributed that outlined a particular profile of a community college student. This was part of the research done for their book The Community College Writer. Here was my group’s student profile:

• Student#3: Wendy
• 40 years old
• Taking English 10: Basic Writing
• Working full-time as a town clerk
• Has a husband (no HS diploma) and 2 sons, supoortive
• Though professor has scaffolding of the essay in syllabus, all assignments were required to be in essay for w/o scaffolding. 
• Toward the last third of the semester the focus of feedback was on phrasing and grammar
• Wendy struggles with how to respond to feedback, which takes the enjoyment out of the writing. She begins to e-mail parts of the her paragraphs to the instructor before completing the essays.

Interview questions with Gladys and snippets of dialogue.

The following are the questions and various excerpts from an interview done with my mother Gladys Kudic. Although I ended up not using her narrative as a source for a paper, it was a beneficial experience where I learned a few things about her. I'm glad she was able to open up and give me the time to talk about her writing. It was probably a little difficult for her because of the nature of the topic: reading and writing. I don't think she ever really had a chance to talk about it, or if she did it was just superficially and never connecting anything deeper in her life.

Here were the questions:

1) What kind of writing did you do when you were young? (In Spanish)

2) Did you like writing as a child?

3) Were there many opportunities for you to write as a child?

4) What kind of writing do you do now?

5) When did you first start writing or reading something in English?

6) What was something lengthy that you read in English?

7) How did that feel?

a: Do you read magazines/novels in English?

b: Is there any kind of writing that you find interesting or pleasurable? 

8) Which language do you feel more comfortable reading&writing in?

9) Did you have writing instruction for your Associate’s Degree? What kind of writing was it?

10) Did you do any kind of writing/reading at work?

11) Did you have any fears/anxieties related to reading/writing in English? At work? in another setting?

12) Is reading/ writing important to you? Why? 

Some notable excerpts on learning English

“I started at the library. Most of the libraries in New York were offering English classes. They started from 6-7 or 6-8. There was a library on 8th avenue where I used to work. I started in that library. Then when I moved to the Upper West Side in Manhattan, 125th street. There was another library there and I was taking classes. [Back] Then the classes that they were giving there were for grammar—There was not a lot of conversation, and not much writing. For me it was, “That’s it for me here.” I have to go someplace else where they can teach me more.”

“After seven years, I found through some friends that Colombia University had a school that were giving free classes too. They had classes from Beginner to Intermediate to Advanced. That was much better for me. This started at 6:00, and it was from 6:00 to 9:00. Those were good, good classes. I always appreciate all those guys. They did a lot of writing and a lot of conversation—reading. They really were strict and were pushing you to do your best. They give you exams, and it was for the teacher’s grade. If everybody passed, then it looks like the teacher did a good job too. That’s why these teachers did the best and really pushed the students to learn.”

Found in Translation: my literacy narrative

Kevin Kudic

ENGL B8104

Prof. Gleason

12/2/14

                                                   Found in translation

            My desk is cluttered with books on how to learn Korean. My most recent purchase, Teach Yourself Korean, is fairly concise and expansive despite its deceptively small size and is splayed open with a Korean word written in hanja, staring at me:

                                                        안녕하세요

Hello, it says; it beckons me to forge ahead and continue learning as much Korean as I can before my yearlong stint teaching ESL in South Korea. I am 24, graduate of Queens College, an English major but have never taught before in my life. I had initially wanted to go to Japan—because of my interest in Japanese culture and manga and anime—to teach English. I applied to various language schools in Japan, but didn’t get accepted. I even started seriously learning Japanese and was comfortable reading some elemental kanji, hiragana and katakana. On my wall there is a Kanji poster that helps me study the 2,000 + characters that are needed for middle school students in Japan. This prompts the occasional question from concerned family members: “Weren’t you learning Japanese?”

            I was excited about learning another new language but wondered how my students would feel. How did they feel about learning English? Did they share the same kind of excitement I did when learning a new language? A cursory glance of South Korean culture didn’t illuminate much. All I could find was the popularity of norebangs and the way the education scheme was organized: broken up into the private cram schools of hagwons and the public schools, hakkyos. It turned out that I would learn more about myself then I ever anticipated.

           

            At Incheon Airport, Mr. Yang, the headmaster at Seoul Language Academy, greets me. He is wearing a modest white collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up and unassuming gray pleats. I’m relieved that someone is there to pick me up at the airport and I don’t have to go through the hassle of finding transportation on my own.

