Korean Job Discussion Forums

[rapier]

Do you have any classes that you've just abandoned to the anarchic chaos that they naturally are?
I feel bad about it but For some reason, I just lack the drive to fight with them any more. I always have them last thing in the day, at the end of a long shift on fridays. I'm already worn out by the time i teach them, which I guess is a significant factor. Added to that, they're mostly motormouth 13 year olds who constantly leap out their chairs or talk over me...I just can't be bothered getting angry anymore..
at first i made a point of setting the Korean teacher onto them. it works for maybe half an hour before they're back to monkeys again...besides, the teacher who offered to help has more than enough of her own work. I hate involving korean teachers because the kids than realise that your only authority is dependant on another teacher..
I refuse to wear myself out getting angry or shouting...no energy left for all that...

[some waygug-in]

Not anymore, but I used to have 3 or 4 like that. About once a week I would find something that worked for one of those groups, sometimes 2, but never all of them. The Korean teachers fared no better with them. The kids had gotten used to the idea that they could have their own way, any kind of resistance to that was futile.

The best I could do with some of them was to give them puzzles, word searches and crosswords to keep them busy for the first half of class. Sometimes this only worked for 15 minutes. Then all they would do was play a game. It was hopless to try and get them to do any book work.

The joy of kids in hagwans.

Good Luck

[busan_boy2000]

The op sounds like my friday as well. I have a few classes where I am at a lost - I don't care to yell anymore. The worst part is that these classes are the most boring for the teacher and totally useless for the kids - all parties lose in this situation. I feel the worst about the 1 kid - the one that actually wants to learn something - but I am usually to busy pulling some kid off another or picking up a desk (even monkeys have to have some rules). You really nailed the problem as well - it becomes pointless with some classes when the only authority figure is the Korean teachers and like you said - that only last for 15-30 mins.

Sometimes I wonder why I...

[Horangi Munshin]

I've gotten quite good at zoning out the little pricks when I have to. I used to get bent out of shape and try to get all the kids working. One particular class was half no-hopers and half kids who wanted to study. I found myself wasting too much time disciplining the little brats, to the detriment of the hard working kids. I didn't give up on the class but I did give up on the bad students. I concentrated my efforts on the good kids and ignored the brats. The boss would spy on my classes and intervene sometimes, I didn't look good but at least the good kids were making progress.

Like some waygug-in said, the kids are used to getting their own way, so things will not change anytime soon. My contract is up thank God. I'm moving on to hopefully something better.

[ulsanchris]

I have a class that i find tough to handle but i feel it is up to me to try to get the kids into the class. Being that its the end of the day for the op makes it even more tough. At my first job i had a class like that. After a long day with no breaks i had no energy left to teach.
I would reccomend reading some books on teaching and classroom management. there are stratgies out there to help with difficult classes, it is just a matter of finding the right one. This can take awhile and none of them will work overnight.
For those of you that give up on a class, yeah its discouraging, but hang in there and try to find new ways to keep the kids interest. Run out of ideas of your own? Try someone else's ideas. Go to the idea cook book on this site or get a book on teaching.

i recomend David Paul's Teaching English to Children in Asia. its very good.

[just because]

I have a class that just don't want to do anything. All of them and when I say that won't want to do anything, I'm not joking. They don't want to talk in either Korean or English. i asked them once if they are happier looking at the wall and they said yes.
That was 2 months ago and has become one of my favorite classes as i can just chill out.
I know it is SOO unprofessional but I battled them for 6 months and they hated it. Its the only class I have ever done that. We do the hello, how are yous, then read some vocab and thats it. Good and bad at the same time.]
They are middle 3rd. grade

[waterbaby]

[Holyjoe]

I don't want to get on your cases too much, but I think that "giving up" on a class is an entirely inappropriate thing to do.
I have been at my new school for 3 weeks now, and the previous foreign teacher at the school had done absolutely nothing with the kids during his time there. He'd lost control of the kids, let them get their own way and spent 30-40 minutes of every class handing out word searches, crossword puzzles or playing bingo/Scrabble/hangman. The teacher was actually fired because of a lot of complaints from parents that their kids just weren't doing any studying in his class.

I don't consider hangman or word searches to be an integral part of my lessons and as such don't like to use them much - I feel "free" games (as opposed to language games related to the material we study) should be an occasional reward for good work, and treat them as such.

Of course, the students complain "old teacher used to play so many games" or "old teacher didn't make us study", and it's been a bit of a battle to actually get a normal class situation going - moving kids around or splitting them up for talking, putting out the bad kids & sending them to the director just has to be done, and it's not making me popular with the kids who were left unchecked to run riot before.
But I'd rather have a kid go home and "complain" to their parents that "teacher always wants to study" - it's what the parents wants, it's what my director wants.

So spare a thought for the teacher who will ultimately take over your anarchic classes when you leave...

[shawner88]

I don't think these guys really know what you're going through there Rapier. I feel for ya. I had a class like that before, it was awful. Not only that but it was my last class of the day on a Friday too. (Where do you work?) No matter what you do they don't listen, because you're a foreigner and they know they can get away with it, like the substitute teacher back home. Middle school was always my worst class, especially if the class was fairly big.
It's not your fault. I wouldn't feel guilty that you've given up on them. Just do the best you can to get through it. Can you use a copy machine and copy wordsearch puzzles? Get some of the really hard ones that will take them most of the class.

