First Impressions || No. 7 (August 27, 2017)

Jeonju Youngsaeng High School — home for the year.

First Impressions

The advent of fall is often the season of the new – school year, workplace, opportunity.

And first impressions matter; the wrong foot forward leads to many steps backwards. Reparable, yes, but difficult.

In Korea that tends to be magnified to the nth degree. Administrators read your face the moment you accept their business card (you’re supposed to look at it intently to figure out how to address them). Colleagues look for competence and whether you’ll be a pain or a pleasure to work with. Students test seemingly every limit of every line in the sand drawn for them (think: shirts off in class, colorful curse words, sneaking across the room to smack the social outcast).

Nuances here can be an extra level deeper, both culturally and linguistically. Do you stand up in the office when the vice-principal walks in after lunch? Do you bow or say hi to students in the hallways? Do you use formal or just polite Korean endings with coworkers?

Answer key: it depends, it depends, and…it depends (maybe I’ll do a segment on etiquette puzzles in the future).

Sometimes the students don’t know how to react: “Who’s this new English teacher, can he speak Korean, and what the heck is he saying?” They’re not used to teachers walking around the classroom and even behind them at times either.

And there’s host of other questions that arise quickly. Do you ignore the students that clearly have learning disabilities because the Korean education system tells you to or do you slow down every other student so they can keep up? Is sleeping in class disrespectful or inevitable given that school is from 8:20am-10:00pm for many?

Cultural differences or cultural faults? Being the judge of these complicated issues – especially through an American lens.

When the ultimate goal is effectively integrating into the school community, one week won’t get you there – but it’s a start.

600 high school boys on two pages.

News

Stereo speaker company turned LIDAR company turned autonomous car gotta-have. Link

“Instagram is a bit like Disneyland—if every now and then the seven dwarfs hollered at Snow White for looking fat.” Link

For Fun…?

Disney can tell if you really thought that joke from Zootopia was funny…through facial recognition. Link