::A Geek in Korea::

Last week, I talked about the boy that “got my goat” by being annoying and dismissive about his English work. Today was my first day to turn the tables on the boy and show him that his annoying ways weren’t going to work with me any more.

Due to a major paperwork mistake, I found out that the class this annoying boy was in was going to be finishing their work far earlier than I had anticipated. I still have five classes this month to fill, but I only have a few pages left in the book to work with. Today, I had to be creative.

I made a page with several different questions I took from our book. I asked the questions in different tenses, or asked subtly different things. The students had to go through and pick out the differences between the questions, and how it affected their answer. It turns out they hadn’t learned the past tense before, but by looking at the patterns I included, they deciphered the proper response on their own. Way to go, smart kids!

Of course the students that tried were able to do it. That really is all that distinguishes a good student from a poor one. The little effort they put forth. The lazy boy wanted me read the questions to him and basically do his work for him. He said he couldn’t read. I’ve SEEN him read. He’s got some of the best reading skill in the school for his age. Unless he went blind, or forgot how, this was a lie.

I told him it was his paper, and while I’d answer any of his questions, he was responsible for reading and writing his answers. He refused to lift his pencil. When other students tried to explain the work, he huffed, sighed, and rolled his eyes. No one but the teacher was supposed to help him, and he wanted my full attention for the entire class.

After all the students, except the lazy boy, finished their work, I told them to pair up and get ready to play a game. I had printed out a picture based board game. They would use the sentences they had just made as a way to ask students questions about the food tiles they would land on. If they landed on a square with a carrot, they would ask, “What’s your favorite vegetable?” and the person would respond, “I like carrots.” They could also use other, more complicated questions from the sheet to try to stump their friends to make them have to move back places as well.

Our school has no dice. I had to improvise. I grabbed a piece of paper and a few paper clips. I drew a series of circles on the blank paper covering it completely, then filled them in with different numbers. When the students tossed the paper clip down, they got the number they had to move on the board game. This was as good as dice. I’ll do this from now in a pinch.

The girls in the class asked if they could play together instead of being paired with one of the two remaining boys. “Of course! That would be fine,” I replied. The girls were so happy they posed no problem for the rest of the class. They were drilling each other’s English and using the different expressions perfectly by the end of the exercise.

The lazy boy and his hyperactive classmate remained. I told the lazy boy he could join our game as soon as he got his question paper finished properly, and that he should ask me any questions he wanted. I then turned around and joined the only student without a partner and started playing the game.

The lazy boy was shocked that he hadn’t derailed the other student’s plans, and was very dejected to see that everyone else was having fun while he was stuck doing the work. Since the other students had worked together to get the question sheet done and accepted my help, they could have fun with the game. Because he hadn’t accepted anyone’s help, he was now alone. Everyone was having fun, and forget about the downer in the corner sulking to himself.

The class went so well, I actually forgot to check to see what, if any, progress the lazy boy had made by the end of the class on his question sheet. I know he can read. When he takes homework home, he comes back with it mostly correct. If I thought he wasn’t capable of doing the work if he really tried, I would have been more inclusive. Trying to snub out his poor effort is what this lesson was about.

The boys and girls that got to play the game had so much fun they asked to take a copy of the board game home to play. I think my first lesson getting the better of the boy was a roaring success judging by the laughter my students were having.

I didn’t even have to try hard to come up with a way to punish his poor effort. The structure of the class came naturally, and the way the students worked together was perfect. Had other students had the same bad attitude, it could have been a disaster. Luckily, the other students in the class are actually excited about learning English. This helps a great deal.