And now, just like a pole dancer or a millworker...

I'm down to the daily grind.


Day in and day out, beleaguered reader, I deal with the likes of the sweet boy pictured here. We'll call him Raiden, to protect your innocence.




"Geoffrey Teacher, later today I will sit with my head on the floor and talk to you out of my hind orifice."





Yeah, I was just as surprised as you when he used the word orifice.

Or whatever.

There's a battle raging in that classroom. The Apple classroom. The Apples. We all shudder with fear upon hearing the name. We actually convulse and soil ourselves when we enter the room. I feel impotent, redundant, null as the French would say. I have become the educational equivalent of my student's favorite feature on my neck: a skin tag.


NO, THIS IS NOT MY NECK! This is the anatomical avatar of my career thus far.

I have tried everything within my power to get them to settle down, to listen, to join me in their education.





Some, like the girls here, traipse down the corridors of knowledge and learning with aplomb, their childlike laughter reverberating as they learn a new phrase or use an old phrase in a new way.



A chosen few threaten each other with scissors, clandestinely severing random locks of hair from friends and occasionally doing a worksheet about how many sides a triangle has.

This is as advanced a case of Lord of the Flies Syndrome I have ever seen. Admittedly, there are a couple of kids who may not be able to help it and, due to the that's-just-how-things-are-edness about Korea, parents choose not to believe that anything is wrong with their child. Instead they blame the teachers for their child's inability to sit still without turning themselves into a human washing machine. You just enjoy that mental image.

=


And now: the Spin Cycle

For the few that pills won't help, they're just easily distracted. Noisy kids, whispers, bits of errant string, breathing things or shiny objects: anything and everything can set them off on a course of actions that end in their removal from our little society of knowledge and into the diet coke bottle-riddled confines of the teacher's room.

Sometimes, hindsighted reader, I wish I'd done things differently. Reacted faster, had some kind of brilliant solution, called upon the unbridled power of an impromptu tapdance to reign them in. But the truth is, when it comes to kids, I just don't have any resources. I haven't had to deal with them for ages. And really I had become sort of disenchanted with them in the last 10 years, not having had to deal with them at all.

The point is: today I yelled and almost cried. On Monday we're having an early morning meeting (-sigh-) regarding discipline and behavior given by our fearless leader and a pretty inspiring guy, our principal.

I don't know what to expect or what the outcome will be but...I'm hoping for more tools.

I'm hoping for deliverance.

I'm hoping for cattle prods.