April Fools Day 2011

During the orientation we had a lot of advice, recommendations, and general know-how, thrown at us. What we should do, what we need to do, what we're really doing here in Korea. Out of all of that information, the one that has resonated the most with me was this:

You are here to teach culture.

I mean, yes, officially, I was brought in by the Korean government to teach english, and yes, when we say "teach english" we really mean "teach english conversation." But how do you teach conversation without having to deal with culture? English is, fundamentally, a western construction. Korea, with all of its modernity and western things, is still rooted in a culture that is not western. Culture, then, must be covered when teaching/learning english.

The reason why I'm bringing this up is that I always try to expose my students to western culture and customs as much as I can. In general, I'm not a big "April Fools Day" kind of person. I don't plan pranks, and if they happen to me, eh, whatevs.

But because of I aim to expose my students to western customs, I had to plan for jokes and pranks for April 1st. Little did I know that students call "April Fools" "Liars/Lying Day." In truth I wasn't exposing them to anything new, but we still had fun, I think. I won some major points with them for my pranks.

I, however, felt really sorry to my co-teachers, who had to endure my pranks haha.

By the end of the day, I had students coming up to me saying I was a liar. Not even just a liar, but a really good liar. They asked me why I lied to them. I told them I had to because they almost exposed my lie, so I had no choice but to keep lying...

I had told them that I was leaving their school to go back to the US, and that they would get a new teacher next week. They asked me why I was telling them this information on that particular day, and I could hear whispers of (liars day) among the class. I told them it was my last day, that's why. They didn't believe me & told me that it was liars day. I asked them if they were calling me a liar lol. Because I knew they were on to me, I had to pull out something convincing... aka, my super awesome ability to cry at the drop of a hat! I pulled out a misty-eyed, throat clearing, pausing for a few moments of recollect myself moment/performance that made everyone quit with their calling my bluff. After that, there was no more talk of liars, only, "teacher, what is your email address?" HAHA

I played a few more pranks, but it got harder as the day went on since everyone wised up to the fact that they couldn't believe anything that was happening that day. Overall though, I thought it was a very nice was to "play" with my students, since I am, almost always, on the other side.

Exchanging stories with other native english teachers... I've now got plenty of tricks up my sleeve for next year's April Fools! muahahahhha