6nd March, 2022 by Suyeon.M (G12)
At the start of the 2022~2023 year, Korea International School Jeju’s parts of black inside the shoes policy changed which to wearing solid black shoes. The policy was to make clear what shoes KISJ students should wear and avoid arguments between students and teachers about how much blackness is covering the shoes despite these reasons, students went into confusion.
Students were not the only ones who got confused. After the email had been sent out a week before the start of the new school year, some parents kept calling and asking the school about the policy specifically. For example, last year, a student who wore a walker from Doctor Martin had a piece of yellow string attached to the bottom layer of the shoes, and the student and his/her mum were confused about whether this was breaking the new policy.
When KISJ students were on their summer holiday, teachers took a survey asking if they would want students to wear totally black shoes, and many of them said no by adding reasons that black shoes had no connection with students’ concentration and the quality of their work. However, their answers didn’t have any effect at all so teachers were surprised by the notification about black shoes as well (Borisko).
Adding to the confusion, some students had strong disagreements with the new policy. “Blackened shoes policy is violating the student's rights to what they want to wear at least for the shoes. Also, companies do not offer many solid black designs. Especially for running shoes (Park).” Inevitably, she had to buy formal black formal shoes and bring running shoes to school for PE, team sports, and open gym sessions. Finally, she added on saying that it is too inconvenient to bring both shoes to school to change every time and this made it much easier to get tardies by forgetting to bring the shoes.
In spite of all of the confusion and disagreements, Ms. O’Bryon kept her solid perspective of supporting the solid black shoes policy. “There were some no needed arguments with teachers and students about percentages of blackness in the shoes, and starting from this, I wanted to make it clear that KISJ is a uniform school.”
Also, she indicated that even though all students have the same design of shoes, the blackness would show the unity of the school as a student of the KISJ community. Lastly, she pointed out that this was made to stop the competition with each student about what brand they are wearing. “This wouldn’t make the competition all stop, but I hope that at least the students who are discriminated by the patterns and logos that are printed big on the shoes and feel left out decrease.”