Job Discussion Forums

Keath · Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 4:04 am Post subject:

They must be selling crack.. Keep the phones..

Susie · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 390 Location: PRC

Burnsie, the student boys insulted you personally when you corrected them and took them to task on their disruptive behaviour.

This was a very clever tactic on their part actually. That is, in order to deflect your criticism of them (for disrupting your lesson and being disrespectful towards you as their teacher and interferring with their classmates' goal of learning English), they offensively attacked you back and launched a personal attack on you.

They refused to deal with the issue of their disruptive behaviour. Emotional intelligence at that moment might have led to a discussion between you and them (via the Chinese girl interpreter who could have added her own knife-cutting criticisms of you - afterall she has to live with them and keep face before them) like this.

I'm disappointed that you have chosen to insult me by calling me a boring teacher just because I addressed your disruptive behaviour. That shows a great deal of disrespect on your part. Even if I were a boring teacher, the classroom rules state that students must not disrupt the teacher's lesson by talking loudly among themselves in Chinese during English lessons.

Further, even if you wrongly think that I have a bad attitude, the classroom rules state that students must co-operate with their teacher and with each other during English lessons.

Furthermore, the classroom rules state that failure on the part of the students' to follow classroom rules means that their ID cards must be shown to the teacher for recording and reporting of their unacceptable behaviour to the headmaster.

In addition, the five boys concerned have to prepare an "interesting" English lesson and role play as teachers for 30 minutes each in subsequent lessons. This exercise will teach them that it is easy to criticise others, but could they stand up and do a better job than you? If not, they should be quite, listen and learn.

Burnsie, it is not just you who has to deal with this type of behaviour. Imagine if they had been playing cards in class! I know of a teacher who had this problem. She asked them to stop playing cards in her lesson. They carried on as if it were break time and she carried on teaching as if them were not there. Then she handed their names into their classmaster and said she wanted this problem addressed. The card-playing didn't happen again.

Another example, when I was a student in a Chinese university learning Mandarin with other international students of various ages, some of the young Koreans would show up late for class, then come in and talk to their classmates in Korean as to why they were late, then they would receive phone calls during lessons in Korean. One of the Japanese students shouted at them for being disrespectful to the teacher. The Chinese teacher ignored it all and carried on teaching. The next day the Koreans and the Japanese were summoned to the Chinese Departmental office and barred from lessons for three days!

kev7161 · Joined: 06 Feb 2004 Posts: 5880 Location: Suzhou, China

It's weird (and kinda nice) to think that everything I post about teaching Senior High students will now be in the past. Anyway . ..

The one thing that always got my goat when it came to discipline was the fact that anything I said or did (to most students) went "unheard". It was only after I brought in their Chinese head teacher (or, quite frankly, almost any Chinese teacher) that the students creating problems would straighten up . . . for awhile.

For example: at the beginning of this previous school year one of my class's head teacher came in almost every lesson. He seemed to want to learn English. The students in this class were (mostly) attentive and we always got a lot accomplished. They were fun and funny and each 45 minute period would fly by. After about 3 months or so, the head teacher stopped coming to class - - don't know why, but that's not the main point of this example. Once he wasn't there, the class started falling apart. My teaching style was still the same, I still enforced the same rules (no chatting, no mobile phones, etc.), but clearly half the students started being more and more disruptive and suddenly turned "dumb" (ting bu dong, ting bu dong - - god, how I hate that phrase!). It became clear to me that the students who really had no interest in English and/or studying in general were putting on an act for their head teacher.

Throughout this year, anytime I'd try mild discipline measures in class, they'd fall on deaf ears. Again, it was only with the intervention of a Chinese teacher that it would seem the student would shape up for a couple of lessons. Some would return with an apology, but that's not really not what I was seeking. I've never been a power-mad despot in my classroom, I'm often quite flexible. But my rules were no different than the school's rules so why would it almost always be a struggle to get them to pay attention to these rules?

In the US, as a teacher, I had certain measures in class, should a child not do homework or become unruly or talk during lessons: time out at recess, last in line at lunch, letters or phone calls home to parents, parent-teacher meetings, etc. Only if a child was REALLY disruptive leading towards violence would they be sent out of the class for the principal or a counselor to intervene. That was more for the protection of the other students and to maintain a smooth and safe classroom environment.

Here, I've felt pretty ineffectual. God bless my "good" classes (and students) to balance the scales.

struelle · Joined: 16 May 2003 Posts: 2372 Location: Shanghai

clarrie · Joined: 05 Apr 2005 Posts: 75

Document (v.)/inform - write reports often and write long ones!; every now and then embarass them; play mind games with them - 'over-the-top' attention one day, ignore them the next; give them the marks they 'deserve' - fail 'em; wave the documentation in front of the administration's 'eyes' when they ask you to reconsider!

I have found that Chinese admnitration hates long-winded, detailed explanations of events and they will either do something to 'solve' the problem to stop YOU writing to them or they'll ignore you after which the presentation of documents becomes more 'sweet!

kev7161 · Joined: 06 Feb 2004 Posts: 5880 Location: Suzhou, China

Of course, this is part of the problem:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050703/ap_on_hi_te/china_kicking_the_net

Between classes, students RAN to the one computer at the front of the class to play video games for 10 minutes. If I used their classroom, I had to force them away from the damned thing. Not a couple of times, I'd have missing students and I'd go find them in their classroom - - playing on the computer! "Ill", indeed!