Job Discussion Forums

[Twisting in the Wind]

[Wolf]

China?

I was reminded of my days in Japan. I had two husband and wife teams during my time there. In both cases the wife was stronger, but she just refused the level-up until her husband was ready (it was kind of like having an assistant teacher, as she tried to teach her husband.) Another class was an older couple who were both rank beginners. They loved to argue in class, and it really didn't bother me much. Both couples were good students and did try.

My most massive problem was that many of our students were conned/suckered/browbeaten into signing on for English lessons, and so they had little intrinsic motivation to learn. However, this led to a dislike of my company's advertising processes rather than a dislike for my students.

[denise]

[Kurochan]

It's a real bummer to have a mentally ill student in your class. The ones I have had have been pitiful rather than scary. One boy was shunned and ridiculed by the rest of the boys in class (although I made them quit that). The girls just sort of pitied him. Sometimes he'd be normal, sometimes he'd be agitated and talk to himself. Once I asked a school official, "OK, theoretically, if I had a student with mental problems, what should I do," and the person said, "Well! He shouldn't be in school!" Luckily, he got help outside of school and is doing OK now. He also went abroad to study, which has been helpful to him, b/c family pressure was part of what was making him crack up.

Another weird kind of student to deal with is the crypto-gay student. There's this one kid at my school who has no friends and latches onto the foreign teachers. He asks us to read his poetry, which comes across as really homo-erotic. Nobody really knows if they should address this with him or not. Like, "You seem to have special feelings for your drill instructor..." I do wonder if he's gay, but doesn't consciously know it, or hasn't named it to himself. It could be good for him to realize what's going on with him, or he could freak out and throw himself out a window. He's generally sort of off-kilter, and if somebody asked me, "Which of your former students would be most likely to commit suicide," I'd say him. So, everybody treads carefully. Nobody knows how to address the issue, so they ignore it.

But, the lowest of the low to me are belligerent students. I've never had any while I've been in China, but I had them when I was a grad student in the US. What's interesting to me is that the worst ones have been female. There was this one girl who harassed me throughout one semester and even into the next (she sent me e-mails like, "You'd better have my grade changed or you'll regret it"). At first, my department was sympathetic to her, but they figured out she was just a huge troublemaker. She was a pathological liar; she'd pump you for information about yourself, and then say, "Oh really, my dad was a _______ too" or whatever to try to get herself on your good side. She said probably my all-time weirdest student comment: "I don't think it's fair you lowered my grade on this test just because I got things wrong!" I had another female student who got in my face and shouted at me because she didn't like her grade. A friend of mine once had to take out a restraining order against a female student who slashed her tires over a grade.

Anybody else had violent/threatening students? What sex were they?

[Twisting in the Wind]

On the other post I made: ("Favorite/Worst Nationalities to Teach") I observed that the only time I have felt really afraid in the classroom was with a FEMALE Colombian student. I dunno. Maybe it's because women have less overt power in most societies and less physical strength that they feel they have to threaten and use overkill to get what they want? I'm not sure. I'm interested to see what other Dave's readers have to say about this.

As for the crypto gay student, hmmm. That's one I didn't think of, maybe because although I've had them in class, I've never had any problems with them--maybe because I teach adults. Could be they're "crypto" because being openly gay is not accepted in their cultures.

[dreadnought]

Talking of the Chinese, when I was teaching in England there was a very old Chinese woman in my false beginners class. On the first day I asked them all their names and she replied confidently and fluently 'My name is Dr Choi'. My initial thought was that she might be in the wrong level. However, over the next two weeks I discovered that her answer to EVERY question I asked was 'My name is Dr Choi'. The other thing she did was to repeat, in a low mumble, everything I said in class: explanations, instructions, questions. The only damn time she wouldn't repeat things was when I wanted her to; then she just normally stared at me with a beatific smile on her face.

The problem was that it was a mixed nationality group and there were no other Chinese speakers in the class so I couldn't get anyone to explain things to her. Finally, after two weeks a young Taiwanese girl joined the group and I thought 'great, she can explain to the good Doctor what I want her to do'. After talking to her for about five minutes in rapid Chinese, the Taiwanese girl turned to me and said: 'I don't understand her'. A little chat with her after the lesson revealed that Mrs Choi was, how can I put it, a little senile and didn't really make any sense in her own language either. She actually stayed in the class for another two weeks, learnt absolutely nothing, though her commmand of the expression 'My name is Dr Choi' certainly improved.

Psychologically imbalanced students? I've had them. When I was teaching in Greece I had a teenage boy in my class who would eat his coursebook. Literally. He would sit there tearing out strip after strip and stuffing it in his mouth. After a few days of this, I got the secretary to phone his parents to try and do something about him and they said, 'Oh, we were rather hoping you would do something about him. We can't control him and he's already seeing a psychiatrist. We thought sending him to classes might instill a bit of discipline in him'.

Students in completely the wrong level? Oh yes. In Morocco I had a complete beginner in my intensive TOEFL preparation class. Unfortunately he was the son of the head of immigration and we needed to keep the father happy to make sure the teachers at the school got their visas. This poor guy came for six hours every day for six weeks and sat in blank incomprehension while we did exercises on subjunctives and dependent clauses. In fact, he took the TOEFL exam shortly after, and scored statistically lower than if he'd just guessed on every single question. I consider that quite a feat on his part.

