::A Geek in Korea::

I have a class three times a week that is sometimes extremely frustrating. There is a girl I am simply incompatible with and we have more disagreements and student teacher "challenge" moments than is necessary on a weekly basis for both of us. I’m a fairly forgiving guy, and I don’t go into class trying to make enemies with anyone, but this girl seems to think it’s her duty to make my life hell when I walk into the door.

Today, she and her friends tried to organize some sort of protest against reading the book in class. The boys in the class would read when prompted, but all but one girl wouldn’t say a word. I read through the entire story once, asking the girls to follow along. After the story was over, I told the student that head read to continue on doing their written work, and I’d just read the entire story again with the quiet students. Seeing as I am a pronunciation and speaking teacher trying to help the students through reading, this is the point of me being in the class. I know they don’t understand most of our stuff, and I try my best to explain, but sitting around in class when the very minimum required is trying to read something is just asking for it.

"Sorry, no, you pay me to fix your pronunciation, speak or just go home after your hour with the Korean teacher before my class. I won’t miss you."

I read the stories again, and even the boys joined us worried that I was close to my boiling point. As soon as we had finished reading and defined words for the next unit, the naughty silent girl ran up and grabbed a paper ball I had confiscated earlier. She wanted to throw it against a wall  like she had been doing earlier in class. I was busy writing the homework for the class on the board, so I didn’t see her until she had already grabbed it. One of the boy students asked her what she was doing, and tried to trip her as she walked back to her seat with the paper ball. She flipped out and screamed louder than anyone I’ve ever heard yell in my entire life. The boy was, of course, forced to retaliate or lose face when threatened by this bully of a girl, so he yelled back. I asked the girl to leave, since she started the problem getting the ball when she shouldn’t have in the first place.

I had 10 minutes left in class and studying was basically impossible at this point. I told the students to copy down their homework while I went to explain why I had kicked out the silent, now screaming girl out from my class again.  My director and head teacher were both eating dinner in the teacher’s room, so they got to hear my explanation and scold their girl. She came back into class weeping, which actually is a huge problem. The other girls made her into a martyr against the mean foreign teacher. They pulled together to get revenge against their mean foreign teacher while the girl swore under her breath.

I walked out of class about five minutes after that and went to see my director and head teacher. I complained that almost all the girls are giving me constant problems, and while the boys curse in class, at least they read when they must. The girls got pulled aside and scolded again. I think, as I was preparing to leave the school, that the teachers were trying to find a way to spread the students out to other classes so that these particular girls wouldn’t be together anymore. I’ll actually try to follow up on that request and see if I can get the worst girl banned from any classes. We have multiple levels, and there are classes of the same level I don’t teach. Move the worst girl there and I can break the other more impressionable students lacking their role model.