bob, you’re in a conversational setting with TWO teens. You have an opportunity to build a relationship.
First questions for wonder:
How many students in a class?
What is the ability range in the class?
What are you actually there for? Like, what do you realistically hope to achieve in this time with this number of students? And why has the school hired you? What do they want?
2x 30 minutes a week, during which you take a roll call? How long until the end of term? Six weeks by my calendar.
Really, the issue is one of how much the school will support you in your effot to impose discipline. There is a very real perception in many high schools of foreign teachers as being just there for show. You’re probably not considered to be a real teacher by the rest of the faculty, and this attitude is communicated to the students.
What would happen if they behaved this way in a local teacher’s class? It’s unlikely that they would get away with it, so why are you being asked to deal with it? Because you’re just the token white face they’ve hired to keep the parents happy.
It can be a real pisser, especially if you have no power to give detentions etc. But do you really want to make a big deal of it with just a few weeks until the end of term?
In your situation I would probably just live with it. But I have another question. Who are these students? Why is there just one class? Why have they been singled out? Are they remedial students, or are they supposed to be the best and brightest? It seems like a very odd set-up.
If you’re planning to make a long-term gig of this then obviously you need to take control, but it’s not going to happen without support from the school. If they won’t deal with it then you may as well give up.
Try this: Enter the room as the bell rings, and immediately take a roll call. Any student who doesn’t immediately answer with an intelligible response is marked absent. Anyone arrives late is marked down accordingly. When you have finished send your co-teacher to bring the school discipline officer. Every school has one, and his/her job is to deal with this crap. It’s not yours.
If the co-teacher refuses to bring this person then just refuse to teach. You require discipline in your class to do your job, for which you need other people to do theirs. In all probability the discipline guy doesn’t even know what’s going on with your class. You could try seeking him out in advance of the class and asking him to come along and talk to them. That’s his job, and it reflects badly on him if he can’t/won’t maintain order. Have you tried talking to your co-teacher as well? If nothing comes of this then you’re on your own and wasting your time.
We have an effective system at my school for dealing with behavioural problems, with demerits, detentions, or even expulsions at the end of the process. The students know that we have the backing of the school, so it’s a lot easier to deal with the small day-to-day stuff that is inevitable. By and large, junior high students are a lot of fun to teach and I enjoy my job. You just have to find a school that takes the whole thing seriously.
I’ve “taught” in high schools with 50-60 students in a class, one 45-minute session per week, no support. You really can’t do a lot in those kind of situations, and nobody really expects you to. You’re there to keep them happy, keep the parents (paying customers) happy, and maybe to make a few students feel a bit less intimidated by the idea of talking to a foreigner. Getting into a conflict won’t help them or you.
It’s an hour a week, for six weeks. Learn to live with it, or quit. Either way, it’s not worth losing sleep over. And they sure as hell better have a good pay rate for you. How long does it take to get to/from this class? How much prep do you have to do? Is it worth doing?
