Teacher's Day

-Rethinking the name of my blog...-

Today here in Korea it was Teacher's Day. Teacher's Day is the holiday where parents usually send extravagant gifts strapped to their tiny child's back to school in order to curry favor with their teachers. It probably started out as a nice way for people to appreciate teachers, and then as Korea grew in economic stature it became more and more of a competition amongst parents as to who could give the most money/biggest gift/largest bouquet of flowers.

I heard a story from my friend Michelle (who works in a private tutoring academy) about how parents were expected to contribute roughly $300 per student in order to get the teachers adequate gifts...thankfully the director of the academy refused to allow this, but in a surprisingly bold move decided that teachers at the academy would not be allowed to accept any gift of any kind on Teacher's Day. Not even so much as a lollipop. Poor poor Michelle.

I didn't expect much at my school, because first of all I'm just a subject teacher (and Teacher's Day is more about honoring and appreciating homeroom teachers), and second of all, most of my kids come from not-so-well-off families, and a lot come from single-parent families. So when I didn't get anything first period, second period, third period, fourth period...it didn't come as much of a surprise.

I was a little disappointed though...my co-teacher got tons of handmade cards (most with a PS at the bottom that said in Korean "Tell Jessica Teacher I'm sorry that I can't write in English"). Heck - I would've loved even having cards written in Korean, but I guess it wasn't in the cards (PUN!!).

I kind of half complained to my co-teacher about the students blatant neglect to appreciate the services I provide to them...and that's when I got my butt kicked. I think God likes to do this to me.

About 10 minutes before my low-level after school class started, a sixth-grade student (Han-su), whom I rarely interact one-on-one with, came into my classroom and gave me a simply yet nicely-wrapped chocolate bar.

-Han-su's gift-

And then my cute-as-all-else 3rd grade boys started to file in for class, and Kevin handed me a beautifully-wrapped package with a hand-written note on the front:

-Kevin's gift-

-Tag: "Seonsaengnim (Teacher), Kamsa Hamnida (Thank you)"-

It was soap! I never quite know what to think getting soap as a gift. Simple gesture...or subtle hint? But it was lovely. And so is Kevin!

-Handmade soap from Kevin-

Then Mark skipped in holding a wrapped package for me and delightfully shouted "Happy Teacher's Day Jessica Teacher!!".

-Wrapping paper on Mark's present...surprisingly grammatically accurate!-

No more had I taken hold of it when he exclaimed "It's CANDY!". So much for the surprise...he just couldn't contain himself! :)

-Coffee candy from Mark-

And THEN to top it all off, Tiny Tony bounces in with a bouquet of carnations and wildflowers, hands them to me, and says in his little munchkin voice "Teacher - thith ith for you!" So precious.

-Tony's gift - carnations!-

This is something I'm learning:

My thought process usually goes like this: I've worked for it - I deserve it, right? But then I don't get it...and don't get it...and don't get it. And then at my breaking point I whine and complain about the fact that I've worked hard and I should get what I want. And God reminds me that the reason I work is NOT for the rewards of this world, not for gifts, not for admiration, not for money, not even for love...and just as I come to accept that, He gives me Tiny Tony with a bouquet of flowers he had to carry around all day to wait until English class at 2:00 just so he could give them to me.

And its in the moments I'm least deserving of anything good, its in those moments I feel His blessings and love, stronger than in the happy moments, in the comfortable moments. I'm almost getting used to feeling like a fool.

Maybe baby's growing up.

I'll leave you with this Matthew Henry quote I happened upon this week:

"We need affliction, to teach us submission."

Prayers,

Jess

PS. Today for lunch, we had mystery-meat nuggets. I can access the lunch menu on my school's website, so I usually try to look up the Korean words and figure out what I'm about to eat before I walk into that arena of the unknown. My first attempt in the online Korean dictionary gave me "earthborn". The second dictionary gave me "nuclear power plant" and "allosaurus" amongst a wide array of other responses. So...I'm still not quite sure what I ate...perhaps organic radioactive dinosaur nuggets...