june

You may remember one of my earliest posts was about my first encounter with insanity in the classroom. Little Tess went and lost his mind for 15 minutes. Well, guess what happened again?

This boy's name was June, which makes me wonder if it's something about giving young Korean boys girls' English names that drives them to madness. You've all seen June before; he's the fat, blabbering sack of shit seen here.

June has always pissed me off. Every class I teach him, he tries to do his homework during class. Every class I have to tell him to stop, which he does for about 20 seconds until he surreptitiously tries to do it again, at which point I'll take his notebook away from him. Then he'll cry or something.

The other day things got to another level. I'll pick the story up about halfway through class. At this point I've already moved June's seat because he was talking to his friend next to him and didn't even have his book open. It's time for the daily speaking test I give them. Each kid takes his turn, then I let them pick who the next student tested will be. So, we get to June, he mumbles and stumbles his way through some gibberish and I jot down a note in the class folder, maybe something like, "June might be retarded." I then prompt June to select the next student.

Now, all the boys in the class have had their test, so June has to pick a girl. He selects Jane. I say, "You love Jane?" and before he processes the question he just blurts out "Yes." He immediately realizes that I kind duped him, "No no no no no," he says, laughing, and all the other kids laugh and then Jane has her test.

This wasn't the first time I had duped a kid in this manner. In fact, I've probably done it to every kid that goes to the school. It's always good for a laugh. For some reason Korean kids will laugh at the same thing over and over again, no matter how many times they've seen or heard it. My imitation of a monkey has had kids rolling in the aisles for 11 months now.

About ten seconds later I see a little light go off in June's head, when he realizes that my little joke is something he can get pissed off about, and he goes from laughing about it to staring at me in anger. I tell him in Korean it was just a joke, and he throws his pencil at me. This is an extremely bold move for a Korean student, but I keep calm and let him get away with it. Then he pushes all my books off the desk, and I superkick him in the back of the head. Alright, I wish I'd superkicked him in the back of the head, in reality I just start yelling at him, and tell him to pick up the books. He just sits there, fuming, looking like he might take a run at me. I go to grab him by the arm and make him pick everything up, and he swats my hand away. Using every ounce of restraint I have not to punch him in his fat head*, I instead get the Korean manager to get him out of the class.

At the end of class, I go out and see June in another room, his eyes fixed on me. He looks completely psychotic, as now he's breathing in and out really fast, his blood boiling. I go back to the teachers' room.

Five minutes later I hear some movement in the outside stairwell which is connected to the teachers' room. I open the door to find June setting fire to a pile of paper outside the door. He sees me and immediately hauls his fat ass down the stairs and I stomp out the flames.

Later my manager comes to talk to me after she called June's mom to tell him what he did. She says that June told his Mom that I told him I was going to kill him. We laugh because it's the perfect dumb lie that a dumb kid would come up with. She asks what she should tell his Mom to do. I say he should quit, and he does.

Let's just hope he never finds out where I live and tries to burn my apartment building down.

*While this is the closest I've ever come to hitting a kid, it's still a million miles away from it. I would never hit a kid, of course, even though June's fat head would mean it probably wouldn't even hurt my fist.