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A citizenship lesson from the South Korea book

Respecting Community

Grades 2 to 5 · K-1 with an adult reading aloud · one 60 minute session or two 30 minute sessions

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STEP 1

What do we share?

Why this lesson: Popular culture sells children a story where being young means ignoring the old, and where shared things are nobody’s job. Seoul answers both: families where generations live and learn together, a subway that keeps seats for elders, and a city that once tore out a highway to give a buried stream back to everyone. Respect is not old-fashioned. It is how a modern city of millions thrives.

List the things that belong to everyone and no one: the library, the hallway, the park...

Your class’s ideas will pin up here.
STEP 2

The words carry a wish. Flip them open.

In Seoul, Alexandria learns the greeting “annyeonghaseyo.” It is how her friend’s family greets people through the day.

The cover of the Seoul, South Korea book
STEP 3

Your turn: three questions.

Write or draw on paper, or type here. Typed answers appear on your class page at the end.

STEP 4

Something real to read, and talk through.

The story of Cheonggyecheon. For about fifty years, a stream through the middle of Seoul was buried under concrete and an elevated highway. In 2003 the city decided to take the highway down and bring the stream back, and in 2005 it reopened as a long public stream park where families walk, cool their feet, and gather. Read or show from the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s official Cheonggyecheon pages and published features on the restoration.

Open each question when you are ready. Type what your class says:

What was Cheonggyecheon like before, and what did the city decide to do?
What children might sayChildren might say: it was a road on top of a hidden river; the city took the road away and let the water back. You can note that this was a choice, and choices about shared places are decisions communities make.
Who had to work together to bring the stream back?
What children might sayChildren might name: the city government, engineers, construction workers, drivers who changed their routes, neighbors who asked for it. Caring for a shared space is many people’s work, not one hero’s.
How do people in Seoul care for spaces everyone shares?
What children might sayFrom the book and the reading, children might name the subway seats kept for elders, clean stations, parks, the stream itself. Ask which of these took a rule, and which took a habit.
What is a shared place in your community that deserves this kind of care, and what would caring for it look like?
What children might sayEvery serious answer is right, from the school library to a local creek.
STEP 5

Six actions. Which will your class do this week?

Tap a name to see the activity. Tap We’ll do this to put it on your class page.

🌍
Shared-spaces walk: the class inventories the shared spaces of their own school, then matches each one to a shared space Alexandria saw in Seoul: the subway, the park, the stream.
👂
Elder wisdom: at home, each child asks a grandparent or an older family member or neighbor known to the family to teach them one thing they know how to do well, and listens to the whole answer without interrupting. Children retell what they learned to the class.
🗳
Write the care agreement for one shared space the class chooses, with jobs children volunteer for. Propose, vote, adopt, post it in the space itself.
💡
Many ways to show respect: bowing, handshakes, kind words, quiet voices, standing to offer a seat. Children compare how respect looks in their own families, and find what all the ways have in common.
🪞
Respect self-portrait: one way I already show respect, one way I want to grow this month.
🤝
The messy shared space: the class takes a real small problem in a shared space, a cluttered book corner or a chaotic supply shelf, and designs the fix together, then does it.
STEP 6

Then and now. Drag the handle.

↔
◀ Cheonggyecheon as a highwayCheonggyecheon today ▶

Ask together: What changed? What stayed? The stream was there the whole time. The community chose to uncover it. Who had to work together?

These pictures are our artist’s sketches. For real photographs, search the place names together on the classroom screen.

STEP 7

Our Care Agreement

⭐A care agreement for one shared space in their own school or home, written by the children who use it, posted in that space.

Choose one shared space. Write how your class will care for it, and who volunteers for each job.

Our Care Agreement

Everything your class typed, on one page. Print it, sign it, post it.

Our first ideas

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Our reflections

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What we said together

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The actions we chose

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Our plan

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Signed by

With thanks to the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s Cheonggyecheon materials. · alexandriasworld.com · Welcome home.