Teachers and their Students

I forgot about this incident until it came to me the other day and I remember thinking when it happened that I wanted to blog it but I forgot. When it popped in my head the other day I reminded myself again to blog about it.

The last day of my orientation a couple of weeks ago the entire group of us were going to the auditorium for a few last minute send off lectures and such. We all had assigned seats and the other group that was with my group, the TaLK (Teach and Learn in Korea) were all undergraduate students who were taking time out of their classes to experience this overseas teaching program. The speaker, also the head of the English department for Kongju University, where we were having our orientation, notice that there were quite a few empty seats. He looked very disappointed and upset by this.

After asking another speaker who was currently giving his presentation to stop for a moment he proceeded to call role. As he was doing this people started trickling in and they were upwards of 30 minutes or more late. When these people would come in, both Korean college students and American college students, he would tell them to stand and wait.

After completing role call he told them all they needed to continue to stand and he was going to pass around a microphone. He made them all explain exactly why they were late. The tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with a night. My friends and I in our little group, even though non of the 8 of us were late, felt like we were in trouble too it was so intense!

After going through everyone's excuses (which were a starting number of people, probably close to 20) he kicked 3 Korean girls out of the room and I think told them not to come back until the lecture was over. Also another Korean guy refused to take his hat off in the room. The instructor was talking to him in Korean then all of a sudden started yelling at him in English, "Get the hell out if you are not going to take off your cap!" He hesitated for a while which was shocking. And eventually after about 30 seconds or so he finally took it off. He was smiling too and I think that made the professor even more angry.

It was an interesting situation. This is an excellent example of Korean culture and what the level of respect they expect in all aspects of life. It was a very good, interesting lesson for all of us I think.