Check here http://bogglesworld.com/wordsearches.htm



or here:

http://www.thepotters.com/puzzles.html

These ones look small, just print and enlarge on the copy machine.

If they finish early give them another one or make them write the words ones time on the back of the sheet. Takes them forever, flipping the paper over. You may make a reward system so they actually do them. Such as 500 won for the first person to do the puzzle and write the words 1 time. After class collect the puzzles and take them home so your boss doesn't find them, if he's the type that would care.


Hope this works!

[rapier]

Thanks for the advice there guys: shawner- unfortunately my school has a strict syllabus of different books to work through and deviating from this with puzzles etc is not allowed...its just that the books are a bit monotonous and boring...
Busan boy: good point, I spend far too much time trying to keep the worst kids in line and nothing on the 3 or 4 good kids who want to work.. i guess giving them a lot more attention while being little more than an occasional bouncer to the bad kids is probably the best way to go now...

[busan_boy2000]

Good call on Bogglesworld, that site has saved my skin a few times. I agree with the other poster about how it sucks to come into a school where the old teacher did nothing but play games for a year - I have realized that is what the last teacher did. It seems like all they did for a year was play hangman - I base this on my observations as to when i do have game time (the end of the week) they don't know any games. They think all my games suck most of the time (but I think they are too lazy to bother to learn them) so when I ask them waht games are good the only one they know is hangman. Hangman is sooo stupid and I am amazed that this is all these middle schoolers know how to play....geeesh! I remeber at that age when the French teacher or wahtever said game time we had a bunch that we fought over to play - never hangman - hangman was something you doodled on your notebook with your neighbor.

Oh, but what I wanted to say, even though the old teacher palyed hangman for 12 months I am not finding it easy to be the teacher that is implementing an actual work regime. The kids complain now about me as I am trying to get them to work and in this poor economic climate (over saturated hagwon industy) it is the mommies that hold the cards when little Jimmy is not happy. So I may not necessarily agree with the post that one should carry on without regard for thier popularity. Hagwons are babysitting services most of the time. The mommies are usually in charge, and it may be prudent to let everyone be hapy and let the kids run wild and play hangman unfortunalty.

On the other hand, it isn't hard to find a new job teaching.

Check out the other threads on classroom managment, the one on reward dollars sounds like a great idea for some of our situations.

[Mr. Pink]

ACK you are bringing back memories of some horrible classes!!!

The first really horrible one I had was a Saturday class. I hated teaching it, and I knew the mom was always outside with her ear to the door. So I figured if she complained I would get moved. I did a crap job for like a month straight in that class, and yup mom complained, problem solved, I lost that class.

I think the worst ones I had were Peek-A-Boo type classes. You know, the 3pm kindergarten/grade 1 kids that act TOTALLY evil. I had these 3 boys that were totally evil. They are probably terrorizing their elementary schools as I write this...I begged, pleaded, asked my supervisor to split them up. She wouldn't believe me. The month after I left that hawgwon they had to split it up as the new teacher was going to quit haha.

How did I deal with them? LOTS of coffee before that class. Sometimes praying helped! Tried candy...didnt work. Tried the sticker thing...didn't work. I am ashamed to say NOTHING worked, so I just gave them coloring to do my last couple months and rode it out.

[buddy bradley]

7:20 - 8:10. Middle-Schoolers. Princess has best English. Attitude. Male student who refuses to talk. No hello, no thanks - nothing.

8:10 - 9:10. Nightmare time. Shy high school students with fair command of English language. Boss insists on sending girl to class who cannot speak, let alone read, so I have to ignore her the whole time. Rest of class, when presented with activity that I've spent a fair amount of time on, gives in with an "it's too difficult" or an "I don't know". Spend a lot of time talking to myself in class.

I don't want to think about this now.

[ulsanchris]

I don't want to knock anybodies teaching ability or commitment to their classes, but I think for those of you who have or are thinking about giving up on a class better start trying again.
Shawner wrote

[some waygug-in]

One thing I found that worked for the really young classes was card games. Crazy 8's especially. The kids really get into playing it.

It may take you a few minutes to show them how the game works, but they like playing it. Especially if there is some kind of reward for the winner. But you have to be careful with this, as they tend to start cheating.

After they get used to that game, if you want them to use some useful vocabulary, get the student cards for Let's Go. You can play a go fish type game with the "non-matched pair" cards, or you can play a type of crazy cards with these. You will have to buy some colored stickers (5 - 6 colors) and categorize the cards. Choose a few cards at random, and write "crazy" on the sticker. This way the kids are at least playing games where they have to try and use the vocabulary.


If you want to get them to start reading, you can have picture cards with the name printed below. (mouse, house, bird etc) The kids have to match the first letter of the card with the previous card. You can also put letters on the stickers, so they can match them that way. You can make a lot of cards that have letters that the students have trouble with "ex: L - R , B - P, F - V etc.

For more advanced students, they have to match the cards according to word families , fox - box - ox, hit - sit - mit etc.

You can also make your own cards with your own categories, "emotions, weather, adjectives, actions, time etc. Just because they are playing games, doesn't mean they aren't learning. This is one point I tried to get accross to my last director, but she didn't seem to understand.

Anyway, good luck.