Job Discussion Forums

[Chris_Crossley]

[go_ABs]

[Roger]

I vividly remember my first classes at a teachers' college - one of the country's first to have been exposed to western influences courtesy of a collaborative agreement between that school and the Texas Baptist University.

I was told that in any problem case I must talk to the class' Speaker.
There usually were two of them. I soon found that they invariably sided with the culprit(s) because they were, after all, their peers.
i doubt the Chinese teachers were disempowered in such a way. But yes, foreign teachers do not enjoy the respect we wish we had.

[clarrie]

No big deal really, I could have stayed in class and used a number of other control/punishement mechanisms, but I'd had a tiring week/day and really couldn't be bothered! The particular student and indeed the class needed to see that they did not dictate to me how things operate in my class.

(Chinese) students are very big on this idea of responsibility as it relates to a teacher and their rights as students, but they usually fail to see/acknowledge their responsibilities!

The person central to the incident became non persona gratis (sp?) and I think that hurt more than the fact that I told her she was the rudest, most disrescpectful student of any nationality I had ever taught anywhere!

There is something very powerful about a person in a position of responsibility not acknowledging one's presence and self worth - silence is indeed a powerful tool!

[lionheartuk]

I had no problem with telling students to leave the class if they were not interested. If they didn't want to learn then I didn't want to teach them. I never had one student who refused to leave. Other times I would stand the student at the back of the class or next to me at the front.

I only once walked out of the class but the some students came after me and asked me to return saying they would listen and learn.
Generally I had good students and always had a Chinese teacher in the class with me who approved of my methods and sometimes did the same

At the beginning of every lesson I would make sure the students desks were cleared of everthing that was not being used in my lesson. If any book etc was used I would take it off them and give it back a couple of days later. The same applied to walkmans and mp3's.

One time I had a real go at the students and the next lesson I asked the head of year to sit on the lesson to observe and keep the students quiet. It worked because after that they behaved.
I had no worries about reporting any students to the FAO because I knew she would do something about it.

With some students it took a while to get through to them but nearer the end of the semester they were a lot more responsive. Maybe because it was getting nearer to the tests I had to give them.

[ChinaMovieMagic]

Key Missing Element:
English should be an ELECTIVE
(What's that? Election?)
There's a Discovery Channel show on China's Olympic Training Camps.
No slackers there.
Au contraire

My own solution is to go around the system...
...to be a Consultant rather than an Employee...
...by being a Developer/Trainer/Director
of/for English Drama Clubs in various schools

[Freestyle T]

I've had horror classes and classes of angels. It generally boiled down to how much of a proportion of the class were the "Bad boys/ hard-arses/ no-gooders". If it was a large proportion, the rest of the class generally gave up and went with the flow. Those were the horror classes. If it was only 5 out of 60, though, then it was easy to marginalise the useless ones and get on with teaching.

My horror classes: I tried kicking them out. Got told that I couldn't do that, they had to be physically present at all times, even though the students themselves were happy to be let out.

I tried humiliation - making them stand up and answer a question, using info I knew they hadn't been listening for. Didn't work - their classmates, no matter how much I tried to prevent them, always supplied the answers.

I tried silence. It was sort of successful. The downside was that the good students had to sit through these 20-30 minute periods of doing nothing until the bad kids finally gave in and did what I asked.

In the end, I had three classes where I failed more than 50% of the students. The most pathetic thing was all of these useless little pr*cks coming up to me complaining about how they'd worked hard and done what I'd asked all along. The self-serving, blatant lies and arrogant nerve of these kids! My God, I'd never seen anything like it. I was absolutely disgusted with their attitude, their belief that their marks should be served up to them on a platter. These kids - I used to think they would be tomorrow's leaders in business and so on, but now I know they'll be lucky to end up working at McDonalds - were university students!

The admin backed me up on this, surprisingly. They asked me to review the marks, which led to a couple of revisions (seems some of them can't even get their own student numbers right), but I held firm on the rest, and they supported me. It caused some major waves at the school, but I explained - they couldn't just do the exam and nothing else and expect to pass. If they were going to muck up in class, I would deduct examination marks. Seems the message didn't get through.

And yet, and yet... my angel classes - so far removed as to be from a different planet! Wonderful kids. Though there was a rumour that they'd heard what befell the bad classes and knew I wasn't kidding.

[kev7161]

I had the exact same situation as FreestyleT: I had a few all-but-a-few-students horror classes from hell and then several all-but-a-few-students wonderful, heavenly classes that I LOVED teaching! This made the days interesting, that's for sure!

[winterlynx]

I'm in a completely private school. We have a 'Progressive Discipline Policy' that works most times, even with students who won't behave for the teacher. The administration is very supportive and we find solutions together. Makes a huge difference when there's a team approach and it usually works out well for the child.

We've developed some ability to spot real bad ones before they even enroll, and can generally persuade the parent to go elsewhere. We're also prepared to 'give the money back' and 'unenroll' the child. Maybe every school doesn't have that legal option, but we haven't even been challenged.

If worst comes to worst and a child just won't behave like a primate should, regardless of the intervention of professionals, we have a 'special' class that is 'more suitable to the child's learning style,' if you get my drift. Basically, we isolate the bad actors so at least they don't degrade the learning experience of real students.

You really do need a progressive school to pull this stuff off, but a school can control the classroom environment, even in China. If you're just a lone teacher though, it can't always be done. I think walking out of the classroom has to be an option. Any school who will discipline a foreign teacher for responsibily refusing to teach under unacceptable circumstances simply needs to be reminded about how difficult it is to get a good foreign teacher.

[virago]