In terms of teaching, this week was rather uneventful. My school had many activities planned which took away many of my teaching opportunities. In total, I only taught two language arts classes and the rest of our storytelling time was taken up by decorating our classroom for Halloween.
This gives me the chance to explain something that I haven't really addressed since I started this blog. I teach at an academy and I'm blessed for having such great students in my full time class. These kids are the reason why I love to teach. They are always so eager to learn and well behaved.
This brings me to my other kindergarten class. They only come for half the day meaning they arrive for lunch at 12:50 and finish at 3:45. In all my years of teaching I have NEVER experienced anything like this before. They suck the life out of me to the point that I don't even want to teach them anymore. They make me love my other class even more. They are so naughty. They are constantly fighting, kicking, punching each other, and recently they are using many Korean swear words. I feel really bad for my co-teacher (first year of teaching) because they even talk down to her. They have lost total respect for her. She has left the class crying several times and our director just chooses to ignore these issues. Money is more important I guess.I find it very frustrating and exhausting to teach these children. I can't even put in to words exactly how they make me feel.
They are all at complete different levels of learning which just makes things worse. For example, one boy can barely hold a pencil and write while another girl can read and write with ease. It makes it difficult to keep them focused on the lesson when we are always waiting for a student to finish writing. I have tried to incorporate some small speaking activities while we wait for the other students to complete their work. For example this week we are talking about food items and the students must tell me one thing they like and one item they don't like. I reward them when they complete their sentences by giving them a smiley face which they collect to get stamps and later on prizes. So far so good!! I hope this is the start of something good...I hope. It feels good to be able to share this frustration with others.
This gives me the chance to explain something that I haven't really addressed since I started this blog. I teach at an academy and I'm blessed for having such great students in my full time class. These kids are the reason why I love to teach. They are always so eager to learn and well behaved.
This brings me to my other kindergarten class. They only come for half the day meaning they arrive for lunch at 12:50 and finish at 3:45. In all my years of teaching I have NEVER experienced anything like this before. They suck the life out of me to the point that I don't even want to teach them anymore. They make me love my other class even more. They are so naughty. They are constantly fighting, kicking, punching each other, and recently they are using many Korean swear words. I feel really bad for my co-teacher (first year of teaching) because they even talk down to her. They have lost total respect for her. She has left the class crying several times and our director just chooses to ignore these issues. Money is more important I guess.I find it very frustrating and exhausting to teach these children. I can't even put in to words exactly how they make me feel.
They are all at complete different levels of learning which just makes things worse. For example, one boy can barely hold a pencil and write while another girl can read and write with ease. It makes it difficult to keep them focused on the lesson when we are always waiting for a student to finish writing. I have tried to incorporate some small speaking activities while we wait for the other students to complete their work. For example this week we are talking about food items and the students must tell me one thing they like and one item they don't like. I reward them when they complete their sentences by giving them a smiley face which they collect to get stamps and later on prizes. So far so good!! I hope this is the start of something good...I hope. It feels good to be able to share this frustration with others.
Julie, I like the way you are rewarding positive behaviour. I have had some classes, and bad students, as we all have. It took me a while to realize that not focusing on stopping the bad behaviour, but instead rewarding good behaviour can solve the problem. You could try, if there are any students in the class who don't act up, rewarding them with prizes directly. In one of my classes I give a strike for bad students and a smiley face for good ones. At the end of the class the student who has the most smiley faces gets some candy or stickers (which like your school they can use to get prizes) By doing it at the end of the class the students compete for the most smiley faces.
ReplyDeleteI've tried to reward them directly but this one boy just does not care for any of that. I'll give it another go next week and see how he reacts. Thanks!
DeleteI taught a single kindy class for my first two years in Korea. I tried to get out of it to no avail. It was by far my most difficult teaching experience in Korea. The energy levels needed to maintain control were more than I could keep up with. That and my 20 hour TEFL certification I did before coming to Korea never mentioned taking toddlers to the toilet, and then asking you to wipe their ass!
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely been the hardest challenge to overcome since I've been in Korea. I mean I've had some bad students before and I still do but not a whole class like this. I'm just so exhausted by the end of the week.
ReplyDeleteBut you've got US to look forward to on Saturdays (and better jobs after that!)! :-0
ReplyDeleteThank god for that Tom!!
ReplyDeleteLittle side note....Those two boys walked in the classroom yesterday and literally cleared every item off my co-teacher's desk...they spared the computer monitor at least.
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