Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Welcome to hogwan!

I can't imagine most of those things happening at my (real) school.

[Alias]

This is standard behavior for a hagwon. Don't let the self professed superstar teachers say you can change the situation because there is next to nothing you can do.

[Demophobe]

[Kimchieluver]

They are right. It is up to your director or the korean teachers to lay down some kind of ground rules for the students to follow. If you don't have their support you have absolutely no chance of changing the kids behavior by yourself.

Sorry to say this, but once "bad behavior" or "disrespect the Native teacher" culture sets in, the hogwan is essentially a permanent bad place to work. That is the difference between a good hogkwan and a bad one (especially for the native teacher). The good ones actually have a system for rewarding the students and will support the native teacher. The bad ones just see you as a teaching monkey and as long as the kids aren't going home and saying "The FT put me out in the hall for 5 minutes today" they will just let things slide.

Another difference between a good hagwon and a bad one is that a good one actually cares if the student is learning. Bad ones just want the money to flow in.

So in all honesty, I would start checking for other jobs. There are good hogwans out there and there are adult classes too. Get out of that craphole while you have only wasted 3 months of your life.

[Qinella]

[ChopChaeJoe]

I find that success lies in constantly lowering expectations. Because students can sometimes learn very quickly, it is easy to want to much from them on a regular basis.

Makin children compete can be very effective. It can also reduce the slowest student or students to tears, so the competition should include some ridiculously easy scoring along with the more difficult. Dividing the class into teams works for me.

There should be some kind of reward/punihment aspect, whatever works is the only advice I have for that.

It also helps to be attractive and entertaining.

Learning a foreign language can be very, very stressful. English is a very difficult language to learn. Think about how poorly some of the kids use English in your home country. Hmmmmmm.

Never forget that these are kids. You have to give them a reason to do well.

[Big Mac]

Bring the icy middle school students chocolate.

That's what I did and from that day forward they were completely different. To me it was worth the cost of the chocolate to not have to suffer through the cold stares.

[own_king]

I hate to be the one to say this, but this has to be your fault. I've worked in hagwans for over three years and I have never had a class behave in ways you described. Kids calling you an American pig or throwing books at you? Are you kidding? That's outrageous. If any kid did that to me, it would be a long time before they saw the inside of my classroom. Saying to a kid "That's not nice - don't be such a big meanie" isn't gonna cut it. I've seen a couple other teachers have problems with classes (not that extreme), but they were weak and ineffectual, who knew nothing about classroom managament and discipline. I suspect it is the same with you. When I got these classes, their behavior was totally different. And there is no way I am a "superstar teacher". But I'm just gonna berate your efforts because you get enough of that from the kids apparently. I'll also give you some advice and take it or not.

You'll get a lot of people here telling you to give them chocolates or candy, try positive reinforcement, blah blah blah trying to demonstrate how enlightened they are. But let's face it, your situation seems to be well beyond the "Give them a chocolate" phase, unless it's laced with valium. I did my BEd and know all the theories of classroom management and with all the importance that has been placed on positive reinforcement, some teachers and apparently otherwise educated people, have forgotten that there are transgressions that need to be punished. What you need to do is get tough with them or they will never respect you. Don't be afraid to yell at a kid and throw another kid out, books, bookbag, and all. You can do that here, maybe not in Canada, but you're not in Kansas anymore Dorothy. That will have quite an effect. You'll be surprised how quiet the class gets after that. Write their names on the board, three strikes and you're out. And stick to it. Send the offender to the director or hallway. I guess it depends on what support you get from the admin at your school. You'll see the other kids fall in line if they see you are serious and not gonna put up with any more garbage. I usually do this the first week or two with a new class and then lighten up more as the month(s) go by and that seems to work better. So, next time you get a new class do it from day one, but it's never too late. I've had kids standing in all four corners of a room, two out in the hall, if need be, until I had a couple girls left at the table who wanted to learn. The next day, there was no problem. If a kid falls asleep or falls off his chair, and is usually an a$$ take his chair away and make him stand for the rest of the class. If it happens with an otherwise good kid - he may just be tired especially middle school kids who work so hard. Allow him to go to the washroom and wash his face and give him a second chance. If you get flack from the director afterwards tell him to help or give you a freehand to take back control of your classroom. With hagwan directors, sometimes it's better to do something first and apologize later than ask for permission right away. If you follow this advice, I bet you'll have your classes under control in a week.

