Korean Student Fads

Korean kids are like any country's kids. They all have fads. I'll make posts about the fads that I see in the classroom.

The photo above is of a mechanical pencil that has 7 additional clips attached to it. I've only seen a handful of these floating around, so maybe it doesn't qualify as a bonified fad.

Pens and pencils are the source of a lot of the kids' attention during class. For instance, I've seen a lot of "pen spinning". Pen spinning is a form of manipulation where the goal is to make a pen do different tricks by using your hand, primarily the fingers. It is truly amazing what a 13 year old kid can do with a pen when they are board.

Recently, pens have been used for something called "pen beats". Essentially, the kids use the pens to tap rhythms onto the desk or nearby metal desk/chair legs. The pen is either tapped or slapped while the palm of the hand is bouncing off of the desk to create a bass sound. Some of the kids have memorized long chains of numbers like 1-2-2-2-1-0 that represent the types of tap they are supposed to do to create interesting beats. There are moments when the sounds emenating from these distractions actually sound like beats. Everything else sounds like garbage.

Before pen beats was popular, half of my class would be beat-boxing while I would be trying to teach. None of the kids got it right. It was just a lot of strange noises coming from the mouths of my students.

I've challenged my students to do pen beats and beat-box simultaneously, but none of them have accepted.