             At this point, I can read Korean and know basic expressions. Mr. Yang drives out of Incheon airport to Ilsan, 25 minutes northwest. I spend the car trip reading highway signs, absorbing all of the sights and sounds in the country. When we arrive at Ilsan, I am engrossed by all of the signage displayed across buildings. There are texts everywhere, all rising vertically almost competing with each other. I see the words hagwon frequently displayed across the signs. There are other words that I notice as well and it is exciting to be able to read all of it. My sensory input is overloaded with the glare of the neon lights in hazy cyan colors, flashing reds, and the incandescent glow of white lights. We pass Madu Station, which means that my apartment studio is one station away at Juyeop Station.

            When I get home, I unpack my suitcase and decide to explore my surroundings. Pretty soon, I am driven by hunger and stumble into a restaurant. It smells inviting, so I walk inside.  

           

            *                                                          *                                                          *

            Mr. Jung is in in the kitchen cooking one of my favorite Korean meals, jae-yuk tupbap. It is a dish of spicy marinated pork stir-fried topped with crispy slices of seaweed and egg served over rice. It’s the perfect remedy for a frustrating an exhausting day at Seoul Language Academy. It’s been a year since I started teaching and my frustration has reached a tipping point. I face another day battling with Eric, a young student that misbehaves and disrupts the classroom to no end. Eric is one of the many students that seem to float in and out of the hagwon systems here. Students like these are disruptive and unruly and make no effort to communicate, use English or interact with me.

            Mr. Jung’s food and company has been one of the ways in which I am able to cope with the stress of teaching here. He has been a constant presence during my time here in South Korea and he is a familiar face. I have been learning more Korean and we sometimes do a language exchange when I am not too tired.

            Mr. Jung seems to be your typical purveyor of mandu, or Korean dumplings, but a closer look reveals a spark of individuality that separates him from the clones of proprietors that own these small types of restaurants. Outside, fall is ending and the bleak Seoul winter is creeping up. Two or three customers pop their heads in the restaurant and casually survey inside to see if the place is still open. Mr. Jung takes care of them and then when he is free turns to me.

            “Kevin, how was your day?” he asks turning the T.V. on. The Kia Tigers are playing, Mr. Jung’s hometown baseball team.

            “Not too good Mr. Jung. I felt like I was a jailer.”

            “A jailer?”

            “Like I work in a prison.”

            Mr. Jung laughs but behind it there is recognition of empathy for my plight. I am still struggling with trying to find any direction at Seoul Language Academy.  Remembering my first day of teaching, I am stunned by how I’ve managed to survive here. It was a challenge that I was not prepared for.

            On that first day, Mr. Yang gave me a stack of books that I would be using for teaching. One of the acronyms that I saw was TOEFL. I didn’t know what TOEFL was or what it meant but it took up a good portion of the books in Mr. Yang’s bookcase. After receiving a stack of books, I was told to go over them and be ready to teach a full load of classes the next day. This was my first day as an ESL teacher and it was sink or swim. That initial day turned into a week, and sooner than I expected a whole month had passed. The initial shock of teaching, or just surviving as a like to call it had already subsided and I had gotten used to handling things, although I took it day by day.

            We’ve had this conversation many times before and Mr. Jung always listens sympathetically to my woes and concerns. He too has a daughter, Jung Hua, attending these hagwons, or private cram schools. There is one for almost every major subject in the Korean public school system with English being the most popular. The value of education is impossible to over-stress here. The influence of Confucianism throughout history has placed English learning on a very special pedestal. English is big business in South Korea and will probably continue to be as long as it holds its position as the lingua franca of the business world.

            My jeyuk deopbap smells like it’s ready. Mr. Jung brings me the hot plate and I poke at the top layer of marinated pork with my spoon exposing the steamy goodness of rice underneath. I begin stirring and mixing; I’ve become quite adept at it, as is the custom here to mix foods together. Mr. Jung also brings me an extra fried egg, a banana and a yogurt drink that is consumed widely here as a digestive.       

The T.V is still on while I eat.

            “Ohhh! Homerun—Kevin, how do you say mallu homerun?

I look up at the T.V. and see the instant replay.

            “Grand slam.”

