somebody else's asshole

I teach English in Korea

I teach it to predominantly unenthusiastic 6-11 year old children in 40 minute blocks.  A while back, I was leading a group of them through a worksheet about the winter Olympics.  I had one of the communal laptops open to show them some clips of the actual games.  After a lot of request denying and dispute resolving and redirecting with varying degrees of gentleness, I finally managed to get everybody finished.  Then I realized that I actually had 3 minutes to spare.  Since the laptop was still in the room, I thought we could just watch something fun.  Everything I could think of to watch was guaranteed to be inappropriate, so I settled on playing crocodile rock.  And they went nuts.  You would think these kids had never heard music before.  They were instantly laughing and dancing and lala-ing along to the chorus.  For 3 minutes, we actually had a good time.  And it made the rest of the day go smoother.  I started making a list of other songs that they might love, thinking that I had just discovered a skeleton key to the hearts and minds of disregarded children.

But the next day I was calmly led by both of my bosses into a room scarcely big enough for two, designed for meeting with mothers to tell them how wonderful our program is.  When the door closed, they turned on me with the kind of venomous diatribe I haven't had to endure since I was a teenager.  Because you see  there are cameras in every room and they had caught me wasting time.  They were appalled at how irresponsible I was being.  One of them started mocking my air guitar with the shittiest look he could produce.  I was genuinely dumbfounded.  These kids are 6 years old.  They sit here quietly for 6 hours a day, obediently doing things that they don't care about.  After making sure they had finished their work, I let them have fun for literally THREE MINUTES. What the hell is the problem?

And this kind of thing keeps happening.  I do something that I think is completely innocuous.  And the next day, I'm made to feel like an asshole.  Most recently I was yelled at for using the word, "crazy".  They were seriously snortingly offended by this.  I have also been yelled at for:

1. playing music softly while students work.
2. using colloquial phrases like, "that's bananas".
3. mentioning to another teacher the FACT that recycling is a net loss for the environment.
4. sitting down when I talk to my students, and
5. not saying hello to other staff often enough.


And this is why I'm quitting.  I can endure the self imposed shame of participating in the systematic destruction of the creativity and self esteem of children, but I'm done being somebody else's asshole.