This week was especially stressful for my extracurricular class: K-pop dance.
“Everyone listen up.” “Can you listen?” “Listen to me.” “Be quiet please.” “Can you hear me?” “Are you listening?” “Look at me.” “How many times do I have to ask you to listen??” After waving my arms frantically trying to gather the attention of my K-pop students, I leaned against the wall in front of them, defeated. I realized that it wasn’t the language barrier that prevented the girls from listening to me as they continued to chat among themselves. I crossed my arms and stood in front of them, clearly frustrated. The 38 girls and 2 boys eventually fell silent. There was only a week left of K-pop dance class before all 40 students would have to be prepared for the final performance. I wanted their performance to look as fabulous as I knew they could be. It was time to get serious.
I divided my class into four parts. There is one big group dance and three smaller group dances (EXO, BLACKPINK, and BTS). Each student is in at least two dances. My frustration levels spiked last week when I started teaching the smaller group dances. The problem is that for the smaller groups, I could only teach a third of the class at a time. Students incessantly disrupted me while I taught new choreography to a third of their classmates; they pestered me for my phone or for me to watch the progress of their own small group dances. Unexpectedly, a school teacher visited my K-pop class this week and told me that she would come back later to watch what we had prepared for the final performance so far. She said that she would kick out any student that did not do well enough. My immediate reaction was panic, but I calmly asked her to repeat the same thing in Chinese to my class to motivate them. Her announcement caught their attention. I asked my K-pop students to stay until 6pm (20 minutes longer than normal) if they could for a couple of days this week so that we could have more time to prepare. Every single student stayed the extra 20 minutes, and the past two days of extracurricular class were the most productive that I’ve ever seen. At one point, I took a step back and watched as three, focused groups practiced the choreography to their dances at the same time. It was a beautiful sight, and my heart was happy. I was able to jump from group to group without having to worry about students in the class being distracted.
My favorite moment this week was right before the teacher came to watch what we had prepared for K-pop dance. There were a couple of extra minutes before the teacher arrived, and I had nothing left to say to the students, so I blasted the upbeat tune of “Crooked” by G-Dragon (K-pop artist) on my portable speaker. Students started to crowd around me, and one student took the speaker from me as I urged other students to come join our free-style dance session. Soon enough, we were all dancing in a circle, making up our own dance moves as we jumped up and down to the cheerful beat of the music. We jammed out to the music on maximum volume until the teacher arrived and it was time to perform. I’ve experienced so many emotions with these K-pop students, but we’ve become closer because of it.
As a Chinese-looking, non-Chinese language speaker in China, I struggle daily to communicate with others clearly and directly in a way that can only be achieved through spoken language. Students will often continue to speak to me in Chinese after I respond in English because they don’t understand why I cannot speak Chinese or why I am not Chinese. Thus, I am led to many frustrated moments when I cannot connect with students through a form of communication as unambiguous as spoken language. With each of my English class students, I feel as though, eventually, a wall materializes between us. There is always the point at which we cease to understand each other due to lack of a common spoken language. My K-pop class is a different story.
I have been learning a secret language for the past month. When I walk down the school hallways between classes, I will see students using the secret language, no words needed. The unspoken language is a medley of dance moves by K-pop groups BTS, EXO, and BLACKPINK. The speakers of the language are the 40 students in my K-pop class and me. My heart warms up whenever I walk past a classroom and see one of my K-pop students throw up her arms with both hands pointed at me in imitation of the chorus of BLACKPINK’s iconic “Ddu-du Ddu-du” dance. Yes, I have grown closer to several students in my English classes, but I am able to bond with my K-pop dance students in a way that I cannot with my English students. Through preparation for the big ten-year anniversary final performance that will be held at the end of the program, my K-pop students and I have experienced frustration, laughter, stress, joy, tears, tiredness, the intense heat of our outdoor classes, and an incredible amount of fun together. I feel attached to my K-pop students, and I will have a hard time letting them go next month.
