Winter Sadness

The park is really beautiful in winter. It's the end of January. Some say it's the most depressing time of year because of the weather, x-mas debts and failed new years resolutions.

The Ghetto Rush

Teaching emotionally disturbed 8th graders in the Bronx turned out to be a bad idea. After a 2- month training period and 8 long weeks on the job, I threw in the towel on Friday with a 2 week notice. The kids were tough, but the administration turned out to be this Gestapo-esque squad of assholes who would freak out if your classroom even momentarily strayed from their vision of excellence. A couple of peices of paper on the floor? Students not sitting exactly in a mandated formation? Classroom bulletin boards not displaying current student work (i.e., yesterday) with teacher comments and a visible rubric? Blackboards not cleaned 5 minutes ago? Time to get written up -- come down to the principal's office, get chewed out, and feel like a 6th grader again! I've never worked in such a fastidious, confined environment with everything dictated to you. Teaching was 3% of the job. And the paperwork! My God. To make matters worse, they expected me to wear a tie -- even on Friday! I only own two -- it was quite a juggling act.

This guy is cool. If you're in NYC, be sure to check out his stuff above 100th St.

On Writing and Teaching

At the scene of writing, important things happen. Thought occurs, opinions are expressed and the journey to the self begins. Language is an event, a catalyst that propels the writer towards a specific goal - a goal that can be as simple as explicating a piece of literature or as grandiose as writing a speech that suddenly changes the world. Writing is a process that encourages thought. With this in mind, writing and English instructors should be open to the possibility of motivating students to think for themselves. Saussure claimed that without language, "thought would be a vague, uncharted nebula." Writing and language are fundamental for our ability to express ourselves in a productive and cognizant way and make sense of the nebulous universe around us. Memory is often an abstraction; therefore, language can be a vital conduit to the past. Through writing and re-writing, students embrace the opportunity to more closely examine themselves and struggle against the vicissitudes of time.

Writing is manifested in many styles and forms. Composition and developmental writing, - the most common styles found in the community college setting - are essential modes of communication for an educated person. These skills are of enormous importance for writing essays about any number of topics, expressing oneself through letters of introduction or writing departmental memos in the workplace. Composition teaches the student to express himself in a clear and cogent way so that the audience can learn something that the writer believes or knows about the world.

The conundrum of writing is that it's never finished. Every act of writing brings the writer closer to his vision, but there is almost always room for improvement. Therefore, as a composition instructor, I stress the importance of re-writing and proofreading to the students. I do this through peer revision techniques, one-on-one conferences, draft exercises and direct comments placed on in-class assignments and formal essays.

I believe that students learn to write by reading and writing. Students of music or art study the masters: the best and most respected artists of the field. Students of writing should also be exposed to the best writing that is available. My composition classes usually involve a combination of reading, discussion and writing in response to those readings. A wide range of other activities are available, and as a teacher it is my responsibility to give constant support, explain vocabulary, grammatical issues and guide the student towards the proper expression of a certain topic. I say, "guide" because I believe that students should be given the freedom to discover their own voice, while respecting certain rules and traditions of the written craft.

It has always been my hope as a teacher to not only impart knowledge and skills, but also to also inspire, motivate and learn from the students during the process. Teachers who feel that they have nothing to learn from their students are dramatically missing the point and should find a different field of employment. Every student is different, and we should strive to learn from his or her individuality and unique vision of the world. I believe that writing courses provide an exciting forum for this to happen and that, ultimately, is why I chose to become a teacher.

Teaching in NYC vs Seoul

"Oppression -- overwhelming control -- is necrophilic; it is nourished by love of death, not life." -- Paulo Freire

Well, I've been teaching high school in New York City after two years of teaching at a university in Seoul. Wow, what a difference a few thousand miles makes! At the uni in Seoul, I made $1700 a month with free brand new large studio apt a 7 minute walk or $2 cab ride away. Other benefits included health insurance, 10 weeks paid vacation, a 12 hour work week, extra cash during holiday periods, severance pay, matching pension contributions and very little responsibility outside of teaching (they didn't seem to care if we kept our mandated 3 office hours a week; we had one 30-min faculty meeting at beginning and end of 16 week semester). Low taxes and deductions meant that we saw most of our pay check (usually netted $1600). In New York, things are a little different. Albeit, I receive a higher gross salary ($43,000 USD with masters -- $39,000 without). Of course, after paying out 1/3 of the salary each month to taxes, union fees, etc, I see only about $2,200 net a month which is about $600 more than I remember getting in Seoul. The kicker is no housing. I'm paying $400 a month for a Harlem share (a very small room capable of barely holding a single bed and dresser), transportation costs are $70 a month and the commute is approximately 50 minutes each way (an arduous combo of subways, buses and walks). Now let's look at the working hours -- 8am-3pm daily (most teachers are on-site from 7:30-4 or later) with professional development meetings every other Monday for an hour and a half. New teachers also are required to receive an extra 2 hours a month of mentoring/ prof. dev. and all teachers have to regularly take graduate courses to keep licenses current. Any planning periods or breaks in the day are used for meetings or covering absent teacher classes. The obtuse curriculum requires lesson planning every night (if lesson plans are sub-par we get fired and the admin checks them weekly). Student work must be graded weekly with insightful comments and displayed on bulletin boards inside (and outside) the room (admin checks this and we get fired if not in compliance). Administration (the lesson plan police) comes into my class approximately once a day to observe all aspects of instruction, management and classroom environment. Teachers are written up if any of these are lacking in any way. Paperwork galore: formal report cards and progress reports -- about 8 times a year, letters to parents, special ed forms, behavior anecdotals, professional development paper work, ad infinitem. Freedom in classroom: zero. Everything is dictated by the admin-- what you teach, how long, the exact structure of your lesson plan, homework, etc. Classroom management: I've been physically threatened by at least 3 students, had everything thrown off my desk and I am verbally assaulted with profanities on a daily basis by my students. Expenses in NYC: assanine. Cigarettes: $7.50, drink in a club: $5-15. Taxi to Greenich Village: $25. Studio apartment: $1200 a month. Utilities: $100 minimum.
Hmmm ... you do the math. What am I doing here??

