In class today, we were doing an activity in groups. The students had to answer the question, "What do you want to eat?" then write down three of their favorite foods. Then they had to ask their friends what they liked. This meant I got to spend the time looking at the students drawings and helping them learn English words for Korean foods.
One of the students in the class transfered from another level. He is older than the other students and got moved down because he isn’t as good as other students his age. He’s also new in the school, and doesn’t have any friends in the class. He doesn’t sit by anyone, so he had no one to do the "friends" section of the activity. I told him he could write down my favorite foods so he wouldn’t feel alone.
When listing favorite foods, I did three foods from the lesson, then added a fourth Korean food so he could continue drawing. Some of my favorite food is Korean, so I have no problem localizing the materials for the students to be more comfortable. Watching students draw pizza all day is boring. For some reason, when I got back to looking at his paper, he hadn’t drawn my fourth word. Instead he had drawn some sort of boat or ship. He pointed to it and said in Korean, "What is this in Korean? What is it? Tell me! Speak Korean!"
I don’t like being talked down to in Korean, and I really don’t appreciate being treated like a dog that is expected to perform a trick. I told him, "No, I’m not going to do that. This is an English class. I’m going to teach you English. That looks like a boat. Is it a boat?" He wouldn’t tell me what his picture was, so I let it drop and went back to the students that were doing the activity and having a lot of fun.
The loner boy then out his hand up in a fist and shouted to his classmates in Korean, "American Teachers are so dumb! They don’t understand anything in Korean! We shouldn’t listen to them! Ha ha ha!"
His revolution was very short lived. I shouted back in Korean, "Oh Yeah?! I understand every single word you say. Be quiet, please."
He got a sort of "Oh Shi—" look on his face, then rather quickly got to the business of trying to be my best friend in class. If there was something on the board, he wanted to erase it. If there was something to be said, he tried to say it. If he thought I wouldn’t notice that he had basically just attempted to challenge my authority in class entirely, it didn’t work. I saw right through what he was doing, because I know his type.
A certain kind of student needs to challenge their teachers before they will attempt any sort of meaningful work in class, The challenge doesn’t always have to be logical. He knew I could speak English, but wanted to see if I could speak Korean even though that’s not what we study in class. He could have just as easily asked me to race, or to fold a piece of paper into the shape of a frog if he wanted to. He wanted something to hold over me. If I had failed his challenge, he would have started trying to undo any control I had in class.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he did his homework for the first time today.
