Korean Job Discussion Forums

[winterfall]

I just need to vent. I teach at a tech high school and man I thought there was something seriously wrong last year when the deaf kids were the only ones that could learn the phonics lesson and no one else could. But this week really tops it off.

We've got a special section for the mentally challenged cause we've got so many of them, around 31. Spread out all over grades 1, 2, and 3. Most of em are 1st years. And the school just stuck em all in one class.

What I teach is brain dead easy. Every week they get a pictionary (A vocabulary list with picture meanings), a simple review worksheet with matching, a crossword puzzle, or word search, and a reading comprehension paper, followed by a simple dialogue or drawing activity. I mean pretty easy stuff, this is forced spoon feeding. No thinking involved, all you have to do is look at the Pictionary and look at the other worksheet and just copy and paste.

But somehow, the mentally challenged kids are consistently outperforming the "Normal" kids. There is something SERIOUSLY wrong with that. Everything's the same: lessons, material, delivery.

I have no idea how this is possible. Can anyone chime in? The normal kids are always complaining its too hard or they don't understand even though we always run through a few examples and they get thorough Korean translations.

I understand they don't care but, then why even bother complaining? Just sleep, that's what the ones who really don't care do. They come to school to sleep or they just never come. I'm just mystified on why they pretend to care when they obviously don't. It's frustrating, it sucks up class time and energy from me and the KET when we could spend it better helping the ones that actually want to learn something

[thegadfly]

Ok, do you seriously not know why the "special needs" kids are outperforming the "normal" kids? (Not being sarcastic, but it seems obvious to me.)

Motivation and attitude -- the lower-level kids are "hungrier," whereas the "normal" kids are complacent and/or apathetic.

There have been years where I taught the highest and second highest level classes of a certain grade at an academically challenging hakwon. Nearly every year that it happened, my "second" ranked class outperformed my "first" ranked class, nearly across the board. The classes would switch positions on test scores and performance by the mid term.

I used the same materials and texts, approached the work the same way (with some variation based on the personality of the class, but basically the same stuff in both classes). The only difference I could see is that the number 2 class KNEW it was number 2, and wanted to change that...whereas the number 1 class thought that there was no reason to work at it, since they were number 1.

Something similar happened in two places I taught in the US -- I taught gang kids in Houston and "alternative" kids in Michigan, and had many students that worked WAY harder, and even outperformed the students in my "honors" classes (I put the honors in quotes because, at the time, honors seemed to mean "grubbing for grades without doing any real work or putting any thought into anything").

I would guess that your students know their labels, and perhaps your "special needs" students would prefer to be thought of as "normal," and think that doing better in class is a way to accomplish that. Your "normal" class just doesn't care....

...and yes, apathetic students are the most frustrating thing I think I can encounter, so vent away...you have my sympathy....