Yut!

In my absence last week, Stephanie’s late Monday afternoon Culture Club turned to my father’s home country, Korea. Stephanie taught them a few facts about Korea (including its division and its location on the globe) and shared with them some Korean food: Korean pears from the Korean grocery store (Vincent’s favorite), kim chi (with no rice, not many liked it), and some Korean candy (mixed reviews). No herculean effort to make mondoo.

After my return from Guatemala, over the weekend Stephanie wondered about a Korean game her students – half English as a new language students, half other students – rotating through different after-school programs every eight weeks or so – could play. Although I had to check the Web, I immediately thought of a Korean board game national game named – it turns out – Yut! (pronounced somewhere between YOOT and YUHT). Some 20 years ago I had gone to a church party, at someone’s house, with my father and then stepmother (June). There were lots of yut sets, but I turned out to be paired with one of the best players in the church, and we won the tournament (and I won a set of now banned as too dangerous cookware).

Yut – I was reminded on the Web – is a Korean board game (not unlike Sorry, Stephanie eventually told me). But instead of Western dice one rolls four “sticks.” How many moves you proceed depends on the combination of sticks landing on the “round” side (with writing) and the “flat” side (with no writing). If all sticks land on the round side, you’ve got a “yut” and you get to go four spaces and “roll” gain. As in Sorry, if your piece lands on an opponent’s piece, the opponent’s piece must go back to the start.

Koreans have all kinds of styles of throwing the sticks. As in many activities, Koreans can be very demonstrative (and loud) at particular critical times of the game.

Sunday afternoon I headed off to the closet Korean grocery store. To my surprise, I found – with no help – two Yut sets (as well as two Korean masks).

As luck would have it, I was also slated to have lunch Monday with a Korean man who filled in some Yut details that the Web had left out (including what to call each of the five possible stick combinations).

I arrived at Stephanie’s classroom Monday just in time to help out. Stephanie introduced me, showed the students the masks, and then together we tried to explain the game. We broke the kids into two groups, and then each group into two teams of three (this worked out perfectly), and then each of us supervised one of the groups. We explained that – on a team – each player could take turns throwing the sticks and the team could debate, together, in which direction to go when their pieces faced forks in the road.

The kids got the hang of it pretty fast – though we had shift the word for two sticks up from Gay to Kay. Some of the are pretty rambunctious – somewhat a la Children’s Fellowships – though Stephanie’s ENL students were generally better behaved. After three games, we had the best of three winning teams switch and play each other. And one more time.

(I eventually supervised the kids a little more closely than she did – she let them play the game on their own and took time out to generate the materials I describe below – but on the other hand I sometimes had the most difficult student. Getting the kids to take turns and play fair – with or better yet without adult supervision – is as important as anything. From the start I was a little more directional than when I started out teaching, and this was helpful.)

Curriculum planning genius that she is, Stephanie had found sample Yut boards on the Web. She printed these out, and I doctored them a little. Then she passed out four popsicle sticks each and had the kids use magic marker to decorate one side of each stick (copying what was on the existing sticks or not), so that this side could be the “round” side. So, not only did the kids review Korea facts, learn some Korean words and get exposed to a national Korean game – they also got to take a copy of the game home – that they’d made themselves – and possibly play it with their brothers and sisters. Everyone seemed to leave happier and better educated.

No wonder Stephanie loves her job.

-- Perry