candy

My entire first year of teaching in Korea, I never once used candy as a means of encouragement or reward; nor as a means of currying favor. I saw many other teachers use it, and the benefits were ephemeral and were often followed by bitterness, jealousy, and worst of all, expectations.

But for some reason I used candy a couple weeks ago.

It was only for one class. A deal was struck one day that anyone who scored a 10/10 on the next day's spelling test would be rewarded with a piece of candy. I agreed to it because the spelling words were quite easy for the level these kids were at- everyone gets 10/10, everyone gets candy, everyone loves teacher.

The next day rolls around and wouldn't you know it, only one kid (out of eight) gets a perfect score. I immediately start sweating, because there's now one kid with candy, seven pissed off kids without, and seven pieces of candy burning a hole in my pocket. The three kids who got 9/10 begin to barter, and I acquiesce. This enrages the kid who got 7/10, so again I cave in. This leads to three others who got 5/10 to pressure me some more until I yield to them as well. This leaves only Victor and his 3/10, and if you read the last post about Victor you know where this is heading.

In the end, every kid, no matter how awful they performed, got their candy. But because it was such a tortured process, none of the kids were all that happy with me; I garnered none of the affection, just anger and resentment. Instead of the class ending with gleeful "Thank you, teacher!"s, it was just 8 sullen kids chomping on lollipops.

And now, of course, everyday they pester me for more.