I shouldn't be starting a post at this time. It's almost midnight and even though I don't work till 3:30 tomorrow, if you've been reading my posts, you'll know that I have to try my best to keep similar hours to the new dog in the hood. I've finally seen it. A little, white poodle. Big surprise! I've known a thousand poodles and two were actually dogs. They are a different species. I don't care what breeders say. These are not dogs. Except the two I knew who were. And they had some kind of rogue genetics. I haven't had a decent sleep since the weekend because of this little bleached bundle of cacophony! Every waking hour making undogly noises!
What else could combine for the perfect storm? Well, my water is absolutely disgusting here today. I don't know what happened but the street in front of my apartment flooded and all day and all night a crew was repairing it. My water is all squirty and brown now. You know the way it is when there's air in the pipes. For a guy whose two staples are pasta and bread, this is an emergency! It's after 12 and they're still squirting water and sweeping all the mud off my street outside as I type. Noisily.
And, of course, this is the week when I have my worst class 3 times so I knew it was going to be tough. I don't like to give anyone so much power in my life but I have one student nicknamed Frank who is the Bart to my Homer. I constantly want to wrap my hands around his little throat and make him say, "GAAAAAKKKK!" like Bart! But honestly I can't even say I dislike this kid. He's just a frigging asshole in class! And he encourages others to join him. But this post is not about Frank.
It was hot today and I stopped at my favourite coffee shop on the way to work, the way I almost always do. The lady there is just very nice. We haven't said more than a couple of words other than, "Americano jusseyo," and "Kamsamnida," but I get a super good vibe from her. I think she likes me too. Today I figured I'd just get the hot Americano, which is 500 won less than iced, because I could always just get a cold glass of water at work when I needed it. So I took my hot coffee to the bank machine.
Wanted to pay down some debt a little bit more today. Payday was supposed to be either the end of last month or the beginning of this one. But, as always, when I checked the bank machine, there was no salary in my account. The place I work for has been nice enough to offer me bi-monthly payment, which I really LIKE, but they are always late. So I couldn't make a payment on the debt I accrued because of the whole Indonesia fiasco. Yup, still paying off THAT massive mistake. Have to wait a little while.
But probably not just a day or two. No, that would not be the case for this perfect storm of a day. I was notified that my bank and another were merging and that my banking privileges will be suspended for four days. As you might expect, the four days are the Saturday, Sunday, Monday and the Tuesday of the long weekend. I will work the Tuesday, but still can't bank. On the bright side, it's a long weekend here! YAY! If I only had some dough so I could do something! Or a functioning bank so I could get at my dough so I can do something. I have to make sure I go to the bank machine tomorrow and take out enough money for the next 4 days. A long weekend. Still no plans. Cuz I just might be quitting my job...
Yeah. I know. It's building.
I get to work with my piping hot Americano and sit in my usually decent temperature classroom. I notice it's a bit more sweaty and my arse is sticking to the pleather seat a bit more than usual. Yup, you guessed it, the air conditioner, which never really WAS that great, is now blowing hotter air than there is outside the window. Dripping onto the floor too. And I haven't taught a class yet!
I have a massive three game series of spitball tic tac toe with my wonderful little kiddies, and they not only loved it but they outdid themselves coming up with answers to some pretty tough phonics questions not realizing it because they were so into the game. I don't have my two worst classes so I think this day is going to go great! At least it's starting off that way! But I notice a steady stream of sweat down the crack of my back and ass all through the tic tac toe. The undershirt soaks up the sweat so it doesn't show through the shirt I'm wearing but the underwear is not so absorbent and I fear the sweat and salt stains might appear on my pants later in the day. Not only that but the heat has loosened me up gastro-intestinally and I am only in the first class of the day.
My second and third classes are chock fulla students so even if the air con was working, the heat would be stifling. And we did some fairly physical activities as I am wont to do.
My fourth class was a small one and they had a test today so I spent a lot of the class in my pleather chair not sweating and drying out the wardrobe. But then, about 5 minutes before the end of class, it hit. Like some coagulated shit had melted in the heat and all rushed to my twitching sphincter hammering on it to set it free! "Okay, if you're all done, you can go a few minutes early. Bye!" I haven't done that before. But I grabbed 8 Kleenexes, changed my shoes, (because we can't wear our teaching shoes in the bathrooms), and ran down the impossibly long hall. I chose the middle stall, the only one with a sit down toilet, and struggled to sit down on it. You see there is enough room in the stall for, say, a jockey, but not for me. I actually have to leave the door open while I disrobe below the waist and can only JUST close the door as it presses against my knees as I sit on the toilet. But it's all worth it! What a feeling!
