I could Kill My New Co-Teacher

One of my beloved co-teachers is officially on bed rest until her baby is born.

My new replacement co-teacher is the most awkward shy person I have ever met in my life. He's twenty-two, and admitted to me yesterday that he's never really talked to a girl before. Girls and Boys are seperated at middle school in Korea, and don't interact socially until University where they are set up on blind dates by their friends and parents. This means that many young men, have never really had female friends, and therefore have no real sweet clue how to talk to women. Yesterday I was showing my class how to shake hands with each other and say, "nice to meet you", (in Korea, bowing is what they do instead), and he refused to touch my hand! I tried to explain to him, "But, we need to demonstrate shaking hands to the students", and he responded, "I'm sorry but I can't touch your hand if we're not dating". It was kind of hard to not roll my eyes to this, and I accidently said out loud, "Oh my God...seriously???"

Maybe I'm an insensitive jerk.


He's also horrible at keeping the class in order. He won't yell at the students and things get a little chaotic sometimes. I'm opposed to the usual punishment(hitting the children), but yelling, is an absolute must in the classroom. Co-teaching with guy is torture. I would rather inject the ebola virus into my eye than go to school and have to deal with this all day.