That is not how you get attention.
Teaching March 5th. 2008, 10:54pmI have a class full of students in intense competition with each other. They aren’t competing about getting the highest scores, or getting better at English. They are competing as to how much time they can get to have me dawdle in class to check their work exclusively, and give them praise the most.
I’ve got a class with 11 students. Eight are old students from different classes mixed together. Three are new students that need more attention because they are much lower level and don’t have a clue how to do anything. Who do I need to spend my time on? The new students. Who do I have to spend more time on? Shutting up my old students that SHOULD know better.
I’ve got two girls that sit next to each other that talk so loudly I can hear them in an office around a corner. They sit in the front of class and will NOT do a single thing without being told exclusively by me, at the detriment of all the other students in the class. If I don’t start with them, they talk LOUDLY about how they don’t understand, and won’t do ANYTHING until I explain. They don’t realize I have better things to do with my time than explaining everything a second, third, or fourth time only for them.
They are in competition for the loudest student with “screamer”, who needs to be the absolutely LOUDEST in class at any time. If anyone tries to outdo her with volume, she’ll scream to be heard above them, even if it is to say “YOU ARE TOO NOISY!” At least she’ll yell directions and tell the boy in front of her to calm down.
The boy in front of her is “Test Anxiety boy”, who now gets up and kicks his chair if he doesn’t score a perfect result on his test. At least he’s only vomited in his mouth once in the past two weeks. His new habit is to grab me, and when that doesn’t work, wait till I walk by and stand up in my way. The next time he does this he’s going to get bumped to the ground as if he got in front of a Korean grandmother on the way to a cabbage sale. No physical contact with me is acceptable.
Late boy comes to class after all paperwork and important clerical tasks are completed, making me reopen files, correct attendance, and circle around again for homework. He alone wastes about five minutes of my time because I can’t do anything till he arrives, but I also can’t wait for him to get the class started. No matter what I do, he manages to arrive at exactly the wrong time. He sits in class with his hood up, chin on the desk, never prepared for anything despite always being late.
Late boy has a friend in class that sits at the very front. He has an attention span shorter than the period at the end of this sentence. He’ll construct elaborate things out of pencils, notebooks, and books every time he needs to be reading or doing something in class. He never does homework correctly, but refuses to listen to directions when they are given.
This leaves the two GOOD kids in class that are smart enough to do all their work by themselves, but ask me if they are allowed to go on in their books. I check their homework, correct their pronunciation, and try to keep the rest of the bad students from bothering them too much.
The three clueless students are so out of it that if I don’t write down an answer, or tell them specifically what to do at every second, they’ll go into an English induced coma. They not only have no clue, but they are so far away from a clue, that if a clue was driving at them slowly and carefully, honking a clue horn and flashing it’s clue lights, they’d be run over by it and left to die. I’m just the animal control worker scraping them off the clueless highway with my clue shovel at this point.
I spent the class trying to keep the students from screaming, running around, or doing stupid stuff the entire time. I walked out of class to get some material for a new student that wasn’t prepared by the secretary on time, and came back to a zoo. The bell was also 3 minutes late, causing the students to worry they’d miss their buss.
The director asked why my students were SO noisy. She put 11 students, 6 of which are well know as the NOISIEST in the ENTIRE school in one class, and then ASKED why my class was basically a madhouse. I thought that’s why they had the security system in place. She’s supposed to be watching what’s going on so that this sort of thing didn’t happen.
I’ll be tossing half the class out on Friday if I have to deal with a 1/10 of what happened in class today. My tolerance for this sort of bullshit is over.
3 Responses to “That is not how you get attention.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
March 5th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
My heart goes out to you, having taught kids for three years myself.
Now I teach adults, and I haven’t had to deal with a single pee fight, sneeze in my face, book thrown out a window, thrown chair, or “crying too hard to tell me why,” or psycho mother, in more than a year.
Wanna work at my school? We have an opening coming up.
March 6th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
After years of teaching students of varying levels within the same class, I’ve surmised that it is the system that is clueless as we can’t separate students according to their actual levels, so classes have a few “A-B” students, a majority of “C” students, and those clearly years behind the rest who are generously given a “D or F.” We are forced to try and fit mostly odd shaped students into round pegs. It just doesn’t work. The kids need to be classified and taught according to their levels and not their ages (and social progression is evil). “A” students might need only 4 months of school a year, average students might need 9 months a year, and the far-behind might need the whole year to catch up or risk a later life with not as many options as those who excel in this broken system.
Another problem is a lack of alternate options for those who aren’t getting anything out of reading, writing, and arithmetic later in their middle or high school years before they drop out. There should be trades programs to provide some type of future for these marginal students. Maybe then, they wouldn’t succumb to so many of society’s ills that many in their shoes do (drugs, crime, welfare, or low paying jobs for the rest of their lives).
These problems even make it into colleges later on as many kids are pushed by their parents or society to go to college when they don’t want to go or into certain types of programs that they really have no interest in. It took me two years and lackluster grades to tell my father I was either changing my major or dropping out. Not everyone is cut out to be a lawyer, doctor, businessman, or professor.
I tried instituting some changes at my old school district in the states, but the federal money that mostly runs this system has too great a hold on the administration for them to make any waves. Therefore, everyone, which includes the school-aged future of the world, suffers with this broken, and clueless, system.
As for the hagwon system, I liken it to an after school baby-sitting position that uses short periods of English instruction to pass the time while keeping these kids out of their mother’s hair or from being latch-key kids.
In my first class off the plane, I had a class of crying six year-olds who I couldn’t understand to figure out the problem, and I’m scratching my head thinking I chose to come half-way around the world for a year of this. I later found out that they cried in every class they attended, and were actually worse for their Korean teachers who later came to me to ask how I got them to stop in my class. My secret was ignoring them unless blood was drawn. While I couldn’t actually teach them much at first. I had them get so busy, that they forgot about calling each other names and pulling hair.
March 7th, 2008 at 7:38 am
while i find your posts somewhat amusing, you come across as miserable in your job and in korea. i hope you are making an oiltanker worth of money for signing your life away like this, otherwise id suggest making major changes in your job and place of residence.