Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jajdude]

Do you have any classes you really dislike, and just try to get through and over with as best you can? I've got a few.

[guangho]

2 especially. One has these two little terrors who are the tag team from hell and always try to wrestle me. The other is a bunch of second graders whose english skills are limited to shouting "teacher is fat pig" and giggling.

[margaret]

I used to enjoy trading insults in English with my kindergarten students. "You are a fat pig!" "You are an ugly dog!" Not very professional, but they were using English and we were all laughing.
Margaret

[some waygug-in]

Most of my classes were like that last year!

It was such a relief to get into a class where students actually did some work.

Games seemed to help sometimes, but then they expected to ONLY play games...........

I had to create games in which they had to use English, (make sentences or spelling) but they never really got into them. They usually just wanted to play mindless games that were nothing more than time-wasters. So sometimes I would do that, just because I was too exausted to deal with them any other way.

I feel for you.

Good luck.

[Sleepy in Seoul]

My worst class is pretty good except for one boy who likes to stir up the class and have lots of attention. He's just as bad for the Korean teacher too. I've caught him swearing at me in Korean twice so far, and have completely lost any patience with him. Now, if he plays up at all, I make him stand outside the classroom, holding his chair above his head. All the other students are much better when he is not there, but it's my last class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays - I dread it and I often go home angry after grinding my teeth for 40 minutes.

[inthewild]

Ahaha, sure do. Glad to know I share similiar experiences in the classroom with other people in the country.

[guangho]

Victory! Okay so I have this kid, William, who is older than the other kids, bored and just too cool for haggie-and he has the other kids acting up too. Today I was going through the usual time out, turning lights on and off, etc. thing when I decided to write on the board:

"If you do not behave I will call your mother and tell her you are being bad. I speak hangul."

The class was like a monastery after that

[jajdude]

Nice!

I'm actually impressed your kids are high-level enough to read that. I find if they could understand that much they are less troublesome. (of course my biggest trouble is with kids dumb as rocks with attention spans of flies)

Or if you wrote it in Korean, even better.

[guangho]

It was something like BE QUIET OR I WILL CALL YOUR MOTHER IN KOREAN.

[jajdude]

Ah, I had a bad one today. I just left the class 15 minutes early. It was a waste of time. But it wasn't cool to just leave. It was not professional. I just felt lousy and the kids bugged me too much. The Korean teacher wanted me to explain why I did that. I just said I felt poor. Anyway, that's the toughest class I have. Eleven boys, several with no interest in anything but getting on each other's case. They exemplify already, at age 11, why Koreans cannot speak English.

[hari seldon]

I used to work in youth corrections so in a perverse way I rather enjoy dealing with disruptive students. It gives me a chance to flex my b-mod muscles.

[superhal]

[quote="Sleepy in Seoul"]My worst class is pretty good except for one boy who likes to stir up the class and have lots of attention. He's just as bad for the Korean teacher too. I've caught him swearing at me in Korean twice so far, and have completely lost any patience with him. Now, if he plays up at all, I make him stand outside the classroom, holding his chair above his head. All the other students are much better when he is not there, but it's my last class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays - I dread it and I often go home angry after grinding my teeth for 40 minutes.[/quote]

I have the exact same behavior in my classes now, and I'm teaching them in the US. I have asked him repeatedly to leave my class and go to the Korean-english math teacher instead, but he has refused. Basically, our exchanges go like this:
Me: "Just leave. I don't like you, you don't like me, just go to Mr. Kim's class."
Him: *After giving me dirty looks and saying nothing for 5-10 minutes* "No."
Me: "Why not? You don't want to listen to me, you don't want to do any work, you don't want me to help you, AND the other students are afraid of you."
Him: "No they're not."
Me: "You don't remember all the times you made a fist and pretended to hit another student?"
Him: "No."
Me: "How about the swearing in Korean, pounding the desks and walls, or swinging your umbrella?"
Him: "No."
Me: "I'm sick of dealing with you. Leave."
Him: "I didn't do any of that!"

Now, I'm not a beginner at teaching. In fact, for the other 5 students in the class, I have been extremely successful in addressing their behavior problems and keeping them on task, or at least being less hyperactive during class through honest discussion and negotiation (all 11-13 years old.)

My diagnosis is this: He has a skewed view of reality and thinks that everybody is wrong and only he is right. He doesn't want to do the exercises that will allow him to see the truth. He is on full "fun-only" mode. Anything that is not fun he doesn't want to do, and reacts violently if he is made to do them. In other words, he's a 13 year old candidate for Alcoholics Anonymous.

Also, I think he is in love with another student in the class, which is why he doesn't leave, and he follows her around the hagwon like a puppy. She is one of the students who has told me privately that he is creepy and scary.

Treatment: I have tried using a technique that I got from Buddhist philosophy that has been extremely successful with the other students, but he has resisted by simply not doing the exercises. I have threatened to send a letter home to his parents, and he has promised to improve, but a week later, back to the same old stuff and worse. I have had him talk to the wongjim, but again, because of his skewed view of reality, his version of the story is very different, and the behavior change from the "talk" lasted less than 24 hours.

Imho, his skewed view of reality is the problem, and that is something that cannot be changed from the outside. change has to come from within.

My next step is isolation. I have to isolate him from the other kids for their safety, because it seems as though his rage is increasing. Usually though, for students like this, it's just teacher/student chemistry, and changing teachers is the best solution.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

What's the simplist way to say 'I call mother' or 'I tell mother' (phonetically) in Korean?

[jajdude]

Damn I hurt my foot today from kicking a desk too hard when I got angry. It was effective though. They shut up for 20-30 minutes and I just took 'em through the drills in the book. I went into class angry though. Sometimes I'm sick of the kids who won't do a tap unless you really make 'em. Other times I let it all slide. I guess it's being inconsistent that is giving me more problems than I'd like. Or maybe the problem is even giving a damn if they learn or not.

[Ryst Helmut]

I'd wager that Peppermint gives the most painful classes....must be that whip!

!shoosh

Ryst