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by Sally Olsen » Mon Feb 27, 2006 8:01 pm
Of course the Mongolians have a lot to teach us and the individual students as well. But I am afraid that I saw a lot that isn't working as well and the students are pretty wild. Mostly though it was because of the methods of discipline- they just hit them when they were bad. If you didn't hit some of the students they didn't listen and since I wouldn't, I had some rough times until the students got to understand my methods.
I do think that particular schools have their own culture and you can change the culture. I saw Montesorri schools in Mongolia that produced loving, caring, patient, stable students. Many of the children of teachers were model students. It was just one or two in each class that had grown up on the move and spent their summers in the countryside who had difficulty with school culture - sitting in one place, writing, reading, sharing with others, etc. They were excellent at hunting, herding, tending sick animals, and many other talents. They were taught to tease, push, poke, dominate younger children and so on because it fit with their lifestyle but not the school lifestyle or at least my lifestyle. So I just took it as part of my duties to tell them how things worked in schools. It is just part of the teaching job and should be done with as much patience, humour and explanation as possible. I spent the first six months in most schools teaching them about my expectations and concentrated on this part of the lesson without fail, not worrying about the academic goals I was trying to reach with them. They still learned a lot of English - No pinching, poking, hitting, spitting, teasing, swearing, and so on. Since they have the actions right there in front of them and the victim doesn't like it, it is very hands on English. There are lots of games on the co-operative games sites to encourage people to work together and not against each other and I used a lot of those including the parachute which they loved. (Don't try to take a parachute in your suitcase to Isreal though - I spent an hour being questioned about that in the airport).
I am presently doing my PhD at UBC in Vancouver and trying to apply Systemic Functional Linguistics to the materials that I developed for Greenland, Mongolia and Japan and to the written materials I brought back. No discipline problems at all although some very heated discussions.
Try putting up a sign that says, Be Nice and Work Hard at the front of the room and whenever anyone disrupts the class point to the sign and discuss the behaviour. Don't worry about taking time away from the class, they can do the usual curriculum of the year in the last six months or less if they learn how to work.
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Sally Olsen on Mon Feb 27, 2006 9:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Any suggestion on which country to try to get a break from these crazy kids? Good salary is not an issue, as long as I can make an acceptable living on my work. 
