I think I’m a little more ready for this class this week.
I’ll try some ‘Power Teaching’/divide them into boys team and girls team and buy potato chips for the winning team/and give them some free writing exercises.
The school administration’s attitude is really distressing. I don’t know if they are clueless or just don’t care if the kids learn or not. I have two kids myself and find it hard to not care and just act the clown.
I just started teaching this class a few weeks ago and i’ll only be teaching them until mid-July, so it will be hard or impossible to really stop everything until I get total attention. I’m confident that I can make the class go better though. And I can make some other classes go better as well.
I really appreciate everybody’s input.
[quote=“bababa”]So when you have the students writing 150 word essays on these big boards you give them, and then have their partners check them, do you then go over each one in class? Do you set the board up at the front and point out all the errors and correct them?[/quote]By the time you get this level of GEPT, you have only 4-8 students because the GEPT is hard. For this writing class they write one story a week from the 3 pics distributed on Monday and turn them in on Thursday, then the next Monday I have them graded and all the mistakes written up into Word. Surprisingly the mistakes tend to fall into just a few categories.
I do this for the basic ones and I do put them on the board. This is where repetition pays off as mistakes go way down after 1-2 months except for my gormless students.
[quote=“KathVic”]I think I’m a little more ready for this class this week.
I’ll try some ‘Power Teaching’/divide them into boys team and girls team and buy potato chips for the winning team/and give them some free writing exercises.
The school administration’s attitude is really distressing. I don’t know if they are clueless or just don’t care if the kids learn or not. I have two kids myself and find it hard to not care and just act the clown.
I just started teaching this class a few weeks ago and I’ll only be teaching them until mid-July, so it will be hard or impossible to really stop everything until I get total attention. I’m confident that I can make the class go better though. And I can make some other classes go better as well.
I really appreciate everybody’s input.[/quote]
This situation is typical in many junior high schools in Taiwan. The school admin use your class as an extra selling point to parents, however nobody takes it seriously if there are no points going to their college entrance examinations. Welcome to the crap world of Taiwan education.
Not much to add other than I think most relatively new teachers struggle with this age group. I’ve had my favorite and my worst classes with the same students (J1 mostly). the tricky thing is getting them in an activity that has learning value. and even if one thing works for a couple of weeks you have to come up with something new or else the students will get bored with it. Good luck.
Here in the US the attitude is “either you’re a middle school teacher or you’re not.” It seems to be a rather special age group, and either you are delighted by them between wanting to kill them, which means you don’t actually kill them, or you just want to kill them. 
I personally like middle schoolers, but that’s just me. I could NEVER teach the lower elementary grades (I think). But then I didn’t think I’d like middle schoolers back when I taught high school, either.
I used to teach this age group, and they can be pretty hellish. My general rule of thumb is, try to be engaging and talk to them about stuff they care about, stuff they can relate to and want to talk about. If you have some boring material you have to cover, don’t pretend it’s not boring. Joke about it with them, and try your best to have fun with it. Show them you care, and if they are decent to you, you’ll be nice to them. And actually declare your intentions to them, I find pulling back and laying it all out for them clearly does work.
Conversely, make it very clear that if they’re not polite, you will make their time in your class very difficult. Maybe you can’t burn their chinese homework, but you can rip it up. Bring a blank piece of paper and demonstrate what will happen. The ripping sound gets their attention lol.
One thing I’ve learned (and not to condescend, but many foreign teachers here still don’t get) is that most Taiwanese kids don’t even respect their parents (I blame the parents), so don’t expect them to give it to you. You have to play dr jekyll/mr hyde with them, at least if you want to make your job easier. You only have to get furious once with a class (make an example of the rudest one) and they will remember forever that they do not want to piss you off. Good luck!
Don’t be afraid to confiscate cell phones. I used to do this when I taught Junior High; they got them back after they gave me 100 words about why it was a bad idea, checked by me and written again, by them, without mistakes. If they did it twice, the phone was kept near “the big magnet”, so-labelled in Chinese. No one ever did it twice.
It made them more discreet, at least. Teaching a Jr-high buxiban class of ten (where the kids usually have at least some desire to be there, or they’d be in science class) cannot even begin to compare to being alone at the front of a class in a Junior High School, with forty-plus students who don’t to be there. In a buxiban, they’re on your turf, but in Jr high, it’s very much the other way round, and they know it. Try to make the class as interesting as possible (sailing through “Let’s Be Happy in English” doesn’t cut it; add in plot twists to see if they’re paying attention, etc.)
