::A Geek in Korea::

While I constantly write about how my boss lacks tack in dealing with other people in her employ, thankfully the teachers I work with are very good. They might complain about how much contact they need to have with mothers, or how their schedules are long and tough with lots of ridiculous classes, but they are pretty good at what they do.

One class, in particular, was one I hated ended my day with. A student that I know outside of class from my neighborhood is the youngest student in this class. He’s a very nice, sweet boy that signed up for the class to study with me specifically. Some of the students had started bullying him. Seeing as I actually know this boy from around the neighborhood and like him, I didn’t take kindly to a bunch of older students picking on a boy that’s very nice to me and my family.

One student in particular, the oldest student in the class, was bullying other students, who then tried to push this older boy’s wrath onto the youngest boy. They’d throw erasers at him, or sneak punches at him when they thought the teacher couldn’t see. When you’d confront him with video evidence of crimes, he would plead persecution or ignorance. He was the kind of student that loves to derail a lesson and then act sweet about it to avoid trouble.

The last time I taught the class, the bully started getting students to pick on someone else in class. The student had accidently spoke Korean, which is against the classroom rules. The bully got everyone to mock him and try to get him in trouble to force him to stay later into the evening. The bully was already being punished for not doing homework, but he wanted to ruin someone else’s day, just by being a huge dick. The bully told me, “Oh, he spoke Korean. He has to stay afterschool, right?”

I said I’d think about it, and the bully just smiled and pointed, “Ha ha, you’ll be after school too!’

The boy, who hadn’t said anything other than a simple Korean phrase to himself when he was looking for a book, got really upset. He cursed LOUDLY and quite viciously at the bully in Korean. If he was going to get punished for speaking Korean, he might as well speak his mind about the bully I suppose. It was totally out of character to hear such bad words in the classroom.

The bully had picked on other students too. The poor lone girl would hear withering comments about anything she did, and the other boys that went along with the bully’s tough actions only did so because he’d slap or punch them otherwise.

After all of this cursing and violence, I told my Korean teacher about how this particular student acted in class. I told her about how he was manipulating students to turn them against each other, and how he destroys my lessons class after class. It’s really hard to bring the same enthusiasm I show for all my other classes when I know a student is just going to spend all his time ruining my chances at a good lesson.

Today, when I went to teach, the boy wasn’t there. The tone of the class was entirely different. Instead of students running to drink water or go to the bathroom to avoid their classmates, the students stayed in the classroom to greet me. They had their homework done, and their books ready to study. The class started and actually progressed for several minutes without a distraction. Then I checked the attendance log. The bully had been removed from the class! Amazing!

It turns out that the Korean teacher had convinced the mother to “level up” her student to a classroom next door. He is now out of my class! I don’t need to teach him anymore, and she did it by saying he needed to be in a more challenging class. The bully will study with other older students, so they’ll be less likely to cave in to him. He also won’t be the biggest student in class, so he will be less likely to get his way.

The difference in the class was like night and day. I waited around for the Korean teacher to return to praise her decision. “Thank you SO much for moving that student. The class was so much better! I’m much happier to end my day in that class now.”