TEFL Goetz Wisconsin

Classroom management techniques are often a hot button topic and the best technique to control students is widely debated. The most popularly taught method for tefl teachers, especially with children, is the “good teacher, mean teacher” role. Where you are friendly and warm with the students when they are good, but when they displease you then you flip to the serious or “mean” teacher role, to show that you are willing to be tough on the students, though the best way to achieve good classroom management is to avoid the common pitfalls or mistakes that many teachers make. The article “The 9 Biggest Classroom Management Mistakes teachers Make” by Michael Linsin is a good reference point on where to start. It explains the downfalls of major classroom strategies like praising good behavior or just starting your lesson before the students are quiet. These are quite helpful hints because if you do over praise your students they expect praise for the littlest of things, at least the younger students do. Let us say you have a point system and students need 10 points to get a sticker reward, if you give students one point everytime they answer a question or read aloud then they will not work hard to get these points, they will just wait till you call on them to give an answer or to read not paying attention to the class in general. Also just starting your class before you have your full attention is also a bad idea because the students begin to believe that you do not need their attention to teach, you clearly don't care what they are doing so why bother? The nine rules listed in this article are something any new teacher should keep in mind when starting a class, because it is easier to become softer over time with a class than to build management from an unrulely enviornment that has been established. The commonly used “good teacher, mean teacher” actually falls into several of these nine mistakes, but for a tefl course it is still one of the best methods to rely on. Many times when you are working in a tefl classroom there are set rules by the company that you must follow regarding punishment or you are teaching adults and it gets to the question “What can you really do to them?” After teaching students ages 5-13 for almost a year I will agree that you must be concious of these nine mistakes at all times because as much as we would like to think otherwise, children remember and they want everyone to be equal. If you reward one student for something the rest of the students will try and do the same thing to gain the same reward. Sometimes though you must disobey the rules and lecture students about their behavior because you cannot send them out of the room per school rules, but in order for the lecture to be effective, the students must crave the teachers approval and feel bad if they have let their teacher down. Sometimes to get younger student's attention, who do not know much english, you have to use sudden loud noises that will instinctually make them stop, like clapping or a high pitched whistle.