I've been teaching esl for two years, but until now it has been to adult students. I have recently taken on a job teaching K1 to P6 students and doing a horrendous job with them.
It's a new school, so the number of existing students is small, making each of my classes either 1-on1s or 1-on2s at the most. The little devils like me, but perhaps too much, choosing instead to whack me over the head with a big cushion or hang from my limbs as though I were a jungle jim. They're really quite nice kids and are having so much fun that it has been near impossible to put my foot down.
A couple of lessons into the course, and now I find myself asking, negotiating, and near pleading with them to do some of the activities so I can feel in, good conscience, that they are learning something -- but they show zero interest in doing any work.
One parent ducked his head into the room to upbraid his little angel when he saw that I was having no effect. It makes me look like an idiot and totally incompetent - which I suppose is the truth.
How to correct this situation?
And for new classes, how stern should I be? Should I not be friendly with these kids and look like a horrible disciplinarian from the get-go to ensure their respect?
I don't know if this is worth pointing out - but I am teaching in Hong Kong, and my little devils are quite advanced. I have a three and a half year old who simulated a restaurant experience, placing an order beautifully and even calling for "the cheque, please!"
Thanks to anyone who laboured through all this.
J.O.
Help in controlling a class
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Sally Olsen
- Posts: 1322
- Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:24 pm
- Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next
Sounds like Japan. There it seemed as if the little children could get away with anything because their parents and others knew that they were going to have a life of discipline. The children hit their parents and their parents laughed - I suppose it didn't hurt when they were young but hurt enough as they got older. They climbed all over them, begged for candy, threw everything everywhere. Same in Mongolia but with more aggression.
You have the key if you read your email over carefully. You have to think highly enough of yourself that lthey won't do this. They know you don't at the moment. It's like horses who can smell fear and cats who know who is going to die. You don't have to give up your playful self but just channel it into fun activities that the children will enjoy. Right now you have the double problem of not respecting yourself as an adult and teacher and a bit of fear of being found out. Just change your attitude. It is that simple. Really.
I would get the Let's Go kit for beginners up to advanced. There are cards that will allow you to play games and do matching games. The picture dictionary is great. You can play bingo with the pictures. There is a great teacher's manual and things on the net for activities with the dictionary. There are workbooks for the kids.
Get a Coosh ball or squishy ball and play games with them - say the alphabet as you throw it back or forth, days of the week, months of the year, colours in the rainbow, numbers as far as you want to go, spelling words and on and on.
Make yourself a routine and try to stick to it - greetings, talk about their time since they last saw you at whatever level they can manage, weather, calendar, and then gradually add categories from the dictionary - transporation, domestic animals, wild animals, food and so on. The first lesson on transportation should be teaching vocabulary in some fun way - with the cards for example, then adding sentences they could use with the basic nouns, making up stories about their experiences with the vocabulary (you could take pictures and write a story underneath or draw simple pictures) and then review as you go on to the next area. Always keep up the review. Lots of songs if you know any. Don't be afraid to write and read as well as talk and listen.
Check out the preschool forum as well. There are some regular contributors here and in that forum who have great ideas.
You have the key if you read your email over carefully. You have to think highly enough of yourself that lthey won't do this. They know you don't at the moment. It's like horses who can smell fear and cats who know who is going to die. You don't have to give up your playful self but just channel it into fun activities that the children will enjoy. Right now you have the double problem of not respecting yourself as an adult and teacher and a bit of fear of being found out. Just change your attitude. It is that simple. Really.
I would get the Let's Go kit for beginners up to advanced. There are cards that will allow you to play games and do matching games. The picture dictionary is great. You can play bingo with the pictures. There is a great teacher's manual and things on the net for activities with the dictionary. There are workbooks for the kids.
Get a Coosh ball or squishy ball and play games with them - say the alphabet as you throw it back or forth, days of the week, months of the year, colours in the rainbow, numbers as far as you want to go, spelling words and on and on.
Make yourself a routine and try to stick to it - greetings, talk about their time since they last saw you at whatever level they can manage, weather, calendar, and then gradually add categories from the dictionary - transporation, domestic animals, wild animals, food and so on. The first lesson on transportation should be teaching vocabulary in some fun way - with the cards for example, then adding sentences they could use with the basic nouns, making up stories about their experiences with the vocabulary (you could take pictures and write a story underneath or draw simple pictures) and then review as you go on to the next area. Always keep up the review. Lots of songs if you know any. Don't be afraid to write and read as well as talk and listen.
Check out the preschool forum as well. There are some regular contributors here and in that forum who have great ideas.
Last edited by Sally Olsen on Thu Aug 23, 2007 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
My God, what a sorry sack of @#$@#@ I must sound like. Time to crawl into a bottle... Just kiddingRight now you have the double problem of not respecting yourself as an adult and teacher and a bit of fear of being found out.
Thanks so much for the feedback, Sally. You're dead-on, I think. I will take your advice going forward with my new classes. It's going to be difficult to turn those who have already rum amok, I think, but I'll try.
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Sally Olsen
- Posts: 1322
- Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:24 pm
- Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next
I was hoping to let you know that most of us have had this problem. I had been teaching 40 years when I went to Mongolia and my first class in grade one, a little boy took the head of his seat partner and smashed her face into the desk giving her a bloody if not broken nose. Two boys went out the window onto the balcony two floors up that went around the school and didn't have a railing and ran around. Kids hit, pinched, poked, teased each other and threw spit balls. It took me six months to get them to really do something "academic". I just smiled, played bingo, gave them stickers and praised the ones who were behaving.