As several people have already pointed out, the idea of a “conversation class” for a huge class is a joke, especially when taught by a foreigner who doesn’t know their language. Getting backing from admin (at least “surface backing”) is easy. Worst case scenario: Storm into the office and tell them you refuse to work under such conditions; you’ve never seen anything like this before. Then begin to storm out. You probably won’t make it to the gate before they try to lure you back. But then, I haven’t tried this tactic since I was fresh off the plane ten years ago. (Haven’t needed to since then…) It worked then, but might not in the current economic climate.
you do realise that gorm deficiency can be overcome by the simple application of Dr Parfani’s Extract of Ginkgo Tree and Rhubarb, tubes of which are available at most major pharmacies. Simply rub onto affected scalps three times daily, and wash hair with pinetar soap once a week.
So you stand at the door and uh…
1.Confiscate the cell phones
2.Dip the students in Gorm
3.Give them a bag of chips.
I assume the bucket is for the Gorm and the hammer is for dealing with the ones who don’t quickly give up the cell phone?
This whole discussion reminds me of a foreigner that used to work at my school. He would always say “I never have a problem with discipline or students not listening.” One day I had to leave my class to take some tests to the front office so I finally had a chance to peer in on his ‘orderly’ class. It was chaos, students running around the class, shouting, throwing books, typical unchallenged behavior. In his mind, and from what I have seen, the Taiwanese teachers mind, this is normal and acceptable behavior. It is clear that for many students, our class may be the only time they have actually been challenged to behave like students. They don’t get it from their parents, or from their school classes, so we are fighting an uphill battle.
All my students are great IF I don’t expect anything from them.
I think the main thing that I have learned is that no matter what happens, you absolutely need to remain cool. They do actually respect cause/effect when delivered with zero emotion, while the same thing delivered by an angry, frustrated teacher will not work.
I also found that making the class as a whole responsible for behavior works wonders. Get the students policing each other a little bit. Eighteen students that don’t want to be punished will jump on the one or two bad students. Peer pressure works wonders at this age.
My experience is they only act up in the ESL classes , they don’t behave in the same way in front of their Taiwanese teachers. In general anyway, as they have the power of the mighty grading pen…
Why punish students for doing something that’s perfectly fine?
My only experience of these beings is on the MRT, where they seem to flock at certain times of day. They’ll giggle, point and screech (including the “male” ones). I just look at them and they stop immediately. Every time.
Why punish students for doing something that’s perfectly fine?[/quote]two reasons:
- This is the way I was taught. It’s an old school grammar rule.
- If I didn’t, every sentence would start with one of those 3 words. I’m only mildly exagerating.
Yeah, giving out writing as a punishment for writing wrong out of not knowing a better way to write – that’s enlightened pedagogy all right.
How’s about some more input, so they can write correctly?
“And why not do away with grammar rules pretty much altogether unless they are actually accurate and easy to understand?”
“But it is the way I was taught!”
[quote=“ironlady”]Yeah, giving out writing as a punishment for writing wrong out of not knowing a better way to write – that’s enlightened pedagogy all right.
How’s about some more input, so they can write correctly?[/quote]We actually went over it and I did explain how to write properly without starting the sentence with those 3 words. Unfortunately kids being kids, they didn’t follow the rule nor bother to use what I taught before I put some teeth in it.
Please ask for clarification before making assumptions. I teach kids who couldn’t pass the written part how to pass it. Sometimes I have to be a real prick to get them to do the things that they need to do to write properly enough to pass the GEPT writing part.
My point is more basic: It’s not bad grammar to begin a sentence with and or but. It never has been.
It’s not old-school grammar; it’s just another of Miss Thistlebottom’s hobgoblins.
Sure, imposing some style guidelines on students can be helpful. (Back when I taught writing, my pet peeve was the lazy word “very.” How my red pen would slash!) But I think that in this particular case you’re being far too hard on your students. 
[quote=“Homey”]
I think the main thing that I have learned is that no matter what happens, you absolutely need to remain cool. They do actually respect cause/effect when delivered with zero emotion, while the same thing delivered by an angry, frustrated teacher will not work.[/quote]
Right, a lot of this is probably effect as much as cause though. A teacher who is not being effective will be angry and frustrated. A teacher who is will be able to remain cool and gain respect. There’s a cycle to it, either favorable or vicious as the case may be. I do agree it’s good to consciously try to keep your cool.
It’s possible to overuse this though. You may eventually wind up with eighteen students frustrated about constantly having to pay for others’ mistakes.
Wait for the leader of the trouble makers to go to the toilet. Follow him outside. Grab him by the throat and while picking him off his feet with your one arm. let him dangle in the air while assertively (remember to be assertive) saying “give me any trouble in the class again and I will snap your little pencil neck”.
Then let him down and politely say “now please go to the class and be a good boy”. This tactic usually works well for me although yes all different classes have different dynamics and no one class is the same. I would not advize to follow exactly what I did rather adapt it for your own situation and always remember that you do care!
The OP is a woman! Unless the students are preschoolers I don’t think she’s going to be able to do that.