Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Saxiif]

Since so many people get thrown into classrooms without any real training, how about a thread for practical teaching advice?

1. Act Happy: in my first two hagwons I was generally in a bad mood at work since they were crappy hagwons and the kids were horrible. My third hagwon was a lot better, so I generally was a lot happier in class and I didn't have a single discipline problem for months. I think the main source of the difference was that if you act like you hate being in class, why should the kids feel any different? I'm not saying act like a clown, just have a nice serene smile planted on your face the whole time and have a lot of positive energy and it'll help a lot.

Also just think back to school, I know you had at least one teacher who was pushing retirement age and just counting the days until they could retire. Did you pay any attention in that teacher's class? I didn't...

2. Pretend You Like the Kids: Even the little shit heads whose presence you can't stand. The more you act like they piss you off, the more they'll do stuff on purpose to get under your skin. If you can't convince the kids that the foreigner really likes them, at least never give them to satisfaction to appearing to take any of their shit personally. Just think: for every minute of time that they waste, they're not getting anything and you're getting money.

3. Be Predictable: The more you do things because That Is The Way We Do Things in Class Everday, the easier it will be to get the kids to go along with it. The flip side of this is to NEVER appear to take any input whatsoever from the kids. If whining gets them candy and games they'll never stop whining.

4. Good Cop Bad Cop: Be Good Cop, it's more fun but make sure there's a Bad Cop. Having CCTV in class is great for this, whenever the kids whine, just say that you'd love to play a game but the class is being watched by the wongjangnim and he doesn't allow that.

5. Socratic Questions are Your Friends: I sat in on a reading class and the students (many of whom hadn't done their homework) were asked questions and if nobody answered the teacher just explained the answer. So the whole class was the teacher explaining things that the kids hadn't read and couldn't have cared less about. What'd good to do is ask really simple questions and build from there, if the kids haven't read the text give them page numbers and let it be a simple reading comprehension exercise. Also play devil's advocate as much as possible.

[wings]

My best tip is NEVER to ask your students "Do you understand?"
They will always say yes regardless.

If you explain something and you want to know if they understand ask them simple questions about what they have to do.

The first few times you do this, they will be a bit shy to answer, so start with something funny and simple like "Do you eat the paper?" (motion eating the paper, then make big x) "NOOOOOO, so what do we do with the paper?"