Scary Eyes

If there’s one thing a teacher needs in order to be successful, it’s scary eyes. I mean, come on, instilling a little bit of fear in students never hurt anything, right? ;) Classroom management comes first, after all, and then the lessons will follow. What better classroom management tool than scary eyes??
I recently worked at an English Camp in Daechon, near the sea, for two weeks. More than one student at camp told me that I had scary eyes. One little girl revealed this opinion of hers at dinner one night, and I just laughed, thinking, “Okaaaay,” certain that she was a wee bit off her rocker since no one had ever unveiled that to me, before.
Then, later in the camp, during a lesson, we were brainstorming things that fell under the category of “scary.” Students were sharing answers anywhere from spiders to roller coasters, and even ghosts. Then, one boy raised his hand and said “Catie Sung Sang Nim” (“Catie Teacher”). I chuckled and said, “Really?” and although I slightly hesitated on adding my own name to the list, I knew it wasn’t my place to discount his contribution to the classroom discussion, and so I wrote it on the white board along with all the other “scary” things. While I wrote it, he pointed to his own eyes, saying, “Yes, Catie Sung Sang Nim…your eyes are scary…they are blue!”
It was apparent that he had no malicious intent.
Instead of letting it bother me that he was basically putting me in the same class as Frankenstein and Brown Recluse, I just wore dark sunglasses until my brown contact lenses came in. J
I’d never thought of myself as having scary eyes, before. Different, maybe. But scary?
Come to think of it, I guess we have witnessed far too many instances in the world where that which is different, does, in fact, scare the living daylights out of us.