Teach English in Kangzhuang Gongye Yuanqu - Changzhi Shi

Every child has different skills and interests, just like adults, and therefore it is the teacher's job to adapt to the needs of a particular classroom and group of students and determine how to best to handle differences without focusing too much on individual students or watering down the class as a whole. As a student, I also struggled and became frustrated with how some of my teacher's handled this delicate issue, as I found myself on both extremes in different circumstances -- sometimes the material was easy and I finished early and became bored, and other times the material was incredibly difficult for me and I lagged behind. Either way, one of the solutions I found the most attractive from this course was the importance of group and pair-work to solving this issue. Not only does this allow students to become better friends and strengthen the class as a whole, but stronger students can be paired with weaker students to assist the latter partner in understanding the course material. This serves a couple purposes. First of all, sometimes students are more willing to hear out and learn from their friends and/or classmates, especially if they are generally frustrated in a traditional classroom setting. Furthermore, the stronger side of the partnership can also learn from the other student, and gain valuable skills of teaching, empathy, and general kindness which will not only help the class function better but also help the child in their development as a person. Another possible solution to teaching students at varying levels is to use different materials with different students. While this can quickly balloon into an enormous amount of paperwork and a headache for an inexperienced teacher, experienced teachers are adept at splitting the class where it is more logical and allowing the students to work on different topics and at different levels. This does, however, require the teacher to split their attention between the different groups, and therefore may be a struggle for a beginning teacher such as myself or any person with less experience using this technique. One of the techniques suggested in Unit 20 is to let the students determine their own interests and strengths in the class, but this seems risky. Some students may be left behind and feel hopeless if the rest of the class appears to be moving at a faster pace and understanding the material far better and easier. The best students may be self motivated already and excel regardless of or even in spite of this teaching technique, and therefore they are not particularly benefited either, unless on a personal level they prefer to work on their own; if that is the case, however, the teacher should single out those students in a private way and allow them work to do after class or interesting extra materials for the students to check out on their own time. This has the benefit and risk of making the brightest students feel especially looked after, but this may cause jealousy and resentment in the other students if this is not carefully and discretely handled by the teacher. A final technique mentioned in Unit 20 was using the same material for varying assignments -- meaning that the strongest students would continue on in the same materials as the other students, but would be allowed to go further and possibly given some more freedom in achieving the goal of the assignment. This seems like a clever fix to the problem of varying learning abilities, and it also may cut down on the problem of splitting the class into different groups with different texts: that is, that the attention of the teacher must also split. Indeed, no matter what method I decide on with my classes, I must first meet the students where they are and try to gauge their varying learning abilities as best as I can and as early as possible. While it is difficult to do this in a short period of time, a classroom should be transform according to the discretion of the teacher and the needs of the students. It is therefore imperative to always be flexible, always pay attention, always listen carefully, and enthusiastically welcome and promote student learning and happiness in the classroom. In short, many of the traits of a good student should begin with the teacher, as the teacher, wittingly or not, is the in loco parentis role model in every classroom, and therefore can establish beautiful and loving relationships with the students; however, a teacher must also be careful not to overstep their boundaries and maintain some degree of professionalism at all times. This balance may be the hardest part of a teacher's job, but also the most rewarding.