It's a sad fact you learn when you teach in Korea, that Korean kids don't really get to be kids.
Life if full of pressures that no child should have to face until… well, I don't know when they should face them. Probably never. The amount of pressure that kids, teens, adults - everyone - faces here is something that surpasses my mind's ability to understand and that my compassion aches over.
When I ask my students what they do after school, 9 times out of 10 they will say they go to academy.
When I ask them if they have time to play, they simply say no.
No time to play?!
What?!
And although they are amazing students, they get amazing test results and usually best me in every activity we do together; they lack the imagination and creativity that playing gives children.
They don't have to think up fantasy lands and fight off villains, or rescue princesses from a cardboard fort, or jump from stone to stone because the grass is lava that could kill them instantly just by the smallest touch.
They don't do any of that, because when they do get a chance to play - they play in a 2D world that glues to them to the TV or computer and has their little hands clicking away and their cerebral function zoned in on Angry Birds and World of Warcraft.
So I'm always a bit leery when I come up with a creative activity for my students to do. When I say "be creative" or "use your imagination", the best most of them do is to copy their neighbor. Awesome work there guys.
However, that wasn't the case when my 5th graders did a drawing activity for our lesson about describing people.
I told them they could draw, color, create whatever they wanted!
And thankfully, some of them did!! ^^
* 
*hahahaha I know, I know not the most imaginative drawing, but I love this little guy for some reason. Looks like a young Mr. Rogers!
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