Now I hear outside the door some footsteps. A man, with, (I can smell it), a smoke, comes into the can. Bear in mind I have 10 minutes between classes. I can't wipe the usual way by twisting. There is not sufficient room in this Vietnamese torture hotbox of a stall for me to do that. I have to wait until the man outside finishes doing his duty before I can open the door to the stall and to the bend forward and wipe technique. No choice. So I wait. And wait. This must be a long cigarette. A 100 I'm guessing. I open the door and check if the coast is clear. He's gone. I wipe and rush back to class and find the place in an uproar because for the first time EVER I am a couple of minutes late. I don't know if anyone noticed the wet spot on the bottom of my right pantleg. Right around the shoe. It seems the previous, or previous PREVIOUS, or who knows how long before me, user of the stall was one of these notorious Korean spitters. The floor where the bottom of my pulled down pants had rested, was covered in gob from some dude who couldn't hork his lugies between his legs like any normal, courteous male of the species. Spit stained pant legs. I'm not making this up!
I ask the class if anyone has done their homework. You see, last class they were negligent in their studious duties and basically just talked with each other in Korean the whole class. Interestingly, the lesson was on this brand new TV commercial in China that has been labeled the most racist ad of 2016. Here it is.
As I have said, my students' behaviour has been increasingly disrespectful and I have pinpointed one, and only one, difference between myself and the other three teachers at the place I work: they are all Korean and I'm not. I have no less experience, skill, charisma, or ability as a teacher. I definitely have less authority, (I'm not as scary), because I don't speak Korean and I can't call their parents, but I have demonstrated numerous times that I will make the 3-second walk to another teacher and tell them if someone is being a little creep and THEY will take matters into their hands. They're good about that, all three of them! Tell them what's going on and the student ends up in bowing apology or tears. Yet in most of my classes, (not the kiddies), the middle school kids will not abandon their freedom to go full on substitute teacher with me until I invoke the Korean co-teacher warning. Even further, some of them will wait until I deliver. Or boot them outta class. Kicking them out of class is not enough though. As I have said, they just never go when told. And even when they do go, it does no damn good. I have to bump it up a notch by calling one of the three true authority figures into the situation. For some reason, after doing this several times, nobody thinks I will do this!
What else put me in a HULK SMASH mood today?
I had the worst meltdown of my English teaching career tonight. I'm not proud of it, but I have to say, (whispered: I shoulda tried this like 4 months ago!). Go a little ballistic, pop a few eyeball blood vessels, raise your personal violence against students bar a little bit, and it's astounding how any previously organized disobedience will be postponed!
I have built up my defense for this crime sufficiently, I feel, so here it is: I have now physically removed a student from my classroom as I would have done a violent patient in the psych ward of one of the Calgary hospitals I worked security for. I actually applied, by rote, the elbow hold escort technique used for just such a purpose. I am relieved, and my student is lucky, I didn't apply any pressure point or joint holds I also learned work pretty well. But I was actually in perfect positon to. Without ever a thought. That's the power of training! In two swift moves that seemed like one I could have maneuvered the elbow I was holding into an uncomfortable position, taken the hand and locked the wrist into Uncle calling authority. But I didn't. Thank God! This is a kid! I've never used this technique on a psyche ward patient because THEY are kids too. Drunk assholes in Emerge. That's it. But I was fully positioned and within a snake-strike quick transition to do so. And that's why I'm up till 2 AM drinking tonight. The road clean-up crew finally left at 1.
I'm not proud of this incident. In fact I had to walk the halls for a good amount of time before I went back to class. I was fired up. The adrenalin was unmistakeable. I had lifted this boy by his chair, a very heavy chair, with just my left hand. Right off the ground. He fell and I had picked him up on an easily accessible elbow lock, or wrist lock position. He had no idea.
This is not what I want to go down on the job here, needless to say! And this was not even one of the students who had rightfully earned this sort of treatment, like Frank. This was the wrong kid who had said the wrong thing at the wrong time. What was it? Well I'm glad I asked.
This boy is one who I have had no equal to. In fact in this hagwon there have been numerous unequaled phenomena! Almost as if this is a cosmic gathering point for the extraordinary! I have never seen anyone like this boy groping, feeling, fondling, stroking, sucking, (well okay not sucking but that would most certainly have followed), other boys! I don't care that he is obviously gay, though he won't realize it until later in life and maybe never be allowed to own it... what I am concerned about is the displays of affection. I would not allow them from a male to a female for vice versa either. Even female to female, what this kid was doing was over the top. And forget whether it was sexual, I was trying to teach an English class at the time for fuck's sake!
