Korean Sijo Contest Winners’ Field Trip

Every year my school’s Korean language and culture program, which I coordinate, holds a sijo-writing contest for its 2nd and 3rd Grade students. We define sijo (pronounced “she–jo”) as a three-line poem that is often sung with a backup of traditional music instruments.

Each line has a unique role:

Line 1: introduces a situation
Line 2: develops the situation
Line 3: adds a twist, punch or conclusion

First the students read translations of classical Korean sijo, written by King Hyojong, Hwang Jin-i, U Tak, Kim Su-Jang and other famous poets. Many of these sijo talk about nature or philosophical issues such as growing old.

Then the children write their own poems, often echoing the same themes. The contest winners go on a special field trip to view some aspect of Korean culture and eat lunch in a Korean restaurant.

Here’s one of this year’s winning poems, written by a student in 3rd Grade:

Only Child

I have no brother or sister.
I have no other kid in my house.
But I get all of my mom’s love.

Here’s a winning poem from a student in 2nd Grade:

Being Born

Being born is hard for everyone.
You think being born is easy, but your mom gets stressed out.
But after you are born, your mom cools down and feels happy.

To read a collection of winning sijo from the past years at our school, click here: Children’s Sijo.

But let’s go on the field trip! First we’ll visit the Korean Cultural Center in New York, to view an exhibit about the upcoming Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. Then it’s off to a private room at a Korean restaurant for an enormous meal!

Ready?

We start off at the subway near our school in the Bronx. The train is above ground through most of the Bronx, with great views of rooftops and roadways.

In Manhattan, however, the train goes deep underground, and we have to take a lot of long escalators and flights of stairs to get up to street level.

When we arrive at the Korean Cultural Center, we meet the mascots for the Olympics and the Paralympics.

The exhibition has plenty of spaces for photo ops!

A main part of the exhibit is a collection of 100 winter sports helmets, each decorated by a different artist.

Example A.

Example B.

Example C.

You can select ballots for the helmets you like best, and vote for your favorite.

The most popular part of the exhibit is a video game where you control a snowboarder who careens down a dangerous mountain slope!

After viewing everything, the children fill out an open-ended form that I prepared, on which they describe their favorite part of the exhibit and why they liked that most of all.

The video game is many children’s first choice….

…but not everyone’s.

Final photo op: Facebook-blue, Facebook-inspired! Our Korean teacher, Ms. SooJin Choi Kim, stands in the center in the back row.

We stop by the Korean Consulate on a different floor in the same building, to have a snack with Director Lee Yong Hak of the Korean Consulate’s Education Center.