The basic scene is that there's this rich old man, Alfred, who was killed after a dinner party at his house one night. The suspects are his wife, son, business partner, the business partner's wife, and his butler. They all have motives for killing him...you get the picture. What was funny were the things my students said when they were defending their reasons for choosing the person they thought was the murderer:
"Obviously Tiffany killed Alfred. He was cheating on her with another woman and then when he found out she was pregnant, he said he wouldn't pay for the new baby's education. So she killed him to get the insurance money to pay for the child to go to school."
"The butler accused Tiffany because he saw her in the kitchen at 1:45am, when she later said she was asleep during that time. He's trying to put the blame on her because he's clearly the killer. Why was he in the kitchen in the middle of the night not doing anything when Alfred had just been killed? That's so suspicious!"
"Everyone else thinks that the wife killed Alfred, but it must have been his business partner because he's the only one without an alibi. He wanted to run the company by himself, and he didn't even come up with an excuse about what he was doing when Alfred was killed."
"Tiffany said she took strong medicine for her headache. That can't be true because no good mother is going to take medicine like that when she's pregnant because it would harm her baby. So Tiffany is lying and she killed Alfred."
Clearly, my girls watch too many Korean dramas because they came up with all sorts of motives. I thought the lesson might be too difficult, but they proved me wrong, and were more attentive than they've ever been in class because I gave them something challenging. At the end of class, I asked each group who they suspected of being the murderer and why, and kept a tally on the board. Then when I revealed the murder, all the teams that were right exploded into applause and I saw a sea of high fives. I don't think they were ever this excited about anything before.
This experience showed me how blessed I am to be at my school. I've talked to tons of other teachers, some of whom work at schools with exceedingly difficult circumstances (in all sorts of ways). Some people have students whose Korean level isn't even that high, and whose English is much worse. Others have classes where the students are fighting each other and cursing each other out. None of that at Daegu Girls' High School. EPIK gave me just the right placement (thanks Ji Won!), and when I renew next year, I'm definitely asking to stay at my school.
In summary, things are gonna get more challenging for my students. But now I know they will rise to the occasion. :-)
