PTSD

My students have PTSD. They have been tortured by the Taiwanese school system for their whole lives, in some cases for 20 yrs. They have been both physically and mentally abused. Once when they were being bad and not paying attention, I said "I should get a ruler to make them pay attention", and my one student in that class with good enough English to understand what I said (out of 50), said, "You can't hit us, we aren't kids". When planning my finals, for finals week some classes regulary meet Tues/Thurs. or twice a week and they all ask me "if we take the final on Tues. do we still have class on Thurs?", and this shocks me cause in America it is understood that of course Finals Week means you just have to take a final and that's it, and after you take a final, what more class can you have anyways? But they are all terribly relieved when I say "no, no more class after the final", which tells me that they are often forced to go to this empty class for no reason, and are therefore held up from going home for winter break for several days. Often my students will get exited and talk in Chinese and start to run a bit wild, so I have to change out of my normal mellow mood and get kinda angry and maybe yell at them. Then they become quiet and still as death for 5-10 min. This is the way they are normally used to being talked to in class, and this is why they are sooo bored in class.