Working hard or Working smart?

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
21

That’s why you need a “Plan B”. Sometimes a carefully planned lesson falls to pieces. (Most likely because the kids were bored or restless, or unprepared at the very start so never got into the material that probably would have worked if they could ever have gotten in to it.)

You have to be prepared to stop what you’re doing and change directions when things aren’t going well. With younger students having shorter activities is a must. If a 15 minute activity flops you’re in trouble. If one 3 or 5 minute activity flops, you can rally them with something active and then come back to the next two short activities.

[quote]But, my main question is this:

How do you know when it’s not a case of not working hard or smart enough?
How do you know when you just should stop working?

I’m putting in a lot of time preparing for my adult classes, and it just doesn’t seem to be going well at all. I don’t feel any sort of connection with my students or the material I’m supposed to be teaching.[/quote]
At first you really do need to put in a lot of extra time. And you need to give yourself time. This is a different environment than what you’re used to.

It’s also possible that you’re over-planning or trying to do too much. Perhaps concentrate more on one or two things and not worry about the rest until you’ve become comfortable with the one or two. (I know that’s generic advice, but it could be applicable.)

And you know, it may even be that you got a lemon class. Some classes are just DULL and are black holes for teacher energy. But don’t accept that until you’ve had other classes that eat up the same lessons you’re giving them and you’ve tried everything.

22

That’s why you need a “Plan B”. Sometimes a carefully planned lesson falls to pieces. (Most likely because the kids were bored or restless, or unprepared at the very start so never got into the material that probably would have worked if they could ever have gotten in to it.)

You have to be prepared to stop what you’re doing and change directions when things aren’t going well. With younger students having shorter activities is a must. If a 15 minute activity flops you’re in trouble. If one 3 or 5 minute activity flops, you can rally them with something active and then come back to the next two short activities.[/quote]

Thanks, again, Puiwaihin, for your sage advice! :rainbow:

My Chinese co-teacher made similar suggestions; she said they didn’t have a long enough attention span for what I had planned. So, now I’ve tried to shorten my lessons and make them more active. Actually, I just started doing that these past two days…I had to borrow some books from the school library to get some idea of exactly how one goes about teaching such young children. My teacher trainer was great in recommending me some child development and kindergarten classroom management books. I felt like Super Teacher yesterday and today :smiley: The small group activity centers idea I tried out today went better than expected, even though I wasn’t able to put together as many centers or give the kids as much time as I’d planned.

My recommended reading:

–“How to Manage Your Early Childhood Classroom” by Teacher Created Materials
–“Easy Activities for Building Social Skills” by Nancy Jolson Leber
–“Phonemic Awareness Songs & Rhymes” by Wiley Blevins
–“Drama with Children” by Sarah Phillips
–“Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills” --Second Edition, by Paul H. Brooks Publishing, ed. Judith R. Birsch, ed.D.

23

You can work smart by getting a class, let’s say of 10 students, to repeat the same phrase to each other: student 1 asks student 2, student 2 asks student 3, … All while correcting them along the way. It’s not a waste of time and the time goes by fast. That’s with the low levels though.
It also puts them on the spot and they come back thinking they have to perform. I start my classes with discussion. That wastes time too.

Good time wasters are valuable tools. At the same time, it’s work. Any work is working hard. The hardest work is getting the other students to be quiet. Like flipping pages and various other movements. Then you give 'em candy and treat 'em to pizza when the book’s done. That’s working smart.

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Time goes by fast when you’re having fun.

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Candy and pizza for doing what they should be doing? Time wasters to keep them busy and quiet?

:noway:

That’s not working hard or smart. That’s just not plain working at all.

You are kidding, right? Please tell me you are not using trained monkey techniques as a substitution for actually teaching meaningful content when you have the freedom not to be the Stereotypical English Clown.

I can’t see anyone who thinks they are worth so much money for their teaching skills seriously believing that junk food as a reward for expected behavior and “shut up and color” work are real teaching skills or that page flipping is a difficult problem to overcome. You cannot be for real.

I await the “just kidding” line…

Get thee to a teachers.net-ery.

26

[quote=“ImaniOU”]Candy and pizza for doing what they should be doing? Time wasters to keep them busy and quiet?

:noway:

That’s not working hard or smart. That’s just not plain working at all.

You are kidding, right? Please tell me you are not using trained monkey techniques as a substitution for actually teaching meaningful content when you have the freedom not to be the Stereotypical English Clown.

I can’t see anyone who thinks they are worth so much money for their teaching skills seriously believing that junk food as a reward for expected behavior and “shut up and color” work are real teaching skills or that page flipping is a difficult problem to overcome. You cannot be for real.

I await the “just kidding” line…

Get thee to a teachers.net-ery.[/quote]

You could learn a lot from me.