If a child came near me I backed away and said that they couldn't hit me because I had never hit them. I just stood still if they jumped on me and didn't play. They soon get bored. If they were really bad, I said goodbye and pointed to the door. In one class, they didn't stop and so I went outside and stood outside the door until they called me back in.
So please don't take what I said previously as criticism.
However, I think that it did help me that I knew that they would come around from my previous experience in Special Education.
My young colleague who had never taught took longer to get them excited about learning and I think it was because he didn't believe in himself as a teacher. He thought he had to be at their level with physical play and was their "pal". Once he changed his mind set he really made an impact on the classes.
You could try dressing in a suit for a little whle just to give yourself and the students the idea that you are a professional. I noticed that thngs started to change when my young colleague started wearing slacks, shirts with a collar and sweater instead of jeans and a t-shirt. But as I told him, please don't stop having fun and enjoyiing yourself.
If a child came near me I backed away and said that they couldn't hit me because I had never hit them. I just stood still if they jumped on me and didn't play. They soon get bored. If they were really bad, I said goodbye and pointed to the door. In one class, they didn't stop and so I went outside and stood outside the door until they called me back in.
So please don't take what I said previously as criticism.
However, I think that it did help me that I knew that they would come around from my previous experience in Special Education.
My young colleague who had never taught took longer to get them excited about learning and I think it was because he didn't believe in himself as a teacher. He thought he had to be at their level with physical play and was their "pal". Once he changed his mind set he really made an impact on the classes.
You could try dressing in a suit for a little whle just to give yourself and the students the idea that you are a professional. I noticed that thngs started to change when my young colleague started wearing slacks, shirts with a collar and sweater instead of jeans and a t-shirt. But as I told him, please don't stop having fun and enjoyiing yourself.
Last edited by Sally Olsen on Mon Aug 27, 2007 3:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I didn't take what you said as criticism, just as useful feedback. And I appreciate it.
Clothing is definitiely not the issue. I am very corporate looking. I'm also quite tall. You'd think I would be intimidating to these little students... The problem is, as it was with your colleague, that I try to be their pal. It's a big mistake.
Thanks again
Clothing is definitiely not the issue. I am very corporate looking. I'm also quite tall. You'd think I would be intimidating to these little students... The problem is, as it was with your colleague, that I try to be their pal. It's a big mistake.
Thanks again
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Sally Olsen
- Posts: 1322
- Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:24 pm
- Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next
Was trying to think what I meant by being a "teacher" and it is hard to define. I always think of my best teachers in school and university when I say that word and that is what I would like to become.
The problem you presented is very common among new teachers - in your case just new with kids. Just look at the number of viewings on these forums if there is "discipline" anywhere in the subject or post.
Kids are the hardest to teach because you are not only teaching them English but teaching them how to behave in a 'school'. We can't expect them to know how to behave in these situations because they have only being doing it for at most a few years. So they are used to behaving one way with their parents, siblings and family and then are expected to behave differently with the "teacher".
I'm sure that the parents have an idea of how they should behave with the teacher - they might also know that the children won't behave that way at first and that is why the parent helped you.
Sorry, I am just rambling along here trying to figure out what to do and what to tell new teachers that I train.
It might come back to regulative and instructional teaching. You have to spend a good deal of time with any individual or group to teach them the rules that you have in your classroom. Some of those will be very personal and some general that will carry over to other classes. You are basing those rules on things you have learned in school, both things that you liked and didn't like. Some of the rules that you didn't like, you will let your students get away with, but other teachers will not. The children are learning what you will put up with and what you will not. So the sooner you know yourself and what you want the classroom to be, the better for both you and the students.
You will base what you want in your classroom on teachers that you liked but you will also do things in desparation because they worked for teachers you didn't like. It will change with every child or group of children as they "test" you and try to figure out the rules in your classroom and as you "test" them to see what will work.
Complicated of course, but what we do every day with every relationship and situation. We try to learn from our mistakes and try not to make mistakes. The more we know about what we are doing the better. The more we know about the situation the children are in, where they are in their learning and what the cultural expectations are, the better.
Anything else?
The problem you presented is very common among new teachers - in your case just new with kids. Just look at the number of viewings on these forums if there is "discipline" anywhere in the subject or post.
Kids are the hardest to teach because you are not only teaching them English but teaching them how to behave in a 'school'. We can't expect them to know how to behave in these situations because they have only being doing it for at most a few years. So they are used to behaving one way with their parents, siblings and family and then are expected to behave differently with the "teacher".
I'm sure that the parents have an idea of how they should behave with the teacher - they might also know that the children won't behave that way at first and that is why the parent helped you.
Sorry, I am just rambling along here trying to figure out what to do and what to tell new teachers that I train.
It might come back to regulative and instructional teaching. You have to spend a good deal of time with any individual or group to teach them the rules that you have in your classroom. Some of those will be very personal and some general that will carry over to other classes. You are basing those rules on things you have learned in school, both things that you liked and didn't like. Some of the rules that you didn't like, you will let your students get away with, but other teachers will not. The children are learning what you will put up with and what you will not. So the sooner you know yourself and what you want the classroom to be, the better for both you and the students.
You will base what you want in your classroom on teachers that you liked but you will also do things in desparation because they worked for teachers you didn't like. It will change with every child or group of children as they "test" you and try to figure out the rules in your classroom and as you "test" them to see what will work.
Complicated of course, but what we do every day with every relationship and situation. We try to learn from our mistakes and try not to make mistakes. The more we know about what we are doing the better. The more we know about the situation the children are in, where they are in their learning and what the cultural expectations are, the better.
Anything else?