On Peewee and Classroom Management

This is Teacher Peewee with some of the G6 girls.  Last year, Teacher Peewee was my "Classroom Assistant" in G6.  No mention of the absurdity of assigning a 20-year veteran of the school to "assist" someone new to teaching in Thailand.  Fortunately, I sidestepped angering or offending her, and think we came out on friendly terms.  

One of my biggest challenges is keeping the class moving quickly enough to keep the kids from getting too bored.  There's a balance, of course, and to some extent, those who do not understand any English to begin with will be bored regardless of the pace or content; listening to someone blab incoherently, even if he's gesticulating wildly and responsorily, is just straight up boring.  At the same time, there are those classes, like last year's G6.
So far, all of the Thais who taught that class have commented to me how naughty and difficult last year's G6 kids were.
If I did do any good for the worse classes, most of the credit is due to Teacher Peewee keeping the few most obnoxious in check--as soon as someone started spouting foul language at the stupidly0smiling foreigner, she would clock him with her marker bag.  Or twist his ear. Or whack him with a ruler.

And then there was that one kid, in that one class, the guy who's making a third attempt at getting out of 6th grade and grows more facial hair than I do.  After getting smacked upside the head a number of times, after being stood up and smacked for mouthing off, then for being dumb (in this culture, just like it's acceptable and de rigueur to say "you're fat" or "you're skinny" as a statement/observation without the demeaning connotation it has in the West, it's normal to say "you're being dumb" or "that was a really stupid thing to say," or what amounts to "did you really just say something that stupid? Hold up your hand" *WHACK*) the kid blew a line at me.  Teacher Peewee has always been too polite to translate, despite my requests, so I'm not sure exactly how severe it was, but she stopped class and ordered the guy to the front of the room, where he was told to hit himself on the head.  He shot back a retort, and it turned into smacking himself on the cheek.  Go.  Faster.  Harder.  Another retort, and he was smacking himself in the mouth.  Quite hard, eventually.
The impressive thing is that it did nothing to shut him up.
But it certainly scared the hell out of my inner schoolkid, nurtured in California public schools.
And part of my inner teacher absolutely loves the idea of saying, "You! You're being excessively stupid! Stand up and knock yourself upside the head for me!"which you can do over here when you've been through the wringer enough times to be given its handle and guide newbies through the process.

So when I hear "Oohh, six slash one, very bad, very bad class, you remember?" it always makes me smile and look forward to one day having the classroom authority--if not necessarily the exact disciplinary techniques--as a Thai lady who's built about like the average American fourth grader.