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Roger
Joined: 19 Jan 2003
Posts: 9138
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 Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 4:49 am Post subject: |
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Well, a dilemma, is it?
Maybe you should take a different approach:
Penalise those miscreants by having them write a 100 word essai during every lesson they interrupt or come late.
Ask each of them to write something utterly different so that no two students can help each other!
I am tired of this problem, and I have various stratagems, but in the final analysis it's an uncultural phenomenon (or call it, if you are PC-minded, "cultural").
I notice that students are making a lot of din in every class here at our university - my CHinese teacher colleagues use tiny microphones (but ry powerful and effective!) to shout over the din of student-generated noise without much effort.
This seems to me the typical Chinese way of "solving" a problem: instead of disciplining the rowdies, they pile on their own noise production!
Maybe it's the Chinese language's fault? Can you whisper in this lingo? I hardly think so! In an old LONELY PLANET, I read
"...Chinese is spoken at 100 decibels and at 140 kilopond per hour..." |
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Madmaxola
Joined: 04 Jul 2004
Posts: 238
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| Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:24 am Post subject: |
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| Of course I tell a student who is talking and disrupting a lesson to please be quiet (and I do say please and thank you quite frequently in my classroom). I tell this student 2 or 3 or 4 times. If he still insists on interrupting the lesson after this, then it is time for him to leave. |
You say please and thank you to your students? Why don't you wear a sign saying "kick me" in chinese?
The thing about discipline is... you can't tell the students, you have to show them.
You gotta get guts and be mean. You gotta make it painfully obvious and shameful for the kid.
Anyways, that's china, good luck. |
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Madmaxola
Joined: 04 Jul 2004
Posts: 238
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| Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:26 am Post subject: |
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| By the way, you can't rely on your boss. He only cares about kids in the class and money. |
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Chris_Crossley
Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 1797
Location: Still in the centre of Furnace City, PRC, after eight years!!!
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| Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 3:29 pm Post subject: Bums on seats |
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| Madmaxola wrote: |
| By the way, you can't rely on your boss. He only cares about kids in the class and money. |
In other words, it's the old maxim of any educational "establishment" that regards money as equally important as, if not more so than, students, namely "bums on seats". Universities and colleges care just as much about the money coming in, so you shouldn't be at all surprised about the attitude of bosses of private language schools being so money-minded, especially if the bosses themselves are not bona fide teachers, but businesspeople who are experienced in management. They may not have ever taught a class of kids in their entire lives, but that is not their jurisdiction at all, whereas, as teachers, it is plainly ours.
The bosses of private language schools are, as far as we teachers are concerned, there solely to help make the business bucketfuls of cash, and they, safe in the knowledge that they are, to put it in military terms, "behind the lines", are able to do this on the sweat and labour of those "in the front line". There may be sweat and tears (and, hopefully, no blood!) involved in teaching kids, but that is something that we teachers have to accept whenever we step into a classroom of any sort in China, as is the unfortunate realisation that the people in charge don't give a monkey's about the struggles we may have with the kids.
Simply put, struggling usually leads to complaining, and complaining usually leads to trouble and headaches for all concerned. If the parents, who are paying through the nose for these courses which are supposed to help their kids miraculously improve their knowledge of English, hear complaints about their kids' behaviour, they, in turn, complain to the school, insinuating that the teachers must "obviously" not be good at their jobs. Teachers are made to be convenient scapegoats, yet there are bosses for whom trouble is like water off a duck's back. I should know, having worked for a couple of such people in the past. |
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