Well today was better.
I guess what had me down yesterday was just some difficulties with a certain set of three students, whom I sometimes call, uncharitably, the three stooges. That's not actually wise, on my part, to make up epithets of that sort.
They are a triplet of very frustrating middle school boys, who are quite smart but tend to engage in a kind of right-on-the-edge-of-bullying banter among themselves during class, generally in Korean which makes it hard to detect when they're crossing the line, but I can almost guarantee that they generally cross the line. Let's call it "locker room" banter. Some of it is innocent, or just insults traded among themselves, but some of it is offensive to the less confident students, and especially I KNOW there are girls who have been made so uncomfortable by these boys that they have quit the class. Yet it's extremely difficult for me to manage these boys, because I'm not sophisticated enough in Korean to call them on their Korean, and they seem to know that and exploit it, because the Korean-speaking teachers always say, essentially, "oh, they're little angels in my class." So getting disciplinary support from my coworkers is pretty difficult, too.
But I run a speaking class – I can't just make them all shut up. Well… maybe I should. Anyway, I didn't have them today. So today was fine. I had good classes, today. My great new middle school cohorts, the new new TOEFL class of 6th-to-7th 예비중 excellent, my MWF cohort of 8th-9th graders is excellent too, all interesting, intelligent, curious.
Anyway. It's new years eve. I don't care. Or do I?
[daily log: walking, -5 km]