NOT Corporal Punishment

I've been contemplating for the past 24 hours if I should write about this in here, but I've come to the conclusion that I need to unless I might go insane with keeping it in. It may not be the most appropriate to right about on a public blog, but honestly at this point, I just need to do it.

Yesterday, one of my sixth grade classes were misbehaving. The usual six boys were late, and so my co-teacher kept them in the hallway on their knees and brought out her wooden stick with her. She told me I should just start class without them. So I did. Who knows what was going on with the wooden stick. Hopefully her usual hitting them in the back and nothing more, since it was out of sight. Not that I'm condoning that anyway. One by one the boys started coming in. Three went back to their seats to join the rest of the class, while the other three had a pencil and paper and had to kneel in the back of the room writing something. When they started coming in, the rest of the class started getting really noisy so I had them all put their heads down to chill for a few minutes. Lately my co-teacher has just been hitting them in the back with the stick, so it has become normal for the students, but she is still sometimes very unpredictable, so because of that I kept my eyes on the back of the classroom.

Some of the students at their desks were also looking back. And all of a sudden, one of the boys kneeling, looked up from his paper, and she kicked him in his right ribs. The boy fell to the floor onto his left side and grabbed his ribs immediately starting to cry. I heard myself shriek and the rest of the students make noises, as if they had never seen this happen before. My immediate reaction was shock, so I stood there just staring, not knowing what to think. I was looking back and forth from my co-teacher to the student, and didn't care that most of the other students kept looking back at me for my reaction. Clearly they sensed that I was uncomfortable and not okay with this.  My next reaction was to run to the boy and pick him off the floor, and then I realized where I was and what role I have. It's like my feet were trying to move and they couldn't. My co-teacher stood there for at least 60 seconds staring at him.The entire room was silent except for his cries. He finally got up slowly and tried to walk out the door, but my co-teacher grabbed his neck and pushed him back to his spot so that he could continue writing. Finally when he was done, he went to his seat where he was still shaking and quietly crying. I think I kept my eye on him the entire time. At one point I quickly went to my office to look up how to say "Are you okay?" in Korean. I came back and my co-teacher had asked everyone to take a personal broom and dustpan to clean the classroom and inside their desks. Again, with my eyes on him the entire time, the boy got up slowly, holding his ribs as he walked. As I watched, about 12 different students came up to him quietly and gave a look of empathy, asking if he was okay. He wouldn't even respond to them. When they were dismissed by my co-teacher, I walked out the door into the hallway before any of the students and waited until my student walked out.

When I realized that my place here does not allow me to push this teacher out of the way, say "Are you kidding me?!" or "What the fuck?!" and run to see if my student was okay.. I realized I still did have a role here and a major responsibility, as the students' teacher and as a person. I stopped him as he walked out and asked him if he was okay, making sure to act as empathetic and motherly as possible. This has been such a huge issue here, when I want to show a student I care about their feelings or to show sympathy or empathy. It's so difficult to express your emotions because of the language barrier. I know exactly what I would say to a student back home. (Of course this would never happen back home, because the teacher would be fired in an instant. No questions asked. It would be the end of their career as a teacher.) So my facial expressions had to convey my care more than my words in this case. When I asked him if he was okay, he barely looked at me and said "no." I asked him again, and again he said "no," and then he walked away. The other students around me had concerned faces, but I sensed that they understood my stand on this. Why else would I make my way out into the hallway for the sole purpose of asking him if he was okay. I watched as he went up the stairs and then kind of just stood there not knowing what to do, what to say, where to go. I did not want to look at my co-teacher for the rest of the day. I wanted to go to the nurse and ask her to look at his side. I wanted to go to the principal.  I wanted to report abuse to CPS. None of this would solve anything, because we learned from day one that corporal punishment is accepted here and parents agree with it, and getting in the way of that and speaking your opinion about it will only make things worse, and make your relationship with your co-workers drift farther away and more uncomfortable. You are not supposed to come into this country as a foreigner and try to change what they have been doing for the last how many years and what they say works.

I went to get my phone and decided to call my friend who has lived in Korea for about 2 1/2 years now. I was crying and explaining to her what just happened and what her advice was. She said she would ask her co-teacher who has a great relationship with her, and get back to me. As my friend said, her co-teacher basically talked in circles the whole time and giggled, which is what Koreans tend to do when they are uneasy or uncomfortable in a certain situation. But basically, it came down to this: 1) This boy should tell his parents and they should complain to the school. 2) If I talk to my co-teacher or make an issue of it, it won't accomplish anything, only make things more difficult. 3) She said the teacher was in the wrong, but doesn't think that I should take action. My friend and I were both fuming about this, because even though we both kind of saw these answers coming, we still can't believe they're really being said. Both of us said how we can't just sit back and do nothing. Most importantly, we both agreed that this is not another form of corporal punishment that I see almost once a week here. This was abuse. She KICKED this 12 year old boy while he was defenseless on the ground. Not that this is any better, but he's not even her child! How is that okay? How is that moral? And how did she possibly go home that night and be okay with what she just did? Also, what if he doesn't tell his parents? What if he does, and they don't realize the severity of what really happened? What if they don't care and think she was in the right to do that? What happens then? It's like I have no control over this situation, when really I should have full control, because I was there, I witnessed it and I am his god damn teacher. Mandated Reporter here means absolutely nothing.

As we were leaving for the day, she casually said, "I wasn't feeling good today. It was very hot." *giggle* "I was too mad. I shouldn't do that. *giggle*. My response: "mmm." End of conversation.

Today right before that class came in, I was walking to my classroom as my student was walking towards me. I asked him again if he was okay, and he looked at me quickly with a short, "yes." I started getting so anxious that I'm pretty sure I made myself sick. I I had no idea what she was going to do or how she was going to handle how she acted yesterday. When everyone was seated, she said something in Korean, and I'm guessing from the students' faces, it was an apology. She went over to the boy, rubbed his back and said something, (Once again, I'm guessing an apology.) He didn't once look up at her. He said nothing. It was the most sickening sight. She kept smiling, and making the other students smile, though clearly fake, 'Should I be smiling with her right now?' smiles. But he sat there just like yesterday. The worst part.. he had a bandage on his wrist, and she asked him what it was from.  Again nothing. My thought- She was probably sickened at the thought that it may be a result of her kick and and him falling over. I asked him about that bandage quickly in the hallway, but he kind of just waved it away. So I honestly do not know what it's from. He wasn't holding his ribs today, and that was enough indication to me that there's no damage. My attitude the entire day sucked. It's 2pm and I still can't get it back. I skipped lunch because I didn't want to spend more time with that woman today than I have to.

What all this comes down to, is that this act was NOT the normal corporal punishment you see and hear about in Korea. it was abuse. And I am sticking to that. The fact that I can't press charges, call CPS, anything, is absolutely not okay. And I'm pretty sure my relationship with my co-teacher is now changed for the rest of the year. I will put on a happy face for my students and teach them to my utmost ability, because they deserve that. She doesn't deserve any more of my time or smiles. I am still thinking about if and how I am going to talk to her about this. "I am very uncomfortable about what happened," is all that may come out of my mouth, because I'm assuming there will be giggles and confused looks, and I just can't continue on with that conversation if that's what's going to happen. 

Part of my job is to protect my students and keep them safe. Who cares if I am in another country where safety is clearly not number one in schools. It is still part of my job. Do I feel like I did as much as I could for this boy? No. And I hate that. Writing this was important to me. So please, don't criticize that I should have left this to myself.