Shiny eyes.

Today we had some hysteria in the EOZ, as the big main doors had some how come loose from their fixtures and were swinging back closed after each student passed through them, which was fine, except that there is no door handle, so you have to reach up to the very top and pull them open from there. The third graders, being horrendous gangly giants one and all, had no issues with this. Our squeaky little first graders were a different story, however. Encountering a veritable mob of them, about waist-high, as I came up the stairs, I parted them like an ocean and moved through to grab the top of the door and swing it open for them to flow through. After I did so, one particularly dedicated group attempted to lock the door back in place. I told them simply that it wasn't working, and went on down the hall to my office to go about my business.

A few minutes later, I walked out into the hall to find Old Co reaching for the door handle: "Liz! Did you speak Korean to the students?!"

"No...."

"They came running in to tell me that you spoke Korean.... are you sure you didn't say something?"

I thought to myself for a moment, and then realized that when I told the door was broken, I had done so in Korean (simply, "안되요").

Man. I forgot what it was like to be able to impress students with something as simple as that. My third graders now spend a good portion of the time I spend walking around while they're doing exercises begging me to say something in Korean, because it's "cute" (which I never indulge), and aren't really impressed with it beyond that, anymore.

In other terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news, in a last ditch effort to keep the private school teacher on board (despite the fact that Co is completely for letting her go -- the VP doesn't want it to happen), she's been handed the B level classes. Which she thinks is going to make all the difference in the world, because she still hasn't woken up and realized that it's not the C level students that are the problem. So. Now the B level classes have been extended to contain nearly 40 students each (twice as many as she had in each class before), including some of the students with the worst behavior, moved up from C in the shift, and now she's running them.

She's came singing into the office all day today about how much brighter, more attentive and better behaved the B level students are, apparently not realizing that it's their first day with her as a teacher, and they haven't sussed what a total mess she is yet. Each time it happened, Co would shoot me a stealthy look over the top of her computer screen and roll her eyes. Co has completely come clean with me about her feelings on the issue of this teacher since I've tacitly allowed it to be sensed, without any actual verbal smack-talking, that I'm generally on the same page as her. We both know doom and total destruction are imminent. I give it two, maybe three weeks before she's got a mess on her hands the size of something she was only able to barely taste with the C level classes. And lucky me, I get to deal with it first hand.

Some trouble has already begun in the class I taught with her today, where a couple of the nastiest little buggers who had her before have moved up. Minseok and Hangjin. They're not terrible students when in the hands of a capable teacher, but they've become a dual powered nightmare with this teacher, and I finally had to get tough with them today, because I'm officially no longer amused. After putting them both in the back with their arms up, and allowing them to sit back down, I turned around from helping a student with an assignment to run smack into Minseok, who was apparently making the classroom into his personal living room, wandering around chatting here and there. Fucking. No. Not acceptable.

I grabbed him lightly, but firmly, by both wrists, and he started to laugh and squirm in a manner which I've generally accepted out of him up until this point. This time my grasp just got tighter, though, and my tone lowered. "Look at my eyes, Minseok."

He made a noble and laughing attempt, but recoiled immediately once he had managed it.

"Hey. I said look at my eyes. Minseok..."

He tried again, but honestly couldn't manage it.

"What's wrong with you? Look at me. I want to talk to you."

"Oh... Teacher.... I'm sorry. I can't." He was genuinely uncomfortable, and his usual this-is-all-really-hilarious manner had fallen away.

"What? What's wrong with you, suddenly?"

"Oh. Teacher. Eyes no see. Teacher eyes shiny. Oh."

"... What are you talking about? Look at me."

He tried one last time. "Teacher.... Teacher eyes shiny. No see. Very shiny. No see."

"... Hey. Just stop. Okay? Before, funny. Now, not funny. Too much. Understand?"

"예."

Well. I don't know what "shiny" is supposed to mean. But I'll take it as a good sign that he wasn't able to look at my eyes -- they're not supposed to, when they're in trouble, unless they're being particularly brazen. He better wise up, or he's got a whole new level of shiny coming at him. Because I'm going to have enough nonsense to deal with, with these humongous classes pissed off that they've lost a genuinely good teacher in favor of this other mess, with out his and Hangjin's little shenaningans.

Death, terror, dishonor and destruction. I'm foretelling it now, chums. Mark my fucking words.