Now to other users here who are having a heart attack, at reading this please note that I wouldn't normally take such a hard line as this. I'm not Hitler or anything. Usually I teach my kids well, joke around with them, and am normally a pleasant guy, but I think we should all agree that this is not a normal situation. I'm pretty cool and level headed as long as the kids respect me and each other, but if you don't have that, then it makes it impossible to teach. You can have the best lesson plan in the world, and the best intentions to go along with it, but you also have to be able to deliver it in a meaningful and interesting fashion. And it's impossible to do if one kid is flicking boogers at another, while another is sending text messages, someone else is falling off his chair every few minutes to get a cheap laugh, and while some other kid in the back is trying to catch up on his beauty sleep. If you're gonna let his continue, you may as well forget about teaching, because you owe the kids more and they deserve better. Unless you make your classroom a safe and cool environment to be in, they couldn't care less about you or what you want to teach. Throw theory out the window and unlearn what the do-gooders and "superstar teachers" try to instill in you. You're in the real world now.

[ChopChaeJoe]

bravo, own_king, bravo.

[poet13]

good post own_king.

[Qinella]

own_king, how much success have you had using such tactics as yelling, throwing bookbags into the hall, exercise punishment, etc.? By success, I mean do you still have to do these things from time to time? Or were these tactics that you used for a couple of weeks and never had to use again with the same class?

I ask this because those are the types of things I tried with my first hagwon, and each tactic failed miserably. It wasn't until I learned (with much help from Tomato's posts) that the way to truly win your students over is with genuine kindness. It worked for me with all of my classes, right down to the absolute worst. See, I adopted an attitude that my students were all wonderful, and that even the attention-getting, disruptive types were just expressing themselves and should be appreciated as being individuals.

Yes, this may sound like liberal softy bs, but guess what? It worked so quickly and effectively for me. One week, maybe two weeks of this and the classrooms were mine. Now, mind you, I'm firm. The kids know there's a line they can cross with me, but my new rule has been to never yell, never say shut up, never toss out bookbags into the hall or make some punishment, and certainly not use a reward/sticker system. Kids want love. They want the good feeling they get from a teacher's approving smile. If you can get them addicted to that jeong feeling, it's often all you'll need to keep them in line.

You should be their friend.

As my current director reminded me, there essentially two ways to learn: great need and fun. These kids perceive no great need to learn English, especially in hagwons. You need to make a fun environment.

I had a class at my new hagwon that was causing some trouble. It came to the point that they dreaded my class, and I dreaded it, too. I had a talk with the director. He encouraged me to be more kind, smile more often, make the class more fun. Guess what? That's a great class now. We have a great time together. The only "punishment" I do anymore is removing a chair if there's a sleeper (or someone not sitting up straight), and one time I removed a problem child who had gotten completely out of control (calmly removed, had him do work supervised by other teachers, after class had a talk about how smart he is and how I'd really love to see him try harder).

This is my advice for those of you who wish to keep your sanity. They don't pay us enough to get all stressed out at work.

Q.

[ChopChaeJoe]

Q. I think that own_king is giving some better advice in this particular situation. Go back and read the OP message and think if there is any liklihood that advice such as yours would work.

This is not a typical bad class, and this is not a teacher that can employ the all-around love that you espouse. It's a mean class and a mean teacher. Order needs to first be regained in the classroom. After that, some tolerance and good-spiritness on the part of the teacher would complete the task.

IMHO.

[Demophobe]

What I am wondering is how on earth did the situation get so out of control?

The OP had problems from the get-go that were left unchecked. Now it's truly over for them at this particular school and it's time to learn from it and move on.

[Kimchieluver]

I have had to take over problem classes. Mainly because the last foreigners didn't give a damn. I used both discipline and positive reinforcement methods. I managed to get all but one class back on track. I was experienced at teaching by then, so it was not new to me. However, this does not work if the Korean teachers or the director is not backing your game. The one class I never managed to tame had two students that were children of the director's friends. Even the teachers called the class "crazy" and she meant it in a Korean way (not good).

If the directors or teachers aren't helping to enforce your rules/methods or are underminng your attempts, switch schools.

[Qinella]