A Silent Lover

7. Imani

The sunlight streamed in through the windows of my classroom, lighting up the small glass prisms that I had hung from the ceilings. Flashes of colored light bounced from one end of the room to the other and as I watched the display, I felt an aching need to be outside. The day was warm and beautiful; as it had gone by the weather had only gotten better.

It was Tuesday afternoon and this was my last class. The time was almost four o'clock and I wondered what JaeHyun was doing and if he was outside with his friends. My mind wanted to wander, but I brought it back with a force of will, wanting to look as though I was paying attention.

There wasn't much to pay attention to though; I stood behind my podium in the front of the class, looking out over the bent heads of my students. They were all hunched over their papers, busy writing answers to the questions I'd made up for them. Today was the initial examination for my newest group of pupils, ones that would be following me to my new building.

The class size was good, with about thirty kids in attendance. My other classes for the college students had gained about forty new applicants in total and even my adult intensive classes had increased by about ten people. Because of the unprecedented enrollment, I was even happier that I had expanded into a larger building. I'd also had to hire another teacher to even out the class sizes; I was both excited and nervous about the new changes I had been making and the workload I was taking on.

At the moment, I had three separate classes going on at any one time, but I always liked to do the initial exams myself; I was determined to continue this no matter how big my center became. The students liked to get to know me since I was the owner and the only foreigner who actually worked here. Most of my other tutors were Korean and had either been raised in America or studied overseas.

Their English was as good as mine, but some kids and some parents as well, liked that there was a foreigner teaching their kids English first hand. I didn't mind giving them what they wanted and the kids seemed to enjoy my teaching style, one that was very different from the regular English classes that they'd taken in school.

Korean schools focused almost solely on grammar and spelling without realizing that language just isn't learned that way. While it was good to know the alphabet and how words sounded, that wasn't how we'd learned to speak as children. Since I found this out on my own when I started learning Korean, I realized pretty early on that knowing phrases and how to respond to things when asked was much better than knowing that hoarse and horse were spelled differently, at least for beginners.

For my advanced students, we would begin to delve further into the language, but these kids today were only looking to pass their high school exams. That meant grammar and spelling for them with some pronunciation practice added in for reinforcement. I wouldn't be teaching them directly after this class, since I worked with the intensive students much more directly.

As the kids finished their tests and began to trickle out in twos and threes, I greeted them in both English and Korean, letting them know that if they were having difficulties they could speak to me anytime and in their own language. I'd found out after my first few months of teaching that students were much more willing to tell you if they needed extra help if they knew you could communicate well with them. Since then I had made it a point to speak both Korean and English in my classes.

As I greeted the last student leaving the room, two different kids came in, ones that I had been teaching for almost two years. They were no longer directly my students, but were children I'd tutored personally, so I was much closer to them than the average pupil. JunHo was now in college and a Judo fanatic. He never missed a practice and as I said hello, I spied his ever-present gym bag slung familiarly over one shoulder.