TEFL Leesport Pennsylvania

Classroom management (3) The subject that I have chosen will be on class room management. Reading through Unit 5 managing classes was great because for me working in a different country this is a problem. Classes are broken up on how students perform on there listening, reading, writing and speaking test. The problem with this to me is they only have to answer two questions and are given a review to study the week before. Some students remember the answers; some perform very well, coming up with good answers. After this test is where the class room management comes in to play I believe. Classes are broken up in to beginners, intermediate, and advanced. All of these classes have a total of 25 to 30 students in them and it can get pretty rough. The advance classes are very well behaved. At the same time they can become too smart for their own good at times. You have the problem of some of them thinking they know it all. This is easy to deal with at times. Then you have the intermediate class and beginners. To me intermediate and beginner's class are the same. What is not fair is you have a smart student who performs well on the listening and speaking, but bad on the writing. So now this student is put in a class with lower students who are misbehaving. You have your students who are there to learn and the ones who really don't care. It makes it hard to teach because you have to keep monitoring the students acting up. In most of the lower classes this become tiring and takes up the whole class almost. To me it takes away from the students that really want to learn in the class room environment. Also if the students become too comfortable then it can be a gift or a curse. A gift you have little angels who listen, understand and perform well. With a curse you have talkative students, sleeping, and no desire to learn. I have tried so many different tactics. The desks are initially lined up in rows so students come in and sit with their friends. After a while I figured out where the trouble makers were and separated them. This method worked for about 5-10 minutes. Doing this caused some students to be distracted because they want to focus on that particular student. I figured this did not work and tried to separate the desk so they couldn't easily chat or bother each other. This method did not work but I was able to walk around the class more freely monitoring students. The last thing I tried was threatening students that I would change their seat to boy, girl, boy, girl. When I said this, students immediately were quiet I was shocked. The younger students in elementary, middle school, come to find out don't like sitting next to the other gender. When the boys sit next to a female they are so frustrated and vice versa. So I had an advantage over them. Some classes didn't believe I would live up to my threat and I was forced to move them. You would not believe how well the class behaved. I made a promise with them that if they could behave well they could go back to their regular seats. This method seemed to work well for most of my classes. At first they argued and were angry with me. It was something I had to get over. After a while they came to class opened their books and began to study with no problem. We started to enjoy class and I actually got to set a rapport with the students. They respected me and of course I have respect for them. So in the end I think figuring how to manage a class is strategic. For each class you have to figure out what works best and take action. Also those first couple of days or weeks with a class and the way you set the tone really makes a difference. I believe if you come off as to soft the students will run over you if you let them. So for me I try to come in the class not being too strict but firm. At the same time I like to laugh with the students and make jokes. This has been my experience working in Korea.