Granted, this duty is a little more stressful and trying with older students who present more of a threat to a fight mediator. I still feel like more of a teacher on this side of that incident.
A particular child in one of my fourth grade classes was not paying attention. Instead of helping to recite the months of the year and instead of demonstrating knowledge of ordinal numbering in dates, he was using a compass and protractor to crush what I think was pencil lead but looked like it could have also been terra cotta—children will always have their mysteries. After the fleeting thought questioning what the hell he was doing passed through my head, I confiscated the protractor and the ground led/terra cotta. As I was returning to the raised podium at the front of the class, another child (sitting directly in front of the one crushing the mysterious substance) said something in Chinese and handed me The Crusher’s compass. I took it and attempted to resume class by throwing a ball to yet another student and by asking, “What day is your birthday?”
Before an answer, The Crusher had gotten out of his seat, assumed a look of ire, and had seized the lapel of the student who had gotten The Crusher’s compass confiscated as well. (The second child’s self-appointed name, by the way, is Bobo: “Like the clown!”) For a few milliseconds, I bemusedly reflected on how traditional of a way this was to start a fight. For a few more milliseconds, I expected to hear The Crusher shout something like: “You swine! I challenge you to a duel, you nefarious fiend.” And for a few more milliseconds, I placed internal bets on how quickly the fight would end given the fact that The Crusher was one of the smaller children in the class (maybe 4’ and 40-ish pounds) and that Bobo was one of the heftier children in the class (maybe 4’ 5” and 80-ish pounds).
Still, not a second passed before I jumped off the raised podium and began pulling The Crusher off of Bobo—who was barely exerting effort to resist The Crusher’s challenge. The tenacious Crusher through a punch that landed right on Bobo’s left ear; still seated, Bobo pushed The Crusher into the desks across the narrow aisle. I stepped up my intervention a notch, seeing that my restraint of force for the sake of not accidentally hurting the students may actually result in them hurting themselves through an escalation of force.
I pried The Crusher’s hands off of Bobo’s lapel and lifted The Crusher by his own lapel with my right arm while holding Bobo back with a stiff-left-arm. As The Crusher thrashed futilely while dangling in the air, the class laughed at his expense. The Crusher punched me in the chest.
Though this was not exactly a lethal (or even damaging) blow, the gravity immediately struck both me and the rest of the class. A gasp from 48 students accompanied my immediate rage.
Bobo relaxed compliantly. The Crusher did not relent. I began to carry him out of the classroom to yell at him in the hallway. He wrapped his limbs around me and squeezed; he was still furious with both me and Bobo. As I set The Crusher down, he immediately began trying to maneuver around me to run back into the class, I assume, to resume his affront on Bobo.
I began sternly yelling at him, “Stand there!” No compliance. “Stay there!” No compliance. “Do not move!” Each anger-fuelled statement carried increasing amounts of anger and frustration: I was losing patience with this student, and I could not discern whether or not he even understood the words I was using. Maybe he could have, just not in a moment of murderous rage.
In any case, The Crusher had the misfortune of being in a class immediately neighboring the English Department’s office. One of my fellow English teachers (the only teachers who understand English at my school), emerged from the office at having heard my shouts. It was Charlie (my contact teacher who acts as a liaison between me and my boss, between me and other teachers, and between me and Chinese society in general).
“Charlie, this student attacked another student. He then attempted to hit me. Now he will not obey me.”
“Oh.” Charlie looked unimpressed with this everyday disobedience that Chinese teachers like to call “velly knotty.” He, however, immediately shifted his expression to what-I-think-may-have-been-the-original-look-of-rage. “I will take care of it.” Did he just call The Crusher or the situation an “it”? “You should go back to your class.”
I did. I had to consciously control my elevated heart-rate to don a smile for the remaining 49 students who had, to this point, been well-behaved and who continued to be well-behaved for the remainder of class. Actually, it was a successful class in eliciting oral English communication and teaching new vocabulary and syntax. When class ended, the student was no longer in the hallway. Nor was he in the English Department’s office, where Charlie smilingly joked with the other teachers.
I did not even think of the student until the end of the day, when, as I was leaving school, I spotted him from across the entrance courtyard. He sported a look indicating a threat of another tantrum as he sat against a wall. I presumed he was waiting for his parents who must have been called, and who would probably punish him pretty severely at home—discipline in the home still has a wide scope and physical threat in China.
Yet, the day was my best day of teaching. My remaining students demonstrated a newfound respect for me. They observed that I was serious about my job and, in return, they regarded my class and the material with appropriate levels of attention and effort.
