::A Geek in Korea::

Our school has hired a “Internet, Journal, and Detention” teacher. That is her job title. She’s in charge of holding students after when they didn’t finish the Internet program they are supposed to do on the weekend. She posts their scores for all to see, and grabs them before they head home to make sure they complete their work.

The students that write journals also have to check in with her at the end of the week to make sure that they’ve copied their corrected materials. I have to actually grade the papers, but she handles everything after that. I used to hand it to a secretary. Now I had it to a dedicated teacher. Nothing changes on my end.

The thing that does change for me is the ability to hand out detentions to students for not completing homework. Previously, we were supposed to warn students that didn’t speak English exclusively. That lasted about a month, but with no one to track students comings and goings, and parents being pissed off about their students arriving home late without notice, it was a lot more trouble that it was worth.

Now we have an automated check in system that logs the students arrival into school with an RFID enabled tag. The students can be easily scanned through the system, so we don’t have to worry about notifying each individual parent about a student’s departure. The computer system does that for us. This has led to the “Detention board” being placed on the desk in front of the machine for the new teacher.

Now when students fail to complete homework, we simply fill out the form,  who is staying after, what they must complete before they leave, and what class they are in. This new teacher does the rest like a vigilant parole officer. If the students try to leave early, she nails them and keeps them in detention. Right now the students are adjusting to this change.

In my first class, I had five students kept after class. The students were surprised that I was keeping them after for an hour. So was I. I was only alerted to this change in policy via email, and I had to confirm it with my director. She said that as long as I sent an SMS out notifying the parents of the students during my five minute break time, I could keep students after. I’ve got NO time to fuddle with the computer every break if I want to gather books, go to the bathroom, and perhaps munch on a snack, so this SMS computer message is a big annoyance.

I’ll probably abuse my detention powers for a few days to keep as many people annoyed as possible, ESPECIALLY in my last set of classes each day, which tend to be my worst. The fact that I can do all of this passive aggressively and keep kids after despite not being there to babysit them myself is awesome. I want to claim the credit for holding students after to gain more power, but I don’t want to hear about it the entire class. I’m torn.