Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jzrossef]

I find my situation frustrating. I am teaching private middle school and teach hagwon-style ESL classes afterward. I'm faring pretty good with the middle school students, but I'm struggling with the ESL kids. They are mostly in elementary school from other public schools, and they seem to like me most of the time. What I'm having difficulty is that there are too much gap between students, and the textbooks that I'm provided with can't meet everyone' needs. One girl made her point by finishing the workbook over the weekend that the curriculum was suppose to work for couple of months.

Most of them are good kids, and even the ones that are demotivating are really just misunderstood kids tired and bored with the usual hagwon routines. (It helps that I have some fluency in Korean, and I sometimes talk to them about normal stuff and share how I fared when I was in Korean elementary school before I left) My problem is that they are not really learning anything new from hagwon curriculum and that they are disinterested with me and ask off-topic questions. Worst case scenario is when they do all they can to play with me, which isn't really professional of me. I thought about changing the curriculum, but I'm not exactly an expert in that area as my teaching experiences are mostly tutoring academically motivated IB/AP students and the materials I throw at them from time to time are a bit difficult for some of my students.

Help?

PS: ESL kids have about 40 minutes tops, so I can't really find time to introduce games and get the curriculum done at the same time.

[lifeinkorea]

I would "teach" in the public school classes, and I would do more activities and games in the afterschool classes. I am not clear if they are exactly afterschool students, but since you say they come from other schools I would treat it like that.

Take the existing curriculum and teach part of it. Then do activities and games. If the school complains then you need to tell them to organize classes by levels instead of ages. If your situation is where they haul all kids on a bus, then that school needs to decide if it is a lower level or higher level class. If they come on their own, then they can simply have students from 2 or 3 schools come to a class who are at the same level. I did this for summer and winter camps. It worked out better that trying to juggle the different levels from just one school.

As for students who do the whole workbook, tell them to do the homework again. Tell your co-teacher to tell them that doing it all upfront is not necessarily any better than doing it in pace with the class. I do other activities that coincide with workbooks, and that means the workbooks (if easy for a student) are meant to be a warm up for something harder I have planned.

[jzrossef]

[lifeinkorea]

If we are on the same page, and it looks like your students are as well, then I don't see the point in trying to teach to your expectations when the people in control are not going to facilitate it.

They are ignoring your ideas, and that means you ignore some of your students. It's how the system works. If the school put in money for new bicycles, students and maybe teachers would be riding bicycles to school. If they put money into more beef at lunch, then you would be eating more beef at lunch. The cook can't cook it unless the school supplies them with the necessary ingredients.

Similarly, you can't teach unless they provide you the resources. If they aren't complaining, don't try to make your job tougher for 3 more months. If they do complain, then you tell them why the classes suck. They will either shut up or do something about it. Chances are, they won't complain, you won't get more beef at lunch, and forget about riding a bicycle given to you by the school.

[emetib]

I agree with what lifeinkorea is suggesting.

For me, I really like using games from this site to break up the monotony in my classroom from time to time.

I also enjoy having them do group "debate." We first decide on a topic. For example, one day we debated which was better: Pokemon or Naruto. I put the kids into two groups. Then, I made the groups come up with four reasons to support their statement and just let them banter back and forth. They really love it. It forces them to really use and develop their English capabilities.

[jzrossef]

Well, it was worth a shot. I just feel really bad about myself when their parents spend about 300,000 KRW for 40 minutes for all these incompetencies; both the administration staffs and teachers (myself including from time to time)

Let me know if you got any good ideas. I'm gonna browse through the game link and see if I can make some miracles out of it. Thanks for your insights.

[Fishead soup]

Do you have a laptop that connects with the TV monitor. If so check out the materials on Waygook and EFL Classroom ning. I had lots of success with The Mario game on Waygook. The graphics are great somone has really put a lot of time into this game.
Another great game on waygook is Aliens and Robots. It's a kind of Sci Fi game the kids love.

If you go into EFL Ning check out Baam.

[oldtrafford]

you're teaching EFL not ESL. There's a big difference.