Bad Manners

... and horribly demanding of me to post twice in one day, I know. But I needed to share a few tidbits from the blog Sociological Images (which I don't always agree with, but it does sometimes have some stuff worth sharing), especially after having my mind blitzed by the uphill battle that is class 1-5. As I've just bitched on Facebook, I can't say that I was particularly impressed with them today (am I ever?). It was quite telling that class started with me walking in to find one boy about halfway up the classroom facing away from me not wearing his school shirt (they all wear t-shirts underneath so he looked like he was clothed) and everyone else roaring in laughter. I told them to quiet down and for the student to sit down but he wouldn't turn around. Three of his friends proceeded to inform me that he couldn't because he was doing an "elephant" [impression] out of the fly of his pants.

Needless to say, I was not amused. I also had to escalate through the 'quiet pyramid' a few times today - they know it starts at "boys, be quiet please" to "BOYS! Quiet!" to "[name]! SHUSH!". But they were pushing me today so I had to give them that "You've gone too far and Teacher is REALLY angry now" quiet stare and go through the whole "[Daeho] Don't make me say 'shut up'. Because if I say 'shut up' it will mean that I'm very angry", shortly followed by "[Daeho], SHUT IT! I'm really angry now. Do you know WHY I'm angry?.. Class, why am I angry?" and pick on him in front of the whole class, which doesn't always work anyway when you have a class full of clowns and attention seekers. I don't actually say "shut up" unless it's in that precursive warning sentence to students very often because I feel like it's rude and probably a little unprofessional, but I do use the whole range of synonyms. Oh, and I broke my love-stick on the desk last week so I think I need a new one. Maybe I'll get a bamboo one - nice and tough, and scary looking as hell. Muahahaha :D

But anyway, so that was how I battled for my soul over the last 45 minutes. It was quite nice therefore to come back and catch up on more blogs I missed and see another lovely video that I hope you like too :)

Oh and there's also a quite interesting post there too on women in (American) politics. The clip in question featuring Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hilary Clinton also seems to me to be kind of telling about women in comedy too, as many of you have probably heard me rant about (and are probably sick of me doing so) how much I hate women who use the 'dumb bitch' approach to comedy (namely Corinne Grant and that fatuous bimbo that replaced the brilliant Julie McCrossin on Good News Week), as I feel it demeans both women and the work that real comedians put into their routines. Anyway, watch the video, read the article, and hopefully you have time to look out the window and enjoy the sunshine! Or at least pretend that there's some lovely sunshine outside for you to enjoy if there isn't any around :)