Thursday, November 10, 2005

Tempted to use the bamboo stick. Seriously tempted.

So, my first class today was really really bad.
Most of the class was great, but there are two boys in it who are just too much.
One guy just really doesn't care about english, so he says the four words he knows over and over again as loud as he can through that class. He is basically the most annoying person I know in Korea.
He's not that dumb either. My coteachers say he is, but I think that that is more the Korean mentality of focussing effort on those who succees than anything. He just doesn't care, and no-one here seems to want to try to make him care.
Anyways, this kid knows when to play dumb too. He's very smart when he wants to joke around, even in english in class, but acts like he deosn't understand anything as soon as I try to talk to him individually, usually to try to tell him to stop being such an asshole.
Today, he just would not shut up. We were talking about the movies, and I had some questions about the movies for them to answer, just by filling in blanks with vocab words. When I asked "What movies have you seen recently?", he replied "Sheecksh in Shitty". I took that to mean "Sex and the city", so I said "Good! But, 'Sex and the City' is a TV show, not a movie."
The reply just about broke me.
"No, not "Shecks and the Shitty", "Shecks in Sheety", on the internet. you... umm.. 'ERO'!"
So, basically, he was talking about watching porno in class. I tried to kick him out, and my coteacher wouldn't let me. I was so angry, I was torn between finally using the bamboo stick, crying, and just walking out. I actually took a couple of steps toward the door before I caught myself.
My coteacher yelled at thim for a minute or so, said "Now he will be calm". He then proceeded to tear up his handout and spit on it. She said nothing.
How the hell am I supposed to discipline them, or be taken seriously, if my first effort to do it is totally undermined by my coteacher.
My next two classes were much better. My grade three class that doesn't care, but at least plays along with my lessons, and the grade twos.
Ah, grade twos, you are all that keep me going.
They know so much more than the grade ones, but they don't yet feel any pressure to be cool, so they will participate. Lots of my best classes are with the grade twos at the boy's school. They manage to make me have to pause to laugh at least once every class. They really are great. Hopefully when I come back to school afetr winter break, they won't have transformed into the same horrible grade threes I have now.
In other news, I've decided to scrap the rest of the lessons I had planned about the movies, and to start next week with a listening excercise based around "If I had $1000000" by the Barenaked Ladies. I already have a slideshow ready to accompany it, and I think it should go really well.
That's all for now. Back to killing time for a little bit. In a different way...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Matt,
Don't know if this is at all useful since I don't fully understand the situation, but any attention, even negative, given to a child that craves it, can reward bad behaviour. Try an experiment of smiling, making eye contact and praising any small positive but don't connect with him when he's out of line. Your Korean teacher may be on to something.
You can always use the porn incident as a seguey into your Barenakedladies lesson.
Jackie

Anonymous said...

PS...I realize now that you were probably kidding about the Barenakedladies....................But as luck may have it I have more unsolicited advice on Pornboy. Think about having your co-teacher translate for you that you know his secret that he's smarter than he lets on, that you like him, and want to help him prove to others how smart he is.
..........I know, I watch way too much Oprah, but this week she had a segment about tourette's syndrome and apparently 1 in 100 students have some degree of it and can't control sounds, ticks or outbursts though they have normal intelligence.
Don't worry about hurting my feelings if you don't listen to my advice. I don't know the situation like you do.
Jackie