...from my camp counseling time with nine year olds.. way worse then eight year olds. I had to sleep in the bunk with my kids. Woke up with a body covered with Ben Gay at two in the morning. I shudder to think which one of those nine year olds bothered to coat my private areas. It was not a good experience and the administration will sometimes set you up to fail. Sometimes the best way is to offer rewards for good behavior… in my case I was left with no leverage. In the end I offered the 9 year old boys an opportunity to go on a Panty raid of the girl’s bunks… you can imagine in this era of sexual harassment how that turned out. I suppose it was a bad idea… but the camp was not giving me any power and I had no control of them. Believe it or not the week I offered the “Panty raid”, the little fuckers behaved like saints. When you consider how low on the totem pole administrators actually think of the children that they would set up teachers to fail. Children of this age need less freedom and their teacher needs to be trusted.
http://www.igorthetroll.com/blog/teaching-english-in-japan/#comment-3307
