::A Geek in Korea::

A class of new readers with a new teacher is usually very shy. You need to get them on your side quickly and make them laugh. It’s just like that old adage about giving a speech, “Open with a joke.” If you ever want to get them to warm up to you and speak in front of so many other classmates, having them laugh is a good idea. The edge you have to walk is being funny, while still coming off as serious, not silly. If you stray into silly territory, the students will think of you as a clown and an entertainer. I did fun activities today, but I never approached “silly”, at least, I hope I didn’t.

The unit today was about a boy that had a stomachache at the circus because he ate too many sugary snacks. We practiced the dialog, “What’s wrong?/I feel sick./That’s too bad.” once or twice with a CD. Then we said it aloud. The students were mildly commited and self-conscious. I had to repeat the CD five or ten times before I saw everyone reading aloud.

We went into an extended activity about a boy that was very, very sick. I introduced all the “-ache” words, like “stomachache, earache, and headache” by drawing the location of the pain on the boy.  The students were surprised I was letting them DRAW in their notebooks as we went along labeling the picture. I had the students draw their own boy, then had them label the boy’s problems.

Then, I had them go back over the “What’s wrong” dialog. They could remember the illnesses by grabbing the appropriate part of the body. It was pretty cool to see them get the vocabulary. However, they didn’t really want to get up in front of class yet.

One of the differences between my old students and my newer students was when bribery was involved. I told the students that volunteering to come up to the front of the class would net them a reward point we call a “smile”.

My old students were like, “Ok, that’s good! I’ll do it!”

They know that if no one volunteers, someone will be called up anyway, it’ll be a test, and they’ll get nothing for their silence. It’s better to jump on the grenade, as it were, and go first.

My new students were like, “Oh, really. I get something? But how MANY will I get?”

The looked like they were going to try to negotiate what they thought the price for class participation was going to be. Never, ever let students decide their terms for doing what they need to do in class. If you call on students and need to bribe them for an answer, you’ve lost control of the class. I’ve had this happen in my early days of teaching, and it’s horrible.

I shut those greedy little kids down harshly. Any student that asked THAT question was asked to sit back down and not participate. If you aren’t going to play my game, I’m not going to play yours. I guess my coworker had to bribe them multiple times at escalating prices for their participation. They thought I’d be easy pickings. That isn’t happening in my class, and I was insulted they would even ask.

As of right now, it’s a huge class, but I think I’m working the room over. Eventually we’ll work out our rapport and they’ll know my quirks quickly enough.