It was Monday morning and my class had already started for the day. I had given the students a task to complete and they were quietly and busily completing the assignment.
Suddenly there was a loud knock at the door and a tall, slim man walked into the room.
“I’m a new student”, he said as he burst into the room with a somewhat strong accent, but otherwise good English.
“Nice to meet you”, I said with an outreached hand and a smile. “My name is Suzanne. What is your name?”
“Didn’t they tell you I was coming?” His tone was harsh and arrogant.
“No” I replied. “Usually we meet students when they arrive on the first day.”
“Hmph”, he replied as he pushed past me and took a seat in the middle of the room.
I asked again for his name and where he was from, trying to be patient and keeping my composure. He responded with what I will say as “student x”.
As the days went on, student x’s behavior didn’t change. He came across demanding, discontent, thought he was smarter than everyone else, and dominated the classroom and conversations. After a while, I began to understand why his family had bought him a plane ticket and sent him to another country to study English. They couldn’t stand him anymore either.
The thing that I found most upsetting about this though, was not that he was rude to me (which he was), but that he was the only person from his country that some of the other students would ever meet.
