::A Geek in Korea::

Today was another wonderful class with a group of low level students. I’ve got two students that have a Joker/ Batman like personality clash going on. One kid laughs a lot and plays mean jones, and the other thinks he’s a vigilante who can beat up people he doesn’t like. “Batman” came late to class. He’s generally despised in the class as being a total dickwad to the other students in class. As much as I don’t like “The Joker” in class either for making fun of “Batman”, Batman doesn’t do anything to endear himself to the Citzens of Gotham City…(Er, the other students in the class.) In this scenario I would be Commissioner Gordon trying to keep the Joker at bay while making Batman play by the rules, except I’m twice as tall and strong as both of them and speak a different language. Maybe that makes me Superman. Except I can’t fly. Maybe I’m Apache Chief? Inyuk-chuk! I don’t know. I never read DC comics. Clearly, this metaphor has REALLY broken down.

Anyway, while the laughing prankster student gets on my nerves a lot, you can’t let a boy that threatens and physically intimidates students in class get away with anything either. Every time I turned my back to the classroom, the two of them were engaging in a “battle of wits”. This was mostly name calling and saying stupid words in English they didn’t know about. Why did I have to teach about the planet “Uranus” today.

The laughing boy likes to misrepresent what the short tempered boy says. This gets the fatter, less popular boy upset. The laughing boy used to be the student everyone else in the class viciously hated and ratted out. He is a misogynistic asshole that takes pride in pushing little girls down, belittling women teachers, and being all around unlikeable. The girls in his previous classes banded together to make his life a living hell until he quit. He systematically made several girls completely insane enough with hatred to drive them out of the school.

However the larger boy doesn’t have any friends in class because he’s adversarial. If he kept his mouth shut and didn’t fall for the pranksters bait every single time, I’d think he be better off. He could savagely beat the boy in a fight, but he always gets upset when he is in front of a teacher, preventing him from the justice he thinks he deserves. The loudmouth boy knows that a teacher won’t allow him to be beaten into an unholy pulp in class, but knows how much he can get away with before being tossed out of class for being an ass. My best efforts to keep the two of them separated always ends up with the smarter trouble making joker getting the best of the vigilante. It never gets to physical violence in a 50 minute class, but if I had them in one room together for say, 90 minutes every day, one of them would probably gone off the deep end by now and killed the other.

There are signs at how quickly something like that can escalate. For example, the joking boy had brought a small wind up toy to class today. In the few minutes before the bell rang, I asked him what the thing on his desk was. It was shaped like a pencil case, but had a motor that would propel the car slowly forward after he pulled it back a few times. I was mocking how slowly the car was going when I saw that the vigilante boy had put his large, sharp, full sized umbrella on the table behind him. I was asking him to remove the umbrella from them table when he grabbed it and started thrusting the tip at the other boy’s head. I don’t think he had thought about what he was doing. The act of stabbing someone in the head is probably unintentional when you do it the first time, but he was doing it on purpose, if not a little half-heartedly.

Of course I had to step in and prevent the other boy from being stabbed in the face. I took the umbrella, almost stabbing someone in the face by accident, I might add, and went to the school secretary’s desk to drop it off for later pick up. My director happened to be there, and I explained that I almost had a stabbing in class. I told them I thought that the two boys shouldn’t be in class together anymore. Much to my surprised, she agreed with me and walked back to my classroom. She told the vigilante that he would be knocked down to a lower level class. The boy protested, saying he didn’t fail any tests (lies) to deserve to be moved down. The ENTIRE class started CHEERING at the news that this boy would be moved. He asked if he could study at the same level in another class. Due to a time conflict, it seems to be impossible.

I don’t really like either of the two children in class. I know that recently the laughing boy has done significantly better in class when the other boy isn’t around. I think the change will benefit the class for about a week, then the joker will have to find a new person to pick on to be happy.

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Tags: Inyuk-chuk, Batman, The Joker, class, bully, teaching