Korean Job Discussion Forums

[celticjay]

I go through a teaching rollercoaster. I feel that I'm not adequetly trained to teach ESl sometimes. I've been doing it almost two years and one class will be great while the next will be average at best. Am I alone in this thinking? Is anyone else up and down like a toilet seat with regards to their confidence as a teacher.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Of course not. I go from great class to mediocre class to great class to hyper-active class to great class to too-dead-tired-to-do-much class to great class all week long.

Hang in there and be positive! Your next class might be the best of the week!

[UncleAlex]

I sometimes feel that I've been a bad teacher when I regret having become
visibly angry and upset in front of my unruly groups of students instead of remaining
cool, calm, and collected. If I sense that I have compromised my status in any way
before the students, then I temporarily feel like a failure.

[C.M.]

I did that just last night. Got irritated with a group of high-school students after a near perfect day. Back to work today; forgotten about tommorow.

[crazylemongirl]

Sometimes. I think I'm used to getting a lot more praise than I would in Korea. Often I would recieve a lot o criticism from the prinipal and/or other teachers about my teaching yet when the education office came to do assessments they were always good I even recieved some sort of commendation from them.

[Ya-ta Boy]

[UncleAlex]

I agree that a teacher should take the different personalties of students
and the 'collective personality?' of each group into account when conduct-
ing a class. Although the teacher may be using the same lesson plan with
seventeen different groups, as in a public school, he should make some
adjustments or minor changes to accommodate the different body of pupils.
If a teacher believes that his lesson plan should go exactly as it has
been written down with each group, or an individual one, and stay in sync
with the time slots that have been arranged for each section of it, then he
might feel that he has failed as a teacher when things don't go according to
an exact plan.

[celticjay]

It's been 4 or so hours now from my initial post and yes I'm fine now. The rollercoaster is on the upswing, doomed for the inevitable free fall once again.

Good advice about changing expectations for different classes. I intend to have some flexibility with each lesson plan I make, in a effort to adapt the ever changing atmosphere.

Thanks for all the posts. Sometimes just venting it is enough.

[captain kirk]

Aside from xenophobic indifference, management often aims a 'belittlement ray' at you to attempt to shrink your yarbles over time and make you feel insignificant (thus you're more managable). Resist!

[kathycanuck]

I can relate. Had a great day today, lots of positive energy, productive classes. Yesterday, I was down with my cold, no energy, felt like I'd really let the students down, lackluster classes, grumpy teacher. I think all you can do is let the bad ones slide and try to start the next day with a better attitude. No-one can be 100% on their game all the time, but I think feeling bad about the less-than-perfect classes is a good sign...you obviously still care.

[Homer]

Put it all in perspective.

Bad classes happen. You just need to put those bad ones behind you and move on as we all get those bad classes sometimes.

What you need to avoid is letting one bad class affect you so much that it spills over into your other classes.