Just call me Corporal--Corporal Punishment.

I finally joined the dark side today. There was some kind of emergency today at school and my coteacher couldn't be with me for my last two third grade (eighth grade in US) classes. The third grade students here act just like their counterparts in the US. The boys are loud and obnoxious, because they thought that they could get away with it without the co-teacher being there.

See, because I have a co-teacher with me in the classroom almost all the time here in Korea, I can relax my teaching style a bit since it's usually my co-teacher who handles the discipline. This isn't a point of contention between us at all, it's just an unspoken agreement we have. She's small but very tough (probably as a result of being so small) and all the students fear her wrath. I'm seen as something of a large teddy bear who's always nice. Well, today they got to see the real teacher side of me. I raised my voice, slammed a book on the desk, and basically did whatever my co-teacher normally does. In fact, there were some boys who were consistently hitting each other and wrestling around under their desk (I know, that sounds weird. Believe me, it looked weird too.) So I stood them up, had them put out their hands palm down, and gave them each a good smack on their hand with a radio antenna laying around. I hated to do it (ok, that's a lie. I didn't mind doing it because they were really getting on my nerves and I'd warned them three times to stop), but that's what gets the kids going here--the threat of physical pain. Now, suffice to say, it only actually hurt for about a second, but the fact that they were called out and that I actually followed through with some kind of punishment was enough motivation for the rest of the students to behave for the rest of the class. I felt like an old-school Catholic nun teacher with the ruler in her shirt sleeve :)