Saturday, June 12, 2010
NATALIE: School Days, School Days or Every Well-Intentioned Endeavor Must End
Nothing short of having my daughter in the classroom every school day of the past 5 weeks has made me realize the utter dissimilarity between the individual and the group. I mean, of course, that the way Natalie responds to my directioning and requests and the time she allots for doing so are different at day and night (and weekends). Daytime, the influence exerted by my classes upon her, the ready audience they make for any extrovert behaviors she exhibits and the jamming signal they present to the communication link between her and me all bring out a rebellious frustration at fatherly regulation that in our night and weekend moments of exclusive togetherness is hardly present. In school, My expectations of her are void of frustration, as the public nature of my job dictates; hers of me are full of them. In out-of-school moments, fleeting as they seem, we are oppositely positioned: she, as innocently as a four-year-old, asks of and adheres to me, fully imbued with the spirit of the father-daughter bond; it is I who feel free to expect her to understand what mores, dos and don'ts I express, and to have the time and space to make the effort to concentrate on conforming to them. Out of school, I make the demands on her time; in school, she makes them on mine. And did I just say that the difference is one of how much attention she gets from me in school versus out of school?Most every school day, there is an hour before classes start when we are really both glad to be in that place together, and she happily helps me with the little things I do. She is not always quiet and positively behaved, not always good at shutting out all the distractions lurking outside the room, but we are still in one-to-one communication. But my duties take me away from dealing with her exclusively, and soon break in upon us completely. I think the change is always too sudden for her, but then, young children barely older than Natalie have virtually no other way of presenting change. The only difference between the students and Natalie--for me, not for Natalie--is that all the children I teach have been bound to be there; they 'belong' to the classroom ritual, and Natalie does not (it is a ritual I truthfully am more and more reluctant to place Natalie into, by the way, for school-going is a philosophy and a psychology, for the teacher and the learner. It's a way of life, and the things it teaches are uninviting at best, frightening and worthy of lecture at worst). When there these curricular wards are, what can one's attentions do but shift? So the balance is far from ideal. Natalie and the school and I must dance around the fiery clash of interests without falling into it. I have an uneasy feeling that paying for outside care is coming up, though I don't know how to and don't care to find make such arrangements here in Korea, and I certainly have no interest in paying the price of it. In that regard, I have a Korean co-teacher who will cheerfully assist (that is, do all the phone calling, checking out, etc., for) me on top of her other multiple duties (she is, after all, a Korean female and an underling to someone, and that means lots of work, in the end), so I respect and am thoroughly grateful for that; still, being as overprotective as I thought I was, this Korean society has urged me into being moreso. So I'll hold off thinking about it as long as I can. maybe the requirement won't really come up; maybe Natalie darting out into the hallways during class, interrupting my attempts at instruction to classes that aren't really behaving well anyway, and being a natural distraction to kids and adults alike, as she is normally everywhere we go, won't be noticeable on a corporate level. maybe the zero attention from the administration the after-school English teachers get without her there will just continue. But, because she is who she is--A. a child from the Western hemisphere, and B. a non-belonger in a world of parent-fueled and -underwritten student entities supposed and proudly assumed to be doing their academic best at all times; because of these things, I hope that time won't say a word but fear that it will tell.
Since the big, building-burning blaze we witnessed together almost a month ago, she seems to be more in mind of fire happening all around us. Any smoke will remind her of what she saw and have her seeking to find the source of it. Her concern gives me good exercise in explaining away not only fires, but all such phenomena to which one might be an unfortunate witness once, if ever, in a lifetime. It isn't likely, I tell her, that any one person in our position of the average carriers-on of life who make a point of avoiding not only trouble but any stimulating experiences even close to being non-positive; that he or she will ever see anything like that up close and personal, and coming into the way of one experience like that reduces to next-to-nil the possibility that we'll, that she'll, ever see tragedy on such a scale again. Don't ask how I get such a message of reassurance across to her: It's not a one-part revelation. It's still unfolding.
| posted by John at 4:35 AM
