sisyphus

Sometimes my job feels hopeless. It's discouraging to teach a roomful of indifferent kids, or to see no improvement from some students. This futility is never more perceptible than when I grade book reports.


I don't even assign book reports. That's part of their Korean English teacher's class. However, I am the one who has to mark and correct the damn things. Every couple of days there's a new pile on my desk, and I die a little more inside.

A lot of the kids, well, some of the kids, can write them just fine. They give a brief summary, write that the story was funny or exciting, and that's it. They're not tasked with writing more than a paragraph or so. However, for the most part when I read these things it's just a string of incoherent gibberish.

The other day I jotted down a couple of these book reports so that I could give you a taste of what they're like. Now, I'm not doing this so that we can all laugh at how shitty these kids are doing. Rather, I just want you to see what I'm dealing with. After all, I'm supposed to mark and correct these in a way that turns them into a coherent thought, so that they can rewrite them without mistakes and make it look like they know their shit.

I've left all grammatical, spelling, and punctuation mistakes intact.

Here's one:

He not sleep. So he count sheep. I'm not sleep so I close eyes...and I

sleep. My mother and father says I say 잠 꼬 대. This story is fun

because bee, sheep, monkey. One, two, tree. Um, I think this is most

fun. Last year (I hear sheep (this mean not sleeping so I count sheep

story, I hear) So I count sheep but not sleep. So I sleep 12. (Now is

I sleep very last, last year is I sleep usually 9 or 10) You don't

read this. You read book please!

And another:

I read peanut Before I will got a peanut Because peanut is very cute,

big eyes long ears But after read peanut. Then he eat and fllow the

tasty O's Tad up very hish. But Tad safe Because peanut bark woof! I

finish a book. peantus is very great dog. Peanut! you are very good!!

Here's one more. This last kind is always my favorite because the kid clearly grabbed any book, flipped it over, and copied down what was written on the back. These are great because I can just cross the whole damn thing out, write "Don't copy from the book! Re-do!" and be done with it.

Help! Baby Penny is lost! That sounds like a job for Detective

Dinosaur  and Officer Pterodactyl. The prehistoric police pair

DETECTIVE DINOSAUR is back on the beat with new cases to crack!

I'm not sure why they would think I wouldn't notice that this is straight copy. Chalk it up to either delusion, optimism, or apathy. My guess would be apathy, because that's certainly the attitude I've begun taking to it.