            Mr. Jung and I have been doing a language exchange at his restaurant and it’s one of the things I look forward to the most. His passion for English gives him an easygoing personality that non-native Koreans can quickly detect. Mr. Jung’s place is perfect for expats like me that want a nosh to eat. He is always amiable, hospitable, and always goes out of his way to make sure you are comfortable. I once jokingly told him that he should change the name of his restaurant to Mr. J’s to reflect that sense of unique identity that he emits. He laughed and said he would think about it.

            Instead of a name that dignifies his restaurant, what you’ll see instead as you reach the corner is a sign that is ungraciously shared with a real-estate agency; the bottom half of the sign reads bun-shik, a style of restaurant that specializes in fixing various types of quick meals. The equivalent would be the restaurant being called just plain “diner.” The interior of Jung’s restaurant: yellow flower pattern stained wallpaper, the same stock photos of food that every bun-shik style restaurant has with the upright chairs and the austere wooden tables. Indeed, the atmosphere is humble like the man, but here is the closest thing to a diner experience you will ever get in Korea, and Mr. Jung’s food is the closest equivalent that I have ever gotten to eating a home-cooked meal.

            I leave, thanking Mr. Jung. He wishes me a great day but I know that today will be difficult just like the other days.

            At Seoul Language Academy I start the day by drinking instant coffee. These packs of instant coffee are ubiquitous in Korean offices and schools and they are part of a ritual that I do everyday. With a cup of coffee, I am caffeinated enough to handle Eric’s class. I have to teach a class that I’m not even sure how to begin. I play CDs, or sometimes tapes, of storybooks to a group of 8 year olds who clearly do not want to be here.  Eric is a constant disruption in class. I wish I could do something to make the situation better, but there doesn’t seem to be anything that I can do. I feel restricted here at Seoul Language Academy and want to use creative ways to make the lessons more engaging and fun for the students but don’t know how.

            I play the tapes for the students and they have to listen and do word gaps or different kinds of activities that are given in their activity books. As soon as I play the tape, Eric starts to make funny noises imitating the narrator. I’m actually surprised at his English ability when he mimics the tape and wish he could harness this creativity during my actual lesson. It would be a year before I would actually say, “enough is enough” and do something productive with my time there.

            After a year teaching at Seoul Language Institute, I decided to devote my time to learning ESL teaching skills that would help me in my profession. After doing research online, I came across CELTA, a TESOL certification that gave opportunities for teachers to take workshop classes and get hands-on instruction from qualified teachers. I thought this would be the best chance to actually find out about the teaching process and the ESL process.

            My CELTA training ended up being a watershed moment in my life. I found out about lesson planning, and how to set up activities. Something I never thought to do before in my lessons at Seoul Language Academy. The activity was very hands-on and the workshops were collaborative so we were able to really learn in an environment that encouraged everybody to participate. I actually got to teach and apply what I learned first hand. My first group of adult students was very exciting to teach and the experience gave me confidence to plow ahead. I had found a teaching practice that gave me guidelines and methods to effectively teach an ESL classroom. I went from knowing nothing about teaching to gaining information and knowledge that would help me teach ESL courses and prepare lesson plans.  

            My CELTA transition couldn’t have come at a more felicitous time. Almost two years teaching here gave me more confidence and there were big changes coming ahead. Seoul Language Academy was trying to shift gears to keep up with the competition from other hagwons that were trying to incorporate more extra-curricular English activities that could spur students to speak more English in a more communicative way.

            Our academy had introduced book clubs and we also got new Northstar textbooks to hopefully freshen up the curriculum. Two other co-teachers were even trying to write a curriculum from scratch. This was a huge development and miles from where I started in the school where the only textbooks available were TOEFL based and not communicative at all. TOEFL is the standard test used for international students who want to enroll in an English speaking university. Our emphasis used to be solely on teaching for the TOEFL test but that was slowly changing. This change proved to be conducive to my developing skills and I thrived during the last few months at the academy before it would eventually close due to reduced enrollment and competition from other academies.

            These skills extended to not only teaching ESL but also the profession of teaching in general. I got a better sense of respect for the craft of teaching and this was due to the immediate hands-on training and coaching that I got with the CELTA course. Through this, I also found out what kind of learner I was. I preferred learning in an experiential way and I valued the different kinds of styles that learners and made me more aware of the learning styles of my students in the classroom.

