The Silent Treatment

Over the course of the past 2 weeks, I have done more yelling and screaming than I have ever done in my entire life. My throat was bound to get sore sooner or later. Well, it happened sooner. This morning I woke up with an incredibly sore throat and it was not easy to speak. I was worried because today is my busiest day of the week with 5 classes throughout the day. How would I be able to teach 200 kids if I can barely speak? I'll tell you how... force the students to run the class. I took it easy today and made the students do most of the work for once. And in the process, I learned an incredibly powerful new way to discipline the students when they misbehave. The Silent Treatment. Any time they were out of control during a class, instead of yelling at them, I just sat down in a chair, stopped talking, and stared at the students who were misbehaving. Basically what happens is a chain reaction, one student sees that I am staring, then they tell another, and another, and another, until the whole class is dead silent. Apparently, Thai students hate to make eye contact, and they have no idea what to do if you just sit there and stare at them. This means that my voice should be better in no time, and the silent treatment has become my weapon of choice.

PS- Today at the food market, some (well behaved) students ran into me when I was wearing my street clothes and they told me that I looked cool. Huzzah!