I don't think I need to defend myself. This kid was a multiple offender. And today he was up to his old shenanigans. Fondling another boy and I just said, for the umpteenth time, "Okay, Oliver, sit over here," and pointed to a chair at least one desk away from another male. He immediately replied, "Kae sekiya...." This is a Korean term which means "dog baby." Or in my case, pretty much son of a bitch. But I let it slide. Not for the first time! Other students had said this in my classes. I allow swear words sometimes because they're natural. But when they're directed at me... the stakes are raised.
I tell him again, move to the other seat! He says again, "Kae sekiya..." I don't remember what I said until I somehow worked my way around to, "Oliver maybe you can explain to me what Kae Sekiya means..." and grabbed his chair and him and lifted him up out of it. The next couple of seconds were a blur of martial arts but I disengaged and he almost went face first into the closed door. I opened the door and escorted him out. I told him to go home. Knowing he wouldn't. Then I thought about addressing the shocked class but didn't. The right call. I went out of the class to get a breath and de-adrenalize. But Oliver was right in my path. Shit! As I walked past him I said, (like a five-year-old), "Right now I want to punch you so hard in the face!" And I waved my fist in his face! I am still laughing about that. But I bet Oliver is not. Poor kid.
Yeah. This is a clear sign that it's time to get the fuck out of this place. Seriously NO work I have ever done has driven me to this state of disengagement! And to be Captain fucking Obvious, that is scary! What if someone does something worse? Like I see Frank punching a girl in the face. I know it sounds horrific but I have SEEN this over here in Korea. I was able to NOT snap the last student, Ben, in half like a twig for doing so, but if this happens here and Frank were to engage with, for instance, one of my little kiddies, I'd throw him out the fucking window. And as much as he might, (no, absolutely DOES), deserve it, I'd be an asshole to do that.
I talked to the bosses here and they have assured me that they will do everything they can to fix the situation. I am inclined to allow them their futile attempts, just to solidify two things: They are wrong, and they are wrong. But long after it is plainly obvious that they are wrong, I am hoping to escape this contract and move on up to a deee luxe apartment in the sky. SKY here in Korea means Seoul National, Korea, and Yonsei University. They are the three top ranked in the country. I wouldn't put out a contract from any one of them by pissing on it. That's the way things are here. The reputation allows you to coast. I'm trying, and have been trying for my whole career here, to find a job at a place where they are trying to improve their prestige by doing what is educationally solid. A low ranked university that is doing what no other place has ever tried: educating!
If not I'll take a position at a Korean military English school. Nobody can deny they are spectacular soldiers! And Christians! And cult followers! And snake oil buyers. And diet followers. And plastic surgery getters. And, to come round circle, foreigner despisers. Because they are spectacular obeyers. Despise foreigners and you are COOL! You are funny! You are patriotic! I know how retarded that sounds. And, I mean that in the sense of a mind that has been retarded, or slowed. But check out what Koreans think is funny. You think Jerry Lewis was infantile! Pretty much just make someone look stupid or inferior and be LOUD while doing it, that sums up 99% of Korean humour.
HEY! That sums up 99% of the bad behaviour in my classrooms too! There are some people trying to be funny! But it goes deeper. They are, as unbelievable as this sounds, scoring points with their dim-witted friends by "bravely" standing up to the foreign dogs and showing their patriotism. Now I know there will be dissenters out there but this is not such an old philosophy over here. In fact being completely racist to other cultures is not considered racist a large amount of the time. You can't blame the people. They don't know the difference between white and Asian sometimes, so racism is not as clearly cut as it is in the countries more sensitive to it such as Canada.
I have tried to prepare the very racist average Korean for foreigners that will be necessary for the survival of their people, which they all place paramount in their existence, but they have been largely unapologetic.
I used this survey of countries who would like to have a member of another race as their neighbour and who would not as a topic for discussion in two classes that took almost 3 hours to formulate 6 questions about this, that Chinese video and the question of racism. Hours and hours of very VERY easy conversation. They composed sentences, asked and received answers. No follow-up questions were asked. I could have a student admit to murder in class and their conversation partner would not pursue the topic! They'd move on to the next question because their goal is to finish, not to learn.
Anyway, I stayed late after work and talked with the owner of the hagwon where I work. She tried to suggest that possibly the teaching skills of her and the other two Korean teachers were what allowed the kids to be such assholes in my classes and not theirs, but every suggestion she made, I had tried and it had failed. I suggested putting a camera in my classroom but she doesn't like that idea. Because a camera would cost money. But her lame excuse was that it would make the students too nervous to speak English. Personal research, and cameras in hagwons nationwide show that NOT to be the case, but the boss is the boss.