Married couples? Great fun. Mine also had a little twist in that the couple I had were going through some serious marital problems, refused to work with each other and sarcastically laughed when the other made any mistakes in open class.


You can't beat teaching ESL, can you? I'm sure accountants don't have these problems.

[J-Pop]

dreadnought,
There have been a number of really good anecdotes in this thread. However, yours have got to be some of the best.
(Some sort of sad, too)

Hey, don't worry I alway sound like this, why?
Cuz, "My name is Dr Choi"

[Twisting in the Wind]

[scot47]

Nice to see some negativity instead of the "Gosh, golly isn't ESL great" school of EFLology.

A reminder of why I work in a nice sane country like Saudi Arabia.

[october]

complaints, complaints....
How about young "darlings" spitting their food while they eat and they just have to tell you something, and little bits of their sandwich are flying towards your face?? or coming home with a head full of LICE!!! Or entering a classroom full of sweaty, red-faced, stincky kids? Hey, has anybody been vomited on yet??? aint i lucky?

I love teaching. [/b]

[nomadder]

[Roger]

The word "hate" is way too strong for me, but I sincerely dislike the following:
- Chinese parents who complain their child "wants to study 5 English
words a DAY! I detest these people because they suffered so much
during their own school days, and all they know is how to perpetuate
a cruel, and largely meaningless education!
- Local colleagues who drill the hell holes into the minds of young
Chinese learners without understanding what they are doing or
undertstanding English properly.
When I take over, I have to deal with students whose minds are
impaired, whose reflexes are those of parrots, and whose
English is outlanidsh!
- I positively detest certain adults aged 40 to 55 who honestly be-
lieve they can buy English from me piece-meal, and become perfect
at it in 3 to 6 months! Believe it or not, but whole generations of
CHinese did not complete their education in the 70's, and their
minds are stunted; if they happen to have an influential position
or run a business of their own, they tend to be self-delusional
about their ability to acquire perfect English!

[Roger]

The word "hate" is way too strong for me, but I sincerely dislike the following:
- Chinese parents who complain their child "wants to study 5 English
words a DAY! I detest these people because they suffered so much
during their own school days, and all they know is how to perpetuate
a cruel, and largely meaningless education!
- Local colleagues who drill the hell holes into the minds of young
Chinese learners without understanding what they are doing or
undertstanding English properly.
When I take over, I have to deal with students whose minds are
impaired, whose reflexes are those of parrots, and whose
English is outlanidsh!
- I positively detest certain adults aged 40 to 55 who honestly be-
lieve they can buy English from me piece-meal, and become perfect
at it in 3 to 6 months! Believe it or not, but whole generations of
Chinese did not complete their education in the 70's, and their
minds are stunted; if they happen to have an influential position
or run a business of their own, they tend to be self-delusional
about their ability to acquire perfect English! It goes without
saying that the very same people won't accept that you tell them
how to study English!

[Kurochan]

[Twisting in the Wind]

[quote="Roger"]The word "hate" is way too strong for me, but I sincerely dislike the following:
- Chinese parents who complain their child "wants to study 5 English
words a DAY! I detest these people because they suffered so much
during their own school days, and all they know is how to perpetuate
a cruel, and largely meaningless education!

Amen to that, Roger!! That should've been one of my original categories. Add to that Korean parents, who are as bad or worse. In the LA area the Asian parents want their little darlings to succeed soooooo badly that they send them to cram schools after their regular school and on weekends. Sometimes to private ESL schools where the curriculum is just not appropriate for the young person, but the school is so friggin' greedy it won't turn these students (read: their parents' money) away. I have had many of these students. They are exhausted and their brains seriously warped from too little unstructured time.(Besides the cram schools, there is Chinese, Korean or Japanese school, piano lessons, organized sports activities and school clubs, church or temple activities, and regular family activities etc., etc., etc.)

I could be making a lot of money, like my colleagues in this area, doing privates or teaching at these after school cram schools, but I refuse because it just kills me to see basically good kids turned into robo students on prozak for the sake of getting a high score on the SAT for the sake of getting into Stanford or Princeton. And what happens if (gasp) they fail? The kid loses face. The family loses face. Uncle Ying in Beijing loses face. And sometimes suicides result.

And lord help you if you try to reason with some of these parents to go easier on the kid. In the rare event that they even speak English well enough to converse with you, the conversation will go somthing like this:

YOU:" I think little Ying Ying is overtaxed. Do you think maybe she's (you're) overdoing it a little on the extra-curricular activities?"
THEM" "No."
YOU: He seems depressed and falls asleep all the time in my class.
THEM: I'll ask the doctor to write for more prozack and amphetamines.
YOU: UMmm. You know, when I was a child, I had a LOT more unstructured time. Unstructured time is very good because it allows the child to just be instead of always having to produce, and allows the brain to process what he's learned during the day. Having unstructured time didn't hurt me. I became a teacher....

At this point you will probably get a look that says, "But we want so much more from little Ying Ying than just to become a teacher."

There is no way to win with these parents. I have tried. It's very sad.