Exactly 24-hours after the first incident ended, I began class with "Grade Four; Class Four." After this class, I disbelievingly told one of my colleagues that I had just experienced a “velly knotty” class.
“Was it 'Grade-uh Four-uh; Class-uh Four-uh?'” I nodded. “Oh, they are famou fo bee-in knotty.”
This immediately lightened my mood, “Well thanks for telling me!” My colleagues laughed.
I have a system with my students wherein I write a five-letter English word on the board everyday. If I feel the students are misbehaving or not paying attention, I erase a letter. If the class gets down to one letter, I cancel the daily game I have planned—instead, they would have to recite dialogues. If the class has no letters left, they must sit quietly for the remainder of the period. The students actually comprehend this very visual and obvious system; I can tell because they all gasp when I erase a letter (or even when I threaten to do so), and they often smack each other to enforce obedience amongst the disobedient.
So, five minutes into my class with “Grade Four; Class Four,” the class had lost three letters. Long story short, it took them ten more minutes to lose another letter and thus lose the game—a vocabulary testing game in which students who answer questions correctly would have the honor of trying to shoot a miniature basketball into a rim created by my arms. The obedient students in the class looked defeated; the others (read: “the majority”) looked indifferent. In the next five minutes a series of events occurred:
1. I confiscated toy cars from a student futzing around with them at his desk. As I walked away, he mocked me. I removed him from the class. He continued to laugh and poke his head in to distract other students.
1. I confiscated toy cars from a student futzing around with them at his desk. As I walked away, he mocked me. I removed him from the class. He continued to laugh and poke his head in to distract other students.
2. Another student continued to swat a ball that I used to discern who had the right to talk—“If you do not have the ball, you cannot talk!” Every time he did this, he delayed class a little and distracted others a lot. After the second time, I told him that if he did it again that I would remove the privilege of using a ball—students regard the ball with paramount reverence. He did it again, I informed the class they could thank him because we were no longer going to use the ball, and I began pointing to students to elicit responses.
3. I erased the last remaining letter of the day’s word: “Today.”
At this point, I had to walk from desk-to-desk to make sure each student was silently staring straight ahead. I glanced at my watch and realized that the next twenty minutes would be a war of patience attrition: Could I keep my angry look, and could they remain silent and still? My patience was reinforced each time they lost patience since I could re-up my anger by walking to a disorderly student’s desk, by saying something firmly, and by delivering my patented look that conveys: “I will eat your face if you continue crossing me.” A few students did not get the message, including one student who I had removed from class a week prior. I had some of their fellow students write the misbehaving students’ names on a list for me.
With each passing minute, I began anew a cycle of making “face-eating” eye contact with each student in the class—including, unfortunately, the students who were very obedient and contributed productively before the class’ meltdown. A glance at my watch revealed the bell would ring any moment. I pointed at the list and calmly said: “These students,” I made a hand gesture for a telephone to my ear, “I am calling your mother.” A massive gasp and communal look of terror was perfectly timed with the ringing of the bell. I left class on that epic and [personally] enduring note.
Still, I was delighted as five of the more contributing and caring students in the class followed me to my office to apologize. I struck-up a conversation with them, one in which they demonstrated a good ability to comprehend if not speak and in which I practiced some of my basic Chinese vocabulary to great success.
Again, I told Charlie of the misbehaving students. He offered to call their parents, to which I asked if he could retrieve them so that they could call their own parents. Charlie smiled, “Oh. That is a very good-uh idea.” I left me office just as one of the listed students began dialing his parents while weeping.
I look forward to the next time I have “Grade Four; Class Four” to see if they will respect me more now or to see if this cycle will continue.
****
In the wake of revealing Bobo’s name, here are the best names I dispensed to students: Chester, Ethel, Augustus, Bogart, Shaquille, and Verna.
Here is the best name that a student already had before I dispensed names: Uncle Harry.
Here is a lesson that does not work: Using a picture of Garfield sleeping to convey “tired.” This will only evoke the word “tiger.”
Here is how Chinese children tell me their favorite animal if it is a rabbit: “I like rabies” or “I like rubbish.”
In other news, I am off to Mt. Emei (emei shan) to sleep in monasteries, watch misty sunrises, and play with macaques. The occasion is National Day holiday. Hooray for The People’s Republic of China!
Movies, Music, Books, T.V.: The Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens, The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin, Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler, Mad Men (season two), and Glee.
GAYNGS - Eye in the Sky from GAYNGS on Vimeo.
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