Cleaning Time!

No, I'm finally not the one cleaning (my apartment is allllmost in shape) -- this time its the students who are cleaning! Well, they clean everyday actually. In Korea there is this really awesome time of the day called "Cleaning Time." For 25 minutes every school day the girls clean the entire school! They sweep, take out the trash and even mop! Mind you, the school isn't the cleanest place I've ever seen, but its pretty darn good for havintg 800 middle school girls go through it everyday. I think this is a practice that should definitely be implemented in the USA! I think it forces the students to take more pride in their surroundings. They are still kids so of course there is still random trash on the ground, backpacks on the floor, etc. but they don't blatently disregard the need for cleanliness the way American kids do. There is no gum stuck to tables or sodas poured out on the playground. The girls don't jump for joy when its cleaning time, they usually do an okay job and then have some free time, but I think it works. I don't believe there is more than one janitor that works here and it eliminates the problem of stinky trash being left in a room. It also shows the kids that they are not going to be cleaned up after if they make the mess, giving teachers who don't have to clean more power and the kids a lesser feeling of self importance. I think at least.

It works well here though because of the way the classrooms are structured. instead of the kids moving from class to class (except for taekwondo, music and PE, where they go to specialized rooms) the students stay in one room all day. Thus they have homeroom in the morning, and then 6-8 classes for the rest of the day. They actually study a huge amount of different things! 13 different subjects! They have classes like "morals" and "sociology" -- sounds interesting but the school system is soon to restructure to a system more like ours in the USA, 7-8 subjects. There is just too much pressure on the students to preform exceptionally well in every subject as it is. Yet, because the students start homeroom in the same place everyday, that's where their home bases is, they leave their shoes there and don their inside slippers, they hang out there in the 10 minutes between classes (I have no idea why they need 10 minutes... most of the time they stay in the same room... in the US we have only about 5 minutes between classes and that's to hike from one side of campus to the other! Here we are only in one building as it is.) Yet students can make this room their own as much as they like. There are some decorations, permanent desks, easy to rearrange furniture, a computer and TV. It is very common to walk by the rooms during lunch or the passing period and hear screaming, musical instruments, screaming, pop songs, screaming, chalk on black board, screaming, giggling and most commonly, screaming!

Thus, the students each clean their own class, while some classes are assignd the hallways, stairways and teachers offices. There is a cleaning woman who takes care of the bathrooms. Since all bathrooms in Korea have tile floors, they are all sprayed down (and thus always wet) -- but its an easy way to keep them clean. And they are cleaned midday.

Yet each classroom is definitely the student's, not the teacher's.

(On a side note: Many of the students think Jason and I are married! Apparently that is the story going around! They think boyfriend means married! Or that if you have a boyfriend, you can marry your boyfriend. I don't think they know that the term then changes from boyfriend to finance to husband. Whenever they ask I'm like "What?!?! Noooo!!! Where did you hear that?" and they go "rumor." LOL)