*                                                                      *                                                          *

           

            Mr. Jung has a daughter that goes to an academy located right above the restaurant. Sometimes she glides into the restaurant on her roller blades. Like many of my students, she is painfully shy when it comes to interacting in English. I say hello to her, and she strains a faint hello back, exhaled like a puff of air that condenses much too fast for any kind of resonance to be heard. She leans into the crook of her father’s arm, that one “hello” sapping her strength.

            This is the typical demeanor of many of the students in my classrooms that I have encountered over the 3 years teaching in South Korea. Did my CELTA certification help them become confident English learners? Possibly, but it takes more than a certificate to have any meaningful impact that will carry over for the rest of a student’s life. I wish I had more intimate knowledge about the culture to guide them and help them. I want to understand everything there is to know about the education system here. I wish I knew more Korean to be able to talk to them but there are limits to what I can do.

            If I had known more Korean, perhaps I could’ve talked to Eric and found out why he was misbehaving in class. My CELTA certification was geared for teaching adults but I could easily apply it to teaching children as well. I never got the chance to find out how Eric would’ve adjusted to my newfound sense of responsibility as a teacher. He transferred to another hagwon and it made me aware of the short-lived nature of the teaching experience here. Many of my students would tell me about their experiences at hagwons and how fervently they hated them.

            As a teacher in South Korea, my biggest responsibility was making them enjoy themselves in class by making lesson plans communicative and fun. Oftentimes, I eschewed strict grammar lessons although the parents generally preferred this kind of teaching because they felt it was more productive for the kind of standardized tests that are administered in highschool—all in English—which are the bane of Korean students.

            My CELTA certification allowed me to see the components of my teaching and it gave me self-awareness of what I was doing, but it didn’t prepare me for the contextual understanding of English language learning in South Korea, and perhaps many headmasters at English hagwons feel like it isn’t the job of Native English teachers to understand. It was just my job to teach English in class and be the token American English teacher, a figurehead that schools could use to boast to parents that their hagwon was better than the rest. In fact the Seoul Language Institute website boasted about how the faculty graduated from Ivy League universities, Yale, Brown—I was the only oddball CUNY teacher there.

            Koreans viewed learning the English language as imbued with prestige and status. Their views on education was viewed through the lens of rigorous tests that saw English learning in an almost scientific way; the way to learn English was to break it up into discrete components that had to be mastered. If one didn’t do this, one couldn’t learn English.

            This attitude made me deeply critical of the nature of the English language education system in Korea. What I was witnessing was a form of Standard Language Ideology happening. Speaking English was the language of prestige and if you didn’t have the means and access to get your son or daughter to an English language school, then you were already behind.  The sense of wonderment about learning a new language is still relevant to me but I am not as naïve anymore regarding the context and ideology under which English language learning in South Korea takes places.

             This contrasted drastically with the language sessions between Mr. Jung and I. Those moments form a strong impression in my mind. When we learned, we were learning together and there was a tacit acknowledgment that we both wanted something out of this. However it wasn’t wholly selfish, we both legitimately wanted to make each other feel happy. Mr. Jung would always comment that real life is unpredictable and that we have to study real situations not hypothetical ones. He used the term “life English” to describe this.

            Mr. Jung and I would continue to do language exchanges until I left for the States. I valued and still value our relationship together; in many ways it was more useful than my CELTA certification. Mr. Jung’s “life English” suggests a practical way to learn a language. But it didn’t just apply to the English language. I learned that learning is a lifelong process and teaching for me meant a lifelong pursuit. Through friendship and a form of creative translation in our language exchanges, I had found a path I could call my own.

Literacy Narrative: first draft

            On my desk was a Speak Korean language book that I had bought from Barnes and Nobles. I was sounding out the vowel-consonant combinations that make up words in the Korean language:안녕하세요 annyeonghaseyo, Hello; my first introduction to the language and the start of a new language journey.

            When people ask how did I end up teaching in South Korea, it always takes me a long time to answer because the reasons weren’t so clear to me then. Lately, I’ve come to realize that teaching English in South Korea was one of the most transformative experiences that I have ever had. There are many reasons why this is true. Part of the reason why is that I was so unprepared for what lay ahead of me.

             I had graduated from Queens College as an English Literature major, not having much direction in my life and being disenchanted with the whole idea of teaching high school. I wanted to be a writer but lacked the fortitude and discipline to forge ahead and write, so I was stuck in an idealistic phase waiting for something to happen. I wanted something different; I wanted to live alone and get away from my parents, to experience freedom and to seek ownership of myself. I was missing a sense of autonomy and wasn’t quite sure who I was. It was then that I realized that travelling would be a viable option for me. So, I sought out ways to try to make that dream be realized.

