I have a class that the Korean teachers have deemed awful enough to assign "boy girl" seating. This only happens when the Korean teachers have as many discipline problems as I do. My students are still at the age of "Eww, members of the opposite sex!" so getting them sitting in the right place is a hell of a task. Once you have the class in split gender seating by rows, the likelihood of mischief drops considerably, but the stupidity and naughtiness is still only diverted. Nothing prevents its flow entirely.
Two of my paired students hate each other. They aren’t good enough to be trusted a few feet away from the teacher, so they sit in the very front. The class is completely full, and they can’t be moved without disrupting the delicate discipline ecosystem that has evolved. This means that every single trivial thing they do to torment each other happens right in front of me. Today, the boy had brought in some water in little plastic jar with a screw off lid. The other students called it "poison water".
Before the class had even started, he had poured some of the water on the table, had ripped up pages of the copies of the book we had made for him to study, and was trying to make spitballs to toss at someone across the aisle in class. This is happening directly in front of me. I have my desk next to his to hold my books. When I ask him what he’s doing, he gives me this, "But I haven’t thrown them at anyone yet!" look.
As I went around class, the girl and the boy fought over the water. The girl spilled some of it onto his papers, and when I came back to check his homework I asked him what he had done to his copies. He said that the girl had spilled it. She might have, but I asked him why he had it in the first place. He wouldn’t tell me what the water was for, so I took it. I was going to give it back to him at the end of class, but then he threatened the girl for getting his toy taken away. The boy wasn’t going to drink it. He said he was going to dump it on her head after class.
Great. Now I had to sort it out before the students went home, which meant keeping them after class. The girl loudly complained she had a art school class after this one and would not miss the bus. She rode the same bus as the boy, so she was willing to accept whatever revenge this boy was dishing out just to go on time. I decided I’d rather not have my students fighting everyday, so I told them both to stay after class. Here I thought I was doing the girl a huge favor. She was going to get to rat out her tormentor to a teacher, which is her absolute favorite thing to do in class. Instead, she freaked out.
I told them both to go to the office. The boy gets sent in for discipline every day, so he complied. He sat down immediately and waited. The girl, on the other hand, tried walking out of the school. I called her back to the office, and she came in, only to try to sneak out when I turned in some paperwork. She actually walked away from me when I gave her a direct order to stop, then tried to close the elevator door on my arm when I went to bring her back to the office. By this point, she had a HUGE crowd around her, and everyone was wondering why she was in trouble. I kept telling her that she was supposed to be in the office getting someone else in trouble, but now was actually in more trouble herself. If she was only bright enough to realize that when a teacher is seeking vengeance, it’s best not to step in the way.
Eventually, I got the girl out of the elevator, and a Korean teacher talked to her to get her story. Had she just stayed in the office like I had asked, she wouldn’t have had a crowd of 20 students watching her as she cried. I didn’t feel good how it turned out, but she brought it upon herself the second she decided she didn’t need to obey a direct order. Once the girl had been freed to go on her way, the boy got chewed out properly by the head teacher too. He was more upset, because the girl got in trouble and he thought that the hammer was really going to come down. We had wasted too much time with the girl, so the bus had to go. He’s actually supposed to come in tomorrow for the rest of his punishment. I’ll probably pull the girl aside and make sure she gets an earful too, because I’m actually more upset at her than him now.