27

Imaniou,

You’ve totally got me wrong. I’m actualy quite a strict teacher of English and I make the students learn. I’m right on top of them. I reward them after with the treats. I’m not an asshole clown. I give 'em candy about one to three classes a week because I choose to do so. I also give them candy after every 10 stickers. I give them stickers for various situations or accomplishments. I can afford it because I make a crap load of money for what I do. I’m not talking about a little piece of candy. I’m talking about GOOD candy (and two at that). When my classes finish a book, I reward them with a chicken or pizza party because I respect them and they respect me.

Then I get MONEY.

Who’s your boss? Look 2 feet in front of you. That’s your boss.

Who’s the king? 2 freet in front of the boss.

28

My students do what I expect of them. They know that candy and treats are for special occasions. Shit, even if you’re tossing Godiva at them, it doesn’t make you a better teacher. Save passing out stickers and candy to kids for the circus parade. Praise goes a lot further, doesn’t fall off when you wash your hands, and is much better for your teeth. :smiley:

When my 2nd grade class had finished the first semester reader, they were proud of the fact that they had read a book of over 200 pages (not including reading response activities and the glossary) on their own. That’s a much better reward than anything my salary could ever buy: a love for learning.

My job as a teacher is not to give students prizes or to only “cover” specific material and make sure they do their work. My job is to give them the tools to be successful in their education, to foster a love in livelong learning, and to teach the skills they need to accomplish these things.

I have a student this year for whom I’ve had a special place in my heart because she had a teacher prior who was more interested in teaching materials and passing out rewards to be popular with the kids than in actually teaching the kids. This woman, who has posted on this website in the past, wrote off the little girl because she believed the child’s potential to improve was hopeless. This child started off the year writing things in her journal like “I am bad in school [and learning]” and drawing herself crying to being one of my most active partipants this year, always having her hand up. I make it a point to praise her for every correct answer she gives and let her demonstrate to others when she gets it to boost her self-confidence in her abilities. Again, pizza and stickers are no match for what praise has done for her. She still has a way to go before catching up with her peers, but she has lost the “I am bad in school” mentality and replaced it with an optimistic one of “I can do it” and comes to school with a big smile and a polite greeting every day.

Then again, I’ve always had a special place in my heart for the difficult cases…the kids who need the love and guidance more than they’ll ever let on consciously. To me, helping those children see that they have worth and the potential is what teaching is all about.

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As far as money goes, just because someone gets paid a lot of money doesn’t mean what they do is worth it. Pay is hardly a firm indicator of how important or how well someone is doing in a job. Ask any major-league sports star why dribbling a ball or hitting a baseball far makes them worth 100 times as much as the person who taught them (and many others) how to read and write. Or why George W. Bush gets much more money than say, Abraham Lincoln did for doing the same job.

What does pizza have to do with respect? Pizza is food. I could eat the pizza you buy and still not have respect for you.

And if you’re implying that the respect comes from them saying “thank you”…

Saying “thank you” after getting something is as meaningful as saying “bless you” after someone sneezes if you’re saying because you’ve been taught to rather than understanding why you are saying it. I say “bless you” every time someone sneezes and “excuse me” after I burp, but I am definitely not asking to be excused or blessing anyone. However, when I thank someone, I make a point of including what I am thanking them for, when it’s not obvious (or with my kids to drive the point home that it does have meaning, EVERY time). “Thank you for helping Jimmy pick up his pencils.” “Thank you for giving me this gift.” “Thank you for answering Lucy’s question for me.” And my kids are writing thank you letters to their parents for coming to the Parent-Teacher Conference that are coming up in a few weeks when in-person attendance is optional (with reasons why including “caring about me”, “taking the time to visit my teacher”, “learning about what I do in school”, and “wanting me to do well in school”…paraphrasing the grammar, but these are actual reasons my 4th graders have written on their own). But now I’m digressing.

Praise and expectations have more relevancy to respect than that which any kind of material reward might garner. Stamps fade. Candy dissolves. Stickers fall off. But a sincerely kind word and acknowledgement of one’s capabilities and potential lasts a lifetime.

30

[quote=“ImaniOU”]As far as money goes, just because someone gets paid a lot of money doesn’t mean what they do is worth it. Pay is hardly a firm indicator of how important or how well someone is doing in a job. Ask any major-league sports star why dribbling a ball or hitting a baseball far makes them worth 100 times as much as the person who taught them (and many others) how to read and write. Or why George W. Bush gets much more money than say, Abraham Lincoln did for doing the same job.

What does pizza have to do with respect? Pizza is food. I could eat the pizza you buy and still not have respect for you.

