What we need is some discipline

Sorry if my last post came across as a little bitchy, I was more pissed about losing my finely crafted post than anything else.
I haven't been up to too much that has been fit to print this week, an dI'm going to keep it short cause I'm still nursing the last vestiges of a cold and I promised myself that tonight the nurse was going to pull the plug.
One thing that I guess is a little different this week is at the elementary school I teach at. One of the classes I have is to teach the teachers English. not the english teachers, its just a drop in class for any of the teachers from other subjects tath want to learn. In the past the class was not very popular, to the point where most days no one showed up and the previous teacher just got to go home early. As much of a fan of that concept that I was its also in my best interests to keep the elementary school happy. In some ways I like the elementary school a bit more cause its not run purely for profit like my hagwon. In any case the main teacher I work with on Tuesdays knew I used to be a personal trainer and suggested that I run the english lesson as an exercise class. I agreed, full well knowing that any english learned would be purely incidental. the fitness boom is just taking off here, everyone is super-concerned about thier appearance and gyms have started cropping up selling answers. Of course they are still very misinformed and few people at all work out with weights at all. Overall Koreans are no where near as fat as Americans but thier high carb diets do lead to some signifigant belly fat in a lot of the population. And they are more openly critical of eachother. It would be accepted here for someone to tell you to your face that you've been looking very fat lately and not pretty.
Anyhow i ended up with a dozen middleaged women in my fitness english class. I taught it purely in english and for the most part they seemed to pick up the general sense of what I was telling them. I drilled the nutrition angle since sweets and sodas are on the rise here. Coke is cheap as piss here, I've heard they will sell thier products at a loss to hook a country on them. I didn't push them too hard, just some squats crunches rows (I had some bands) etc. They all seemed to enjoy it alot. It felt kind of good to be doing it actaully. I am very much doing a lot of new things lately with the teaching of kids and whatnot and teaching exercise to people with poor english skills is something I have been doing for years. It went so well that the teache rtha I work with suggested I go into business for myself one day with the combination english lesson/ fitness training. She pointed out that the same rich parents that send thier kids to private english schools also are very concerned that thier kids don't end up fat. The fact of the matter is that the market here is probably very very ripe for some good money there. I'll give it some thought but theres not much I can do right now. I would need either a partner or vastly improved english skills to pull it off profitably. Although I might mention the idea to my school director in a few months if I just get bored and want to do it. Anyway things are going good at the elementary school, today they called my hagwon to tell them how great they thought I was doing with all thier classes. But to be fair I'm following a complete loser and a semi-burnout and those are easty acts to follow.
As for the title of this piece that just comes from my new techniques to discipline my kindergarten classes. I have three different ones that I teach at random blocks in the week. Theres the little one Edison, mostly three and four year olds. Schweitzer which is 5 and 6 year olds and Galileo class which is is 6 and 7 year olds. I think. Thats about the age range I guess anyway. Sometimes some of the classes get out of hand, the kids get antsy and just start ignoring me or hitting eachother (usually play fighting but it can get out of hand) or just don't ant to do what I say. Galileo is actually no problem, those kids are well behaved and as long as I don't bore them they're fine. Shouting has little effect since they are all so loud anyway they can barely hear you. I don't like sending young kids out of the class b/c they are unlikely to stay anywhere near the door and are just as like to see if they can turn the bathroom into a swimming pool.
The school has had some problems with how teachers have disciplined kids in the past. The old teacher Matt had lost a class because he shoved the kids a bit and the parents complained. Matt told me about another guy, some middle aged english guy, who used to poke the kids' hands with pins. Seriously. I've had a few of the Korean teachers take me aside and ask me not to hit or hurt the kids, not that they thought I would specifically, just because of the troubles they've had in the past.
Anyway I looked around online and found a few simple methods for getting kids in line. For the Edison class I just start class by putting a big smiling face on the board and a big frowning face. Everyone starts in the smiling side and when someone is bad they are put to the frowning side. At the end of class the smiling face kids get stickers (I brought a tonne with me from canada) the others get bumpkis. they're young enough to be thrilled with stickers, and its giving them the basics of there being consequences for thier actoins. The Schwietzer class is a little older and a little more rowdy (I was warned they were the most misbehaved class) and I knew stickers wouldn't cut it. For them I keep a scoreboard on the wall and every good thing they do (like answer a question right) gets them a smiley face and every bad one get them... yep you guessed it a frowning face. I'm really stretching my artistic skills to the limit here. At the end of class I hand out Canadian play money, $5 for each smiley face. Usually only one fiver each. Invariably one or two kids don't get one and start crying. Which tears me apart. It sucks to see a little kid cry and know that you're the reason. But after a few days they seem to be starting to realize that if they are good they get some money. Wow in writing this sounds so much like bribing. Anyway at the end of the week they can redeem thier money for prizes. They can either get cheap candy or for more money they can get toys. I know I'm a hypocrite for having candy but the moral is to skip the candy and save up for the cool toys. Also I can't blow too much money on this kind of stuff. Anyway the first week of prizes wen tout todya and it seemed relatively sucessful. there was one kid crying so much at the end of one class caus ehe didn't get anything that I almost cracked and gave him something. But then one of those cool things happened where another kid who had only gotten $5 that day gave it to him so he would feel better.
Anyway I realize these are just boring teacher stories and I promise I'm going to rest up this weekend so I can get better and have some more comic misadventures real soon.