The image of the Airbus on the Teletron is exciting; it almost looks like it's coming in for an emergency landing at the intersection here in HK or wherever this photo was taken. The video acts as an "interlocuter" between consumer, viewer and pedestrian, connoting the postmodern condition of our milieu.

Hmmmm. This looks exceptionally good. Particularly on 17-hour flights to Korea. Have a Xanax for extra effect.

It was a dark rainy night and I wandered into Geckos for a pint. It was my 4th month in Seoul and I was pretty down on life, the job, alienation and generally just living it up in Asia. Another hogwan friend was supposed to meet me, but he never showed. I sat at the far end of the bar, alone, dejected and rapidly getting more drunk. Soldiers and Nigerians monopolized the pool table and a few drunk Koreans and teachers sat around at the scattered tables. I smoked cigarettes, read the paper and tried not to look too much like a loser. I noticed two young women sitting in the stools a couple of seats down from me and I half-heartedly struck up a conversation. They both turned out to be Russian (one was from Vladivostok and the other was from Khabarosk?). One worked as a hostess in various clubs in Seoul and the other was a recruiter for a company that brought eastern Russian girls in on entertainment visas to various Asian cities like Seoul and Tokyo. We all left together and walked up hooker hill and found a cozy pojang macha about mid way up. I was feeling generous and ordered sundae and a couple of bottles of soju for the ladies. After all, I was lonely and miserable at the time. It was in November and getting bitter cold. A light rain with ice in it began to fall. Soon enough, the hostess grew jealous of her friend as her and I were doing most of the talking. She stumbled off into the night and I was left with the recruiter named Natasha, an average looking 24 year old with a nice body. She commenced to tell me her sob story, how the Korean ajoshi who recruited her cheated her out of everything she had, made her live in a room with ten other girls, wouldn't pay her the 300,000 won a month salary they had agreed to, constantly tried to sleep with her, etc. In truth, her story made me very sad. She lived in Kimpo, but it was getting late and she asked if she could stay at my apartment in Kangnam. I agreed and we returned in a taxi. She was a very sweet girl. I paid for her taxi back to Kimpo the next day. I saw her a couple of other times, but nothing serious developed. The last time I saw her, as a memento, she gave me a crumpled Russian ruble. All these months later it's still in my wallet, and occasionally I take it out and think of her.

Blue Taxi

Korea is like no other place and living there as a foreigner is a surreal experience. A friend of mine once said, "Korea is a bubble, and when you get on the plane to go home ... the bubble bursts." So true. Choosing to work in Korea is like getting sucked into an alternate reality, a time warp, a glitch in the matrix of the world. How can words express the poetry of the neon hieroglyphics in the mad streets, the dark recesses of smoky PC Bangs on lonely nights, the small cups of soju sipped back in your box-like apartment on the 10th floor of a sky rise complex? How can words express the feelings of abandon on a windy day in Seoul during Lunar New Year when the city comes to a screeching halt, and the wide avenues of Kangnam become ghost-like and vacant? Or to suddenly awake in your taxi at 8 am after circling lost neighborhoods, the driver yelling incomprehensibly for your address?

I've been back in North America a few months now and I find myself really missing the sasheemi in Seoul. You can get sushi in any city in the states, but it seems so boring now. It's bland and frozen and not the same at all. Sushi in the states is all Japanese-style. I miss the places in Seoul with the tanks out front. Does anyone else frequent these places? Where you order a plate of raw fish and they serve it up with endless side dishes and you finish it off with a steaming bowl of meyan-tang and soju shots? Side dishes include, but are not limited to, quail eggs, omelettes, pajang, raw marinated crab, whole baked mackeral, ad infinitem. I also miss the Japanese-style frozen Tuna sushi places that serve up really cold slices of different tuna varieties with rice gruel and dry sea weed (kim). After a healthy dinner of raw fish, treat yourself to one of the dong dong-ju hofs in Shinchon. You can't beat the digestive qualities of a big bowl of rice liquer and aju-tang? Fish egg stew. I can't remember the name. The crab stew is also a winner -- Goekay-tang. It's hard to find any of that stuff in the states -- even in Korea towns.
Hot picks: -Sinsa station (Gokay-tang)
-Naranjin station -- biggest seafood market in Seoul with on-site eating areas
-Sinchon (near Jamsil) -- big variety of seafood restaurants that serve everything
- Shinchon (near hongdae) -- best dong dong ju in Seoul
Gonbae!