it surprises me sometimes just how happy i am with my job. there are some bad days.. but most of them stem from the work environment, the colleagues, the communication problems, and simply the differences in culture. but one thing has never failed me, and that has been what i feel when i'm with my students. yes, there are the handful of "bad" kids... the ones that give me grief, the ones that are rude, the ones that don't listen, the ones that no matter what, i'll never be able to truly help. even these kids hold a place in my heart. at the end of the day, it is because of these kids that i want to become a teacher.

im somewhere between a "teacher" and a "friend" to these students. they dont see me that often so i dont have to discipline them, i don't have to give them grades, and i don't have to be mean (even though i choose to. i dont like leaving the discipline up to my coteachers). maybe to everyone at this school i am not considered a "real" teacher. maybe not even to myself, at this point. but sometimes it surprises me how attached i get to these kids, whose names i can't pronounce or don't even know. when i think of them my heart fills up, and when i think of the future i wonder what theirs will be. i wonder if they will ever visit america, will they ever think to contact me if they're ever in new york. and i hope deep down that they will. that i won't become a faded memory in their lives as time goes on, because they won't be a faded memory in mine.

i know that kids back in the states wont be the same way. there is an innocence about these students, a lightheartedness, a different type of relationship they have with their teachers that maybe doesn't exist in middle schools in brooklyn. here, teachers give students a ride home after school. they take their homeroom out to a movie on the weekends. students have their numbers and text them freely in the evening. a teacher in korea, means more than what happens inside the school building. the profession is well-respected (and deservedly so). a teacher can even take away a student's cell phone privileges for an entire month. of course there are some things about the school culture i may not understand and may not even agree with. but as a whole, being in this environment, seeing these kids every day, seeing them remember something i told them weeks before, seeing them make the effort to say something to me in english, and watching their eyes light up when they understand something... this is what i get up for every morning.