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Wow - this thread makes my Korean students look like angels - absolute little darlings. I feel like buying them all candy after reading this. In some classes it can be difficult to keep them focused for 45 or 50 minutes at a time, but pretty well everything I've read above would be unthinkable at my school.

The one from Japan was just astounding. If the students at our school acted like that there'd be a mass beating in the corridor. Which is why that would never, ever happen at our school (the students can be pretty wild at break time, but they don't vandalise, act violently, etc.). In fact I'd be willing to bet that good % of the kids at that Japanese school feel absolutely terrorised - way more so than a timid Korean kid afraid of having to kneel on the floor for a while or get a swat with a stick for being late.

At any rate, the 'worst' disciplinary experience I've had started out fairly harmlessly in a year-two middle school (M2) class. In most of my classes the students sit in three long rows of pairs. I had one in which there were two chatterboxes sitting at the back of the third row. Well, rather than wait til they made me blow my top I made them change seats with two students at the front of the left and right row. Great, I thought, that was easily fixed. I had the students working on something and was monitoring them, walking around, and was at the back when suddenly the girl beside one of the ones I moved, let's call her Han-bet, explodes at the one I moved to the front, let's call her Tae-im. Han-bet is a rather dim, quiet kid who's always been incredibly respectful and tries her best despite having no aptitude for English. Suddenly she was yelling and swearing at Tae-im, with tears rolling down her face while she was shaking with anger. The class went silent and everyone was mesmorised by Han-bet's outburst. Now, Tae-im is a well known trouble-maker and I just assumed that she must have purposely said something to set Han-bet off, probably because she was pissed off at me for making her move. Later, I found out from talking to some kids sitting around them that this wasn't the case. At the time I decided I'd move Tae-im back to the back and deal with it after the lesson when things had calmed down. This had never happened to me before - a student getting violently angry and screaming her head off at a classmate in the middle of a lesson.

After class Tae-im tries to run off and I call her back, having to haul her back by the wrist, hoping that she can apologise to Han-bet and, whatever was said, I can leave it at that. Tae-im is starting to look absolutely indignant and furious towards me: not the 'I hate teachers and school' angry look but a 'WTF do you think you're doing, asshole' look. Suddenly Han-bet sets off at her again and bursts out bawling and I ask Tae-im what the hell she said to her; Tae-im (I'm thinking) won't say and she's really starting to piss me off. Then she bursts into tears, too; she gets punished a lot and isn't a crier. This was the first and only time I've seen her cry. I tell her just to go off to lunch and she runs out of the classroom in tears, followed not long after by Han-bet leaving in a similar state.

So it's time for a meeting with their homeroom teacher. Low and behold, I find out that Han-bet has done this kind of thing before for no reason. I knew she was strange but had no idea she had pretty serious mental health problems. Whatever Tae-im did or said to her was likely in her imagination. Great, thanks for warning me, co-workers. The homeroom teacher tells me not to worry about it too much. Then later in my after-school writing class I find out from a (very good) student who wouldn't lie and was sitting right behind them that Tae-im hadn't said a thing to Han-bet. I'm feeling like it's time for me to receive Asshole Teacher of the Week award. I looked up the Korean word for misunderstanding and apologised to Tae-im the next day; she kind of had a 'yeah, well who wouldn't always blame me' kind of response. A year later and she doesn't seem to like or dislike me any more than before.

So if that's my worst classroom disciplinary experience I guess, in light of the above, I should consider myself extremely lucky.