"It Finally Happened" or "Turning Negatives into Positives" or "Lesson Planning Made Easy?"

"So it finally happened. As if on cue to try and ruin the good mood I've been in this morning, an ajumma reached out her grubby hand and touched my hair. Then giggled to her friends. This isn't the first time for me but it is the first time since coming to Busan last February . I looked at her, frowned, shook my head and my hand and said "안돼요" (No/Don't). Her response was to keep on smiling like a fool in my face. The way you would smile at a child who's 'just so cute when they're mad'. Korea don't do this. Not yet. I still have another 10 months."

That was the Facebook post I made this morning while on the bus, shortly after moving seats because of the violation against my personal space. 6 years ago, when I lived in Siheung, this happened once every few months (total 4 or 5 times), and every time it made me more and more angry. Since moving to Busan last year, though, it NEVER happened until today. I managed to go a whole 13.75 months without being treated like an animal in a petting zoo. 

So I was pretty pissed. And it didn't help that when I got to work I discovered my classroom in the middle of renovations (with the expectation that I continue teaching in this mess). But...

Next week my students have their midterm exams. So this week they're pretty stressed out. The weather is warming up and the campus is beautiful, SO I had already planned to take them outside as part of our lesson. Since their task while outside is to find things that improve their mood, I decided to lead a meditation exercise as the intro to the lesson. 

First, I had them think about 1 thing that happened recently that caused them stress or made them feel upset or annoyed or otherwise unhappy. Then I had them talk about it with a partner for a few minutes. Then I told them about my thing. I must point out here that it was some consolation to see how shocked my students were that this had happened to me. So after sharing my thing with them, I had them close their eyes and imagine that frustrating situation (specifically the feelings of stress or anger) as a piece of bread in their hands. I told them to picture a fast-flowing river in front of them. With every inhale, I had them visualise breaking off a piece of the bread. With every exhale, I had them visualise throwing the bread into the river and watching the river carry it away out of sight. And I did it with them. 

And I think that was really useful in setting up the purpose of the class, which is to show them one way to help reduce stress and also have them think about other ways for themselves.

So all in all an interesting start to the week.