Monday I used my bi-weekly, school-wide radio lesson to challenge all students to write a poem in English. I wasn't sure whether I'd get a single response, especially considering the reward: "The best ones," I noted on air, "would be read on the Friday broadcast."

But low and behold two of my students wrote poems, in English and submitted them today (Thursday) in time for me to put them on the air tomorrow. Here they are (unedited, including grammar/punctuation) as a preview.

"Mom"
by Park Jae Uk

I love my mom
She give birth to me
also she bring up me
So I being in Korea.
My mother is greatness.


"Everyday Prayer"
by Kim Chun Gon

In the morning.
just let me sleep sweetly
just be in the bed.
and just hot hear your cry.

In the after noon.
Please let me enjoy the meal.
Please give me such delicious side dishes.
and please do not make dissapointed with the some menu everyday.

In the evening.
Please let me take a rest
Please let me free of the final term.
and let me just go to bed.

I've taken to correcting my students' posture in class. They hunch over their papers like child-laborers picking through coal. I have a thick wooden rod, a coffee table leg I believe, that I'll lightly poke into the curvature of their spines. Then I'll pull back on their shoulders, forcing them to sit up straight or be jabbed.

The amazing thing is that they all sigh in relief afterwords and thank me. Considering how long some of these kids are in school chairs in a day, all that hunching over is likely to shrink their size by age 30.

One strange repercussion though, I've found that the more students' postures I correct in a day, the more pain I feel in my own back.

Konglish vocabulary for the day: When using English to express how one holds his/her body, Koreans replace the word "posture," with "attitude."

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.

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.

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.

For the past three months, I've taught an after-school English class every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

There were a total of 14 students, although one was almost always absent. Usually, by the end of the school day they were sick of studying and I was sick of teaching, so most days we spent the 50 minutes playing English games like Tic-Tac-Toe-Hangman and Do You Love Your Neighbor.

The best English practice I ever got out of them were the times they'd just talk with me. For example, before my friend Emily visited, I had the class make a welcome poster. They loved the activity and spent the time asking me about her, what things she likes that they could include on the poster and offered advice on what she should do while visiting. One day last week when I wasn't feeling well, the students basically took over the class and taught me some Korean games like 3,6,9 and a kind of water-less Marco-Polo.

At the start of the semester I asked them to write their names in English on the attendance sheet. I expected them to just write "Park Jin Wook" and things of that nature. Instead they made their own names. So I ended up with everything from Henry, to Cortez, to Obama and Gandalf and strangely enough one boy who chose "Jane."

The class wasn't all sunshine and lollipops; there were plenty of times I would have loved to ring their necks. Even now, there are at least a couple of students I hope to bar from taking a class from me ever again. But there are several of the students who I'll miss. These were the kids I saw the most often each week and therefore had the best opportunity bond with.

Here's a class photo I took after our final meeting where we ate pizza and watched Finding Nemo.