Korean students are programmed to forgo any creativity and are consistently rewarded for turning off that part of their brain. This creates an ongoing struggle for right-brained English speaking teachers who want nothing more than their students to speak up and say something self-created, anything.

Last week I presented my students with what should have been a fun assignment. Each received a worksheet with six photos from my personal vacation adventures but no explanations. They were fun pictures including one of me on a horse, one with me in front of a great bonfire and one with me swinging an enormous hammer. The students' assignment was to write sentences or parts of sentences to create some kind of story with the pictures.

Admittedly, making a cohesive story in a second-language might be a tricky task, but the kids had a full week to work on it and I only expected a sentence for each picture, six total. I told the students, "make and interesting story, or even a crazy story," and of course had my Korean co-teacher explain the directions again in Korean.

But students used the class time I gave them for the assignment to ask (or at least try to ask) what specific things in the picture were, what I was doing in the picture or where the picture was taken. I tried to tell them, "it doesn't matter. Write whatever you want, whatever it looks like." But these kids weren't having it.

In the end, all but two or three students wrote exact descriptions of the pictures; "Tane rides horse," or "Tane on mountain." The concept of using their imaginations to take the vague yet interesting pictures and make something of their own was completely lost.

The system trains students to respond this way. In virtually all classes except mine, students sit silently in rows as a teacher lectures. The closest they get to participating in the class is a call and response or repeating something the teacher says. Otherwise, they're simply expected to memorize the information the teachers provide and spit it back out for the test.

And this isn't just in school. I've met several Koreans my age who are currently applying for jobs. But in Korea, applying for a job doesn't mean interviewing or showing you have experience that prepares you for innovative challenges. To get the best jobs in Korea you must take a test. All the major companies have entrance exams applicants take and based upon their scores they're either hired or not.

On a personal note, I'm getting tired of trying to get my students to think or act 'outside-the-box.' My classes of 30+ students are too large for me to kill myself trying to get a single free thought. If Korea is hoping for 800 more cogs in their machine, this school is ready to help.

I hate when I ask a straightforward question and get a non-answer. For example...

My English classroom isn't ready yet, which posed a problem this morning because the classroom I went to didn't have a working TV or projector for my PowerPoint.

I explained the problem and asked, "When will the English classroom be ready?"

My co-teacher replied, "Maybe you could try one of the other teacher's computers in the classrooms to see if they work with the TV."

One of the joys of working in a school where no one feels comfortable in your native tongue is creating stories for the events going on about you that no one bothers to explain. For example, this morning I looked around the Teachers Lounge and realized everyone had disappeared without saying a word to me. I looked out the window and saw the entire school, 800 students and 40+ teachers out on the dirt-yard we call a soccer field in military-style lines.

Someone began speaking through a bullhorn with a Lou Garrick-style echo as the not-so-catchy Korean National Anthem played in the background.

I can only assume that the principal here is following through on what my high school calculus teacher claimed as the ultimate motivation tool; taking all the F students and shooting them in front of the rest of the school. D students will be instantly motivated, especially if we're grading on a curve; with all the F students dead they just fell below the "fit to live" line.

This morning I had my students tell me about their winter vacations. One small boy, couldn't have been older than 12, was struggling to find the right words. I looked at the small picture he'd drawn, a boat on the open water.

I asked him, "Did you go sailing?"
He shook his head.
"Did you go out fishing on a boat?" I asked painstakingly slowly.
Again, he shook his head.
Likely hoping I'd leave him alone, he took it upon himself to blurt out something, anything.
"I went to sea."

I'm left wondering what adventures this preteen had during his two months out on the big blue.

My school has a copy of Jeff Goldblum's The Fly, I can only assume to show students what happens when ignorant Americans get their hands on Korean technology.

Last Friday was a planning day where all teachers (including yours truly) were required to come to school to prepare for the upcoming semester. Failing to complete my lesson plan that morning, I declined a billiards invitation last night to finish my preparations.

It was a decent lesson for the first week and included two handouts I created with pictures from my winter vacation. Unfortunately, no one at my school has ever been able to hook my Mac (a dazzling, foreign device to Koreans) up to a printer here. So I emailed my handouts to my co-teacher Hee Jin Sunday evening so she could print them when we got to school.

This morning was a bit crazed, as you'd expect for the first day of classes. Poor Hee Jin was running around like a Leprechaun who preparing to report a lost pot of gold. So I was thankful she found time to print my handouts, even though the text and images printed to be about 1/4 the size they were supposed to be.

I'd faced problems like this before and had solved them by blowing up the sheets on the copy machine; a cumbersome project, but it had gotten the job done in the past. But this morning when I reached the copy machine, I couldn't seem to find the correct series of buttons to enlarge a copy. Readers should remember that the copy machine buttons and display are completely in Hangul (Korean) so this does not reflect my technical prowess.

Although she was busy, I asked Hee Jin on one of her hurried walks by if she'd have a minute to help me with the copy machine. She stop quickly, looked at me and the copy machine and said, "I think that because today is the first day for new students you will not have class."

"Oh, okay." I replied.

"Actually," she added, "I think you will have no classes this week."

"All week?" I asked, somewhat taken aback.

"Yes. I will tell the other teachers," she replied.

And that's how I found out ten minutes before I was set to start my first class of the new year that this week will probably be pretty dull.

I've yet to make my copies.

It's approximately 8:30a.m. Monday, March 2; the first morning of the new semester. I walked into the building about ten minutes ago and so far I've seen three cases of abuse that would make a Catholic school teacher cringe.

• After climbing the stairs I looked back to see a female teacher wailing on a students' head with her hard-sided three ring binder

• In the teacher's lounge, a male instructor with bad teeth slapped a kid's head with at least half his total force.

• After I finally sat down I heard a light moaning and turned to see an older male teacher pulling a student by his ear and hair, apparently because the student forgot his name badge.