            The first option that I had heard about was through the Peace Corps. I applied and did the necessary, long and arduous paperwork that is required, including all of the restricting guidelines and requirements that limits the Peace Corps as an option for so many people: no prior history of depression, drug abuse, psychological imbalance, etc. Because of my compatibility, I was selected to interview; my interviewer was a very amicable woman who had done the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso. She explained her experience serving under the Peace Corps, staying in Burkina Faso with her host family. I was intrigued by it all. It was such a radical change of life and seemed like it could be the perfect opportunity for me to teach and be of service yet at the same time be in a unique position to experience a culture that was totally different from mine.

            After the interview, I was optimistic and really was making up my mind of joining the Peace Corps; the only caveat that was places was that I needed volunteer experience of some kind to see how well I coped with the ability to simply work and not receive monetary compensation. I knew well enough that the Peace Corps was on a volunteer basis and that I wouldn’t be getting paid for it, but I didn’t care. I knew the deal, but the organization had to be sure that I would take the Peace Corps seriously. Not long after that was when I got a call from another recruiter that I sent a resume to. This opportunity lay in South Korea. I remember I was at the Associated supermarket on 31^st Avenue in Astoria, helping my mom with the shopping. Leaving the store, I get a call from Don who tells me that there might be a school available for me in South Korea: Would I be interested? I told my Mom and she gave me an interested but quizzical look: What’s in South Korea?

            I had found about teaching in South Korea by accident. Originally, I wanted to teach in Japan because I was interested in Japanese culture, stuff like manga and anime—the usual otaku stuff that gets you through high school. After applying to numerous institutions that offered chances of teaching in Japan, including the JET program and AEON private schools in Japan, and being unsuccessful I opted for other avenues to take me away. After aimlessly wandering through my Facebook feed—it was during this time that they first started introducing ads on the homepage, which annoying as it is now I’m actually thankful for for letting me know about the opportunity—I saw an ad for “teach in South Korea” and I was intrigued. I had heard that South Korea was a popular spot for teachers that wanted to travel abroad. Other than that, I really didn’t know anything about South Korea and couldn’t escape the countless times that people would joke whether I was going to “north” or “south” Korea.

            It was time to do some research. I found out about the culture of South Korea and the fact that it was very appealing to expats because of how technologically advanced it was. This was the land of the morning calm, but this belied the technological and industrial revolution that launched the country from Bangladeshi levels of poverty to securing a spot amongst Germany as one of the most economically advanced countries in the world. Even with all of this information at my disposal, there was still a huge unknown element in the factor of teaching. I had no idea what an ESL teacher needed to do, no idea about classroom strategies, Lesson plan strategies, classroom management techniques. In hindsight, I probably should have done a little more research on this but it probably wouldn’t have prepared for what lied ahead in what was once famously called the Hermit Kingdom.

            Incheon Airport: Mr. Yang greets me at the airport and takes my luggage. I’m not really sure what relation he has to the school but it is instantly a relief to be picked up at the airport and be with a local that knows the area and speaks English. At this point in my Korea, I know the bare minimum of Korean basic expressions but I could read Korean. I spent the car trip reading a lot of the signs and absorbing all of the sights and sounds. Incheon airport was 20 minutes away from Ilsan, my home away from home for the next three years. On the way, the driver who picked me up who was actually the headmaster, Mr. Yang, mentioned some notable spots in Ilsan. We pass by a place called Tunnel Nite Club, which Mr. Yang almost proudly, says is the biggest nightclub in South Korea. Of course a “night club” in South Korea is very different from a night club in the United States, something that I would soon learn because I would eventually step foot in this nightclub. Mr. Yang also mentioned Lake Park, which gets its name because of the artificial lake that was built there. I finally arrived at my new studio apartment tired from the sixteen-hour flight to South Korea.

            It was finally time to actually start teaching ESL, the subject I really had no idea about. The most pressing issues at the moment was trying to find restaurants to go to. I was hungry and wasn’t sure what to eat. Luckily, I was introduced to a restaurant right around the corner from where I lived. My first Korean meal was Kimchi jjigae, I had told Mr. Jung that I liked spicy food and he was surprised when I told him that, just like Koreans usually are when a Westerner tells them that they like spicy food. They’re used to assuming that Americans don’t like spicy food. After finishing, I went back to my apartment and bought a phone card to call my parents. That was my first night in Korea.