As pointed out before, I doubt I would be in this situation at all if I was allowed the free reign in the classroom that I had been promised. The first few months when I had it, I had none of these problems at all. Even Frank wasn't bad. It's only been since she has tried to make me teach the way she teaches that these problems have arisen. I have students in these classes that don't have a high enough level of English to be in a class taught by a native English speaker. Several. But what the hell, throw them in there and make some more money, right? And back when I still thought the promise of classroom autonomy wouldn't be broken I decided to try an organized, low level textbook for these classes. I had good results from using Interchange Intro for a couple of lessons. The boss put the kibosh on that though. She referred to it as, "Giving up" on the students. Well now that there is organized mutiny in my classes, do you think it just might be time to "give up" on this ludicrous shit?
But try to put that to her even in a kind way. I brought up these successful classes of mine and that the kids were too busy engaging in the exercises when they understood them to try to impress other students by pissing off the foreigner. She got enraged and launched into a tirade on whether or not I know what's going on in Korea. Do I watch the Korean news? I don't have a TV was what I said, not what I wanted to reply, that watching the Korean news was the best way NOT to find out what is going on in Korea. She then asked if I read newspapers and again, same story. I told her I get my info from the internet, which she scoffed at and asked me what some current stories were. What were the people of Korea concerned about? I mentioned the girl stabbed in the Kangnam subway station and violence against women issues and I mentioned economic issues, which are always a concern. I DIDN'T mention that there is a common belief that the inability of Koreans to work well with foreigners is at the heart of their recent economic downturn. The U.N. Secretary General, Korean, Ban Ki Moon said that himself. I mentioned a recent suicide, which is a huge problem in Korea, in which a college student jumped off a building and landed on another guy. She didn't know about that story. She brought up a couple other stories, which I had heard about. The point she was unsuccessfully trying to make, and she continued to unsuccessfully make it anyway, was that she has observed that I do not have a very good understanding of Korea. She was insulted that I insinuated that the only variable in the situation we are in at work is that I am not Korean. She is convinced that that has absolutely nothing to do with it, but is shocked at the behaviour, can't even imagine the angels of her classes doing such things, but has not a single possible explanation for it. So I brought up what I call the Korean fuck you hello. I didn't call it that to her but explained how when young Koreans are in a group, they often pass a foreigner and score points with their friends by saying hello, getting the foreigner to respond, then laughing their asses off as if they'd just mooed at a cow and it had mooed back. It's never when they are alone and it's usually, hey what a coincidence, kids around middle to high school age who play this game. Again the rage. She started to try again to defend her nation and I interrupted her saying this has happened to me a thousand times if it's happened once. Almost every time I left my dorm room my last year in Gwangju, it happened. "Can you let me talk? Will you let me talk?" she was saying. I said, "Sure. You're wrong but I'll let you talk." So she explains that the Korean people she loves and knows so much better than I are just trying to innocently practice their English.
I looked at her and said, "Do you think it's possible that maybe I, and the millions of other foreigners to whom this has happened a million times, are stupid enough to have never considered this?" She was trapped. To answer yes would be to call all the foreign victims of the fuck you hello stupid. Racist. To concede that we can tell the difference between a genuine friendly hello and the fuck you hello would be to concede racism on the part of her fellow countrymen. I don't know if that point sunk in or not but I continued by saying that I often say hello to people who genuinely greet me. I had done so to a little girl riding her bike down the street that very day and told the boss so. I said that the fuck you hello is being rude to foreigners to score points with your friends by exhibiting what passes for humour here in Korea, bravery and even in their mixed up little minds, patriotism. I then put forth the theory that being rude to me in my classroom could possibly be a way for some of my students to score points with others. But that just could not be the case. So I said, well whether it is or not, they need to be made aware of the fact that to a person from a country sensitive to racism, rudeness can be perceived as racism and in a couple of years this city where we live will be full of these sensitive foreigners, (for the 2018 Olympics), and these rude-to-foreigner-for-completely-non-racist-reasons Koreans. THIS is an issue that someone just might want to suggest to the TV news or the newspapers. I shouldn't have to be teaching it at a hagwon. On that we agreed.
Anyway, she promised to call some parents, (which she may or may not do), and told me that Frank may not even be in class on Friday. I still don't know if my notice was taken seriously or if they are just trying to placate me and string me along a little while longer here. I am genuinely worried that I will snap like that again and do something worse to one of the students. I would think the hagwon boss would be too. But, though she has no trust in my teaching abilities, no trust in my intellectual abilities, no trust in my knowledge of Korea or Koreans, she trusts that I won't assault one of her kids. Or could it just be the money? Hmmmmm....
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