School started on a Wednesday, and the night before was spent at school cutting out and laminating a multitude of bright decorations for the class rooms. My thumb was actually sore from using the scissors for so long. It was the first time we found out who are Korean co-teachers were and we worked together two set up our two joint class rooms. I of course, got a co-teacher that was kind of a bitch. I am still scared of her. The rest of the foreign teachers got nice, giggily typical Koreans and I got the sassy one..go figure.
It never really crossed my mind when I was preparing for this trip that the children would all be crazy. I had heard that Korean children were obedient, eager to learn and would just sit in their chairs and do anything you say. I was more concerned about whether or not I would be a good teacher. How I would control the kids was never a though that crossed my mind..obviously if you are a teacher you would think that I am retarded. The first day finally came and may have been one of the worst experiences I have ever had. I started out with a classroom of 9, six-year-old Korean kids. This is their second year at the school so they speak pretty good English and they know how everything should go. Everytime, I made a mistake they knew and they would attack. I had kids running on the desk and screaming at the top of their lungs. I had kids punching other kids in the face and laughing. At one point, I finished a lesson too early and did not know what to do so I gave them something to color. Just as I did that the head teacher walked in and freaked out. She started screaming at me in front of my entire class. Apparently the kids are not allowed to have foreign coloring materials at school and she made me rip the crayons out of the kids hands and shove the illegal coloring materials into their backpacks. After the yelling incident, I had completely lost my authority with the kids and they would not listen to me and just ran around the classroom screaming. At one point, amidst the chaos, I thought to myself, "Fuck, how am I going to do this shit for a year..." and then I felt like I might cry. Luckily I got myself together and started bribing them with stickers. Somehow I got through lunchtime, which unfortunately I have to eat with them and then I switched to my last hour with my other 6 year old class which was a lot tamer and just seemed bored of me for an hour but luckily did not run around. When I was walking my kids out to the bus line, I finally saw all the other teachers for the first time, and we all looked like we had just been through a war. Later I found out that multiple people actually had started crying and that night one afternoon teacher just straight up bought a plane ticket and left the next morning with no word to the school until he landed safe in Canada. The next day I was actually terrified of going back, it was another terrible day of children screaming and punching each other. Some how, we made it to the weekend and we all drank ourselves into oblivion.
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