winter 2007 - Concord Academy

y Gail FriedmanIllustrations by Robert BrinkerhoffEverett Wallace ’07When physics teacher Brian Giannino-Racine studiedKorean last summer, he picked up a lot more thanlanguage skills.As the school year resumed, he began to notice that youngerKorean students were using formal grammatical forms whentalking with upperclassmen; sometimes, he realized, they evenbowed to the older students.With language study opening a window onto Korean culture,Giannino-Racine came to understand why some of CA’sinternational students struggle with the informality on campus,with many teachers called by their first names, with authorityfigures who consistently invite debate in the classroom.CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 200722The teacher had long been fascinated with languages; hestudied French, Russian, and Japanese in college and spent asabbatical from CA in Florence learning Italian. When herecently opted to take on an entirely new language, he settledon Korean, in part because he so enjoyed the wit and dynamicnature of his Korean students. “I was basically curious abouttheir culture,” he said.With only the summer available for focused study, Giannino-Racine dove headfirst into the language. He spent two hoursweekly one-on-one with an instructor (no one else had signed