            My first day of teaching was a whole other challenge that I was not prepared for. Mr. Yang gave me a stack of books that I would be using for teaching. One of the acronyms that I saw was TOEFL. I didn’t know what TOEFL was or what it meant but it took up a good portion of the books in Mr. Yang’s bookcase. After I receiving a stack of books, I was told to go over them. This was the first day as an ESL teacher and then the first week arrived, and sooner than later I had spent a whole month teaching English and by then the initial shock of teaching had already subsided.

            The observations of the other teachers really didn’t prepare me for the world that I was about to enter. Even the other teachers didn’t seem to know what was going on. In one of my classes the students, 5 students in total, were unruly and the teacher had to constantly break up the lesson every three minutes by doing jumping jacks or some other kind of physical activity just to tire them out. There was no sense of any learning taking place. In other classes, I saw unruly and disruptive students lashing out against teachers who made no effort, or had no idea, about how to manage their classrooms. In some classrooms, the sense of boredom and ennui were so steeped that it made teaching turn into some kind of jailer. I felt like I was a jailer, a warden—the look on students’ faces were heartbreaking to see. I didn’t know it at the time, but I what I was looking at was a stifling education system that channeled all of its energy into cram school, turning language learning from a fun and enriching activity to one of profit.

            After a year of teaching I was fed up and decided to actually devote my time to learning ESL teaching skills that would help me in my profession. After doing research online, I came across CELTA, a TESOL certification that gave opportunities for teachers to take workshop classes and get hands-on instruction from qualified teachers. I thought this would be the best chance to actually find out about the teaching process and the ESL process. It ended up being one of the defining moments, the transformative moments in my life.

            My CELTA training ended up being an important event in my life. I found out about lesson planning, and how to set up activities. Something I never thought to do before in my lessons at Seoul Language Academy. The activity was very hands-on and the workshops were collaborative so we were able to really learn in an environment that encouraged everybody to participate. I actually got to teach and apply what I learned first hand. My first group of adult students was very exciting to teach. The reason for this excitement was that I had finally found a teaching practice that gave me guidelines and methods to effectively teach an ESL classroom. I went from knowing nothing about teaching students to gaining information and knowledge that would help me teach ESL.

            This not only extended to teaching ESL but also teaching in general. I got a better sense of respect for the craft of teaching and this was due to the immediate hands-on training and coaching that I got with the CELTA course. Through this, I also found out what kind of learner I was. I preferred learning in an experiential way and I valued the different kinds of styles that learners have.

            This made me more aware of the learning styles of my students in the classroom. It was also a very humbling experience because I realized that learning a language encompasses a broad range of reasons and motives. Some students learn a language for economic reasons; other students learn the language for job opportunities. One of the main reasons that I frequently saw was for economic, or job reasons. Koreans viewed the English language in a prestigious way and their views on Education focused on rigorous tests that saw English learning in an almost scientific way, the language broken up into discrete components that had to be mastered or else one couldn’t learn English. This made me think more about the nature of the English language education system in Korea. What I was witnessing was a form of Standard Language Ideology happening. Speaking English was the language of prestige and if you didn’t have the means and access to get your son or daughter an English language school, then you’re somewhat behind.

            This has such troubling implications that it boggles the mind if you think about it. Learning a language isn’t an easy thing to do and if one doesn’t want to learn the language and resists this hegemonic practice, then the effect on students could be troubling. I saw this everyday when I taught at Seoul Language Institute; students that hated being there, obviously there might have been other factors at play but I couldn’t help but notice the stranglehold that English language learning had in the country.

            All of these things came together and put me in a better perspective in my life. I knew that somehow I would dedicate myself to teaching. I realized that my students far from being simply mindless were actually very intelligent and they came into a schooling system that is ripe with a certain ideology. This is apparent in all kinds of schooling from K-12, to the upper echelons of higher education. No student learns in a vacuum void of political context. I decided from then on, I would try to be an agent of change. My CELTA certificate wasn’t the end of something but the beginning of something and I realized that it will take more than a certificate to be a teacher. My total experience in Korea, from learning the language to being exposed to a different culture, to getting my first experience teaching there was a transformative experience; each facet giving meaning to each other and strengthening my total collective memory. Translation for me, gave me a particular meaning. It was a personal translation of culture that changed my life and put me onto the path that I currently am on today.