Korean Job Discussion Forums

[robbyt]

earlier today, a student of mine proudly explained to me how she picks on someone at school.

it's troubling that this kind of thing happens in the first place but what really surprised me is that i would otherwise consider this girl a role model for other students. she's very smart, talkative and multi talented. and she's a bully.

it started when i showed a flashcard of some kids building a club house. i asked if she knew what a club was. she said that she's in a club at school, and she's the president. i thought that was great until i asked her what the club was for. she said it's a 'hitting club'. she and her friends get together and hit a younger boy (they are 12 and he is 10) . she said she does taekwondo moves on him, and along with the other 6 club members, beats on him until he cries. this happens almost on a daily basis. i asked why they do this. she told me that they don't like him because he's ugly, dirty and not smart.

i was pretty surprised and disappointed after hearing this, and i'm not sure how or even if i should react. this takes place at her public school, and not at the hagwon where i teach the girl. i'm upset about it, but i'm not going to start some crusade about it. i'd just like to find a kind and simple way to explain to her that what she's doing is not nice. what would you say or do?

[Dome Vans]

It's a difficult one robbyt, and I completely sympathise with you, especially with what you can do about it. It's kind of a helpless situation especially because you want to do something about it.

I have a similar thing but maybe not so extreme. There is one boy in my level 1 group in PS and his English is excellent but his attitude is really bad. There is another student that my co-teachers tell me gets bullied by him. The other student is really sweet, but he does seem to be the butt of the class jokes. He's the only student who'll come to me in the teachers room and have the confidence to try and speak with me. His effort is excellent.

Back to the other bad student, I don't know how to take him, I know he bad mouths the other student in class if he makes a mistake. But what can you do? He's speaking in Korean and I'm not sure what he says but I'm not going to jump in. I don't think it's my place to do it. The other teachers are aware of it, and hopefully it's slowly getting better. If we are doing conversation practice I make myself aware that they are working together and am sure that if he plays up he gets the evil stare and the finger.

This kind of thing seems to be dealt with in a different way in England. It's frustrating to not be able to deal with it. But I think at the end of the day, it's not really up to you. You can be very aware of it, but to take it out on a student when it's not in your class it's very difficult. I help the other student a lot and I've found the other teachers praise him a lot more than others. It's a shame because he really tries hard. Bullying is a pain in the a$s, if there was a simpler solution it'd be great. It's a phase, it'll pass, hopefully.

[midgic]

[yingwenlaoshi]

Survival of the fittest.

[chachee99]

you go kick her ass. That will show her who's the boss.

[jay-shi]

[pelican]

that's so cool of you, robbyt, to raise the bullying issue; i agree with midgic and jay-shi, that your idea to explain to the bully about her actions is a solid one. a really good book on this sort of thing has been written by Barbara Coloroso: it's called "The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander" (or thereabouts)....in the book, she explains bullying as a social process which involves the whole community and she outlines pragmatic approaches which can be taken in order to deal with situations such as the one you've raised....I realize that as a foreign teacher in a hagwon your ability to effect positive change here is probably quite limited, but I'm sure that you'd get a few good ideas from the book as to how you might proceed....by your raising this issue on this forum, you've stirred me to take another look at that book.
many thanks!

[Ukon]

I give the girl props for being a girl who bullies older boys.

She'll be a wonderful wife one day

[Countrygirl]

[mistermasan]

when i was a kid i used to have a classmate who was a bully. he picked on younger kids. we didn't really notice at first. once it became apparent there was only one thing to do. i saw him bully some kids. i walked over, chatted with him and did exactly to him what he was doing to others. i beat the crapout of him. the little kids watched. then i said "it ain't fun is it?"

end of problem.

but those were different days. we also used to beatup kids at recess who disrupted classtime. i dunno.that's how we rolled in my whitetrash tact home world in 1979. you took your beatings, understood why and dealt with it.

that approach is out of play in your case. these korean kids are tough. they deal out headshots in class and the receiver hardly bats an eye. try talking.i t might work. changing a successful social habit isn't easy.

[nomad-ish]

what i would do is take her aside at the end of class, and have a talk. tell her that you have a serious problem and you were hoping that she could give you some advice. tell her that your little brother/little cousin/son is very unhappy and you don't know what to do. she'll ask why, and you tell her that a student in his class is beating/punching him a lot and it makes him unhappy. get her to give her opinion about what you should do, and thank her. then just before she's going out the door, say something like "do you think the boy that you hit is sad and unhappy?"

hopefully it'll surprise her and make her think about what she's doing. i'm not sure if she's too old for this to work on, but it's worth a try. at a PS there's very little intervention from teachers when kids are getting bullied, so it's great that you're trying to help this boy you don't even know!

[nicholas_chiasson]

-I threw one of my students into the wall for beating one of the small students. He behaves a lot better now.

[chris_J2]

I relayed a complaint to the kid's home teacher, (through my coteacher) when 2 boys were fighting / punching each other in class. The one instigating the affray, was dealt with harshly. There was no repeat performance. Korean teachers are a lot stricter than most foreign teachers.

Of course, it depends on just how effective / feared, the home teacher is. Worth a try.

[pelican]

right on, mistermasan! Where were you when I/we was/were in elementary and junior high? When i was eleven, our family moved to a new town, a very white town, a very blue-collar town. I was only in my new school for a couple of weeks when i met The School Bully; he snuck up and choked me from behind until I fell back unconscious and hit my head on the school hallway floor. Even though a few of my new classmates were there at the time, nobody did or said anything to anybody about it...even the teachers feared this bully.
With all these young Korean students moving with their families from town to town, there must be a lot of bullied souls out there.....

As mistermasan did and as a number of postings have suggested, that's certainly one of the most effective ways to shut down a bully in any given venue: reflect whatever action or words the bully is using back onto her or him. And yet, if the bully isn't given a chance to transform, she'll just find another venue for her habits.

[Mi Yum mi]

Pay a bumch of 14 year old girls to whoop her a$$ for a week. Tell her if she stops...they will stop.