There is always a joker or daily problem maker in one class or another. One student will get the reputation for being sarcastic or rude. Other students get annoying when the same student keeps wasting class time.
Our head teacher has set up a series of spies in each class. If any student is really bad and ignores the foreign teacher, causes problems, or is very rude they get a warning. The “spy” in the class will say something like, “We should tell the head teacher about this. Do you want us to tell her what you did after class?”
Usually that warning is enough to calm students down. No one wants to make the head teacher angry (including me). It’s ingenious to use peer pressure in this way. Korean students love ratting each other out. It’s a natural behavior and isn’t frowned on.
Empowering a student or group of students to become an official rat to watch fellow students means that they take the monitoring of behavior of classmates as one of their duties. Having a redundant set of spies in class helps from it becoming a means for revenge.
The students chosen are usually the most responsible and trusted in class, but if they have problems collaborating their stories, they won’t be given special treatment out of class. Being a good spy earns extra rewards by teachers. Not being spied on and being trusted when a dispute arises in class is also a perk.
Since the only time a spy would ever speak up in my class is after a student ignored my directions anyway, I don’t mind the head teacher keeping tabs on my students behavior through “back channels”. The more students know that eventually everything they do gets back to their mother in one way or other, the better behaved they should be. This is better for me.
It’s ironic that in a country with an dedicated number for spies (112), we have an effective little ring operating in our school.