And if you’re implying the respect comes from them saying “thank you”: saying “thank you” after getting something is as meaningful as saying “bless you” after someone sneezes if you’re saying because you’ve been taught to rather than understanding why you are saying it. I say “bless you” every time someone sneezes and “excuse me” after I burp, but I am definitely not asking to be excused or blessing anyone. However, when I thank someone, I make a point of including what I am thanking them for, in case it’s not obvious (or with my kids to drive the point home that it does have meaning, EVERY time). “Thank you for helping Jimmy pick up his pencils.” “Thank you for giving me this gift.” “Thank you for answering Lucy’s question for me.” And my kids are writing thank you letters to their parents for coming to Parent-Teacher Conference in a few weeks when in-person attendance is optional (with reasons why including “caring about me”, “taking the time to visit my teacher”, “learning about what I do in school”, and “wanting me to do well in school”…paraphrasing the grammar, but these are actual reasons my 4th graders have written on their own). But now I’m digressing.

Praise and expectations have more relevancy to respect than any kind of material reward does. Stamps fade. Candy dissolves. Stickers fall off. But a sincerely kind word and acknowledgement of one’s capabilities and potential lasts a lifetime.[/quote]

My kids like the rewards though. It’s not expected of me. I tell them that I dont’ have to do it. Plus they talk to me. And I correct them. You don’t know my situation. Maybe yours is where every kid is just so in love with education. I fucking doubt it.

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God, I wish my kids all came wanting to learn. As I said, I have quite a few difficult cases. I’ve gotten skin-breaking scratches on my neck and a punch in the chin from a 3-year-old my first year. First graders who flipped me off when my back was turned. Kids who can barely read and write and are convinced that they are stupid, seeking chances to goof off. I seriously doubt that all my kids love learning when they leave my class. But the thing is, I seek to improve as a teacher every single day - every single day - and let my own love for learning (and reading) shine through.

I can only hope that it leaves an impression on them to last their whole lives that at least someone out there, even if it’s just a crazy black woman who reads two or three books at a time and thinks of her children’s book collection as one of her greatest treasures that she loves to share with her students and thinks grammar day (aka Wednesdays) comes only second to Christmas as far as excitement goes, believes in them as a person deserving of value and respect as a capable human being and that they can accomplish anything they set their minds to.

If it means holding a child until they regain control and constantly reminding them that even though they are angry with me, I still like them even if I need the convincing myself at the time. If it means giving a student extra praise for things I might expect someone with higher abilities to do with ease and taking the risk of giving them responsibilities when they haven’t shown any reason to deserve such trust before. If it means practicing routines over and over rather than playing games so that the students can be more efficient in using their time to play a game with the time they save. If it means taking journals and homework essays home to write comments to help provoke their writing processes. If it means spending all of my spare prep time over the last three days creating, printing, coloring, cutting, sorting, laminating, recutting, rounding the edges of 228 different laminated parts (yes, 108 cards and 120 tokens) to keep them from being sharp and potentially cutting students’ fingers, re-sorting, and teaching the rules of nice-looking games, if I may say so myself (x3 for each copy I’ve made for small group play) to help reinforce difficult grammar and spelling skills. I am willing to do it if it means my students will get more meaning from their learning.

The First Days of School by Harry Wong mentions that there are three kinds of teachers: Those who seek the negative and complain about their students and try to bring other teachers down with their wallow in self-pity; those who remain at the status quo and say things like, “I did my job. Why should I have to do anything extra like grade papers on my own time when I don’t get paid?”, who teach their subjects, but never reach their students, who seek to become well-liked teachers and not necessarily well-respected ones; and then there are those who want to improve and grow, never cease to learn, and sacrifice a little in the short run to benefit their students in the long run.

I guess these three types can be summarized by the title of this thread: those who don’t work, those who work hard, and those who work smart.

The question is not “Which one are you now?”, but rather, “Which one do you want to be?”

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Well, if you’re going to categorize teachers into to three or four groups, what does that say about the sutdents?

A teacher is a human being.

Anyway, I’m not putting you down.

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I have students of each category as well. I have students who I still struggle with to complete their homework and meet my expectations. I have students who are happy to do the bare minimum so they can get to the fun stuff. I have students who ask if they can do the empty pages in the workbook where I didn’t feel they needed the extra drilling since they have already finished all the required work. Ideally, I would like all of them to be as ambitious and motivated, but any improvement they make toward that direction of the continuum makes me happy.

And don’t get me wrong, I am far from perfect. I’ve had days when I wasn’t fully prepared for a class as the students were walking in and I was still typing up the handout for that class. I’ve had days where I’ve been so tired or frustrated that my patience caused my smile to fade and force me to do some backwards counting before I could bring it back. I’ve had lessons where I only exacerbated the confusion rather than resolved it. But one idea that I like from one of my teaching resource books is that of how a teacher is an actor (mind you, not a clown). You put on a happy face and smile so brightly it makes your face hurt and often your kids will never catch on… the thing is, in faking them out, it helps you regain the real feeling yourself.

I spend a lot of time attending workshops, conferences, meetings, and reading research, articles, and books to learn new strategies and tips to continually improve myself as a teacher. So far it seems to be working. :slight_smile:

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I stopped giving homework.