‘I want to talk to Obama:’ The hopes and dreams of Korean middle school students

After a few months of lesson planning I came to notice something. It wasn’t obvious to me at first, then suddenly it hit me. I used my lesson plans as a way for me to feed my insatiable desire to be curious (or nosy, prying, intrusive…). I often choose lesson topics based around what I want to learn from students! Not wholly or completely, I did try a few lessons on articles. I have attempted to improve their take on English grammar, ‘her hit me’ (when referring to a boy) and my open-class focused on  their ‘I’m good at Englishey’ pronunciation. In the beginning I produced lessons on useful topics like directions and talking about family members – both of which heavily bombed. So this time around I decided to make it more of a win-win situation, often incorporating topics from which I can also learn from them. The most recent of these was to ‘create a bucket list’ – at 11 years old most of them aren’t thinking past what’s on the lunch menu that day, but eventually they took to it really well. I hope you enjoy reading some of the wonderful, and potentially terrifying, hopes and dreams of my first grade Korean middle school students…

First grade boys

• I want to without pain.
• I want to swim in mouny.
• I want to happy to die.
• I want to go to another world.
• I want to marry pretty girl like Laura.
• I want to clear my classmate.
• I want to explore many kinds of the biogeography.
• I want to make iron man suits.
• I want to be a hacker.
• I want to marry teacher.
• I want to sleep in the money bed.
• I want to got kiss.
• I want to fire the M-134 minigun.
• I want to find a new star.
• I want to give to poor people.
• I will be an LG telecom clerk.
• I want to live forever. *Next line* I want to know the feeling of death.

First grade girls

• I want to meet alien.
• I want to make a clone.
• I want to heaven wings.
• I want to make a boyfriend.
• I want to meet Justin Bieber.
• I want to be pretty.
• I want to sleep in homeplus.
• I want to see Korea reunification.
• I want to make an African American friend.
• I want to sleep with my friends.
• I want to never not die.
• I want to cure pimples.
• I want to white skin.
• I want to write books.
• I want to meet E.T.
• I want to talk with Obama.

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