Taken with my cell phone camera.
I was invited out today for lunch with some of my Korean English co-teachers . . .
We went to a little Japanese restaurant and I ordered a sushi plate–it was pretty good.
The conversation for the most part revolved around Julianne and I going to China, and the next native teacher who will be replacing me at the boys high school.
This brought up issues of classroom behavior management because every newbie teacher I’ve ever talked to always struggles to one degree or another with figuring out how to keep the peace in the classroom.
A young co-teacher, later on during lunch, told me he’d heard that some students at the school think I’m “a little too strict.”
I found this highly amusing because if I wasn’t “a little too strict,” especially at an all boys trade/sports high school, my classes would likely range from mild anarchy and chaos to insane anarchy and chaos.
I decided to tell him that from what I’ve seen when I walk around the halls of the different buildings on campus I see too many classes with students sleeping, talking to each other and ignoring the teacher, and other behaviors I won’t allow in my classes . . . not all, and perhaps not a majority . . . but still too many.
I then asked him if he’d asked the students which of my classroom rules they don’t like, and why, and what were they doing when I had to be “a little too strict” with them–he hadn’t asked them and all I got was a silent response to that. Strange that he would feel the need to mention this to me when he hadn’t bothered to find out the why’s and what’s behind the comments.
I told him how at the beginning of each semester I always go over my classroom rules.
Classroom English Rules
1. You must try.
2. You must pay attention during class.
3. You must bring a pen/pencil and notebook with you to class.
4. You must keep all handouts given in the class.
5. You must come to class on time.
6. You must keep the classroom clean.
7. Do not write on the desks/tables.
8. You must not use your cell phone in class.
1st time = lose for one day
2nd time = lose for one week
9. Have fun!
I wonder if the co-teacher, who I think was trying to give me a subtle-passive-aggressive criticism, has ever had to deal with the chronic problem of students not coming to class prepared–and I mean in the BASIC DEFINITION OF PREPARED: bring a pen/pencil and notebook to class.
My students have to leave their homerooms and come to the “English classroom” where I have my classes. Bringing a pen/pencil and notebook with my lesson handouts and some blank paper is apparently an insanely taxing and difficult task for about 50-60% of each class . . .
Since I don’t use corporal punishment dealing with situations and chronic problems like this can be extremely difficult, especially if I have a co-teacher who won’t back me up with trying to change the students’ behavior.
Thus one possible reason why some students might think I’m “a little too strict” comes from me punishing them for not coming to class prepared, and for preventing them from borrowing a pen/pencil from their peers (often with six guys all hitting up one of the better behaved guys to loan them several pens and pencils).
Punishments usually come from the following list . . . and the students know LONG before an infraction what the consequences are because I tell them when I talk about my classroom rules, and I also remind them during a class when they’re misbehaving.
1) 30 minutes of free time lost at lunch combined with 2 or 3 or 4
2) cleaning the classroom desks of graffiti
3) sweeping and mopping the floors in the English classroom
4) in severe cases duckwalking and push-ups outside for about 10 minutes, and then cleaning tasks
UPDATE: I forgot to add that for each minute a student is late for class they have to do 10 push-ups (unless they give me a reasonable excuse AND I believe them).
None of my co-teachers have given any signs of thinking I am too strict or that my punishments are too harsh (probably given that the males use corporal punishment and the females give a tongue-lashing in Korean–neither of which I can or want to do). Also, when co-teaching with me most of the co-teachers don’t have to deal with the classroom behavior problems because my system works. Add to this that EVERY Korean teacher who has ever walked by while students are doing a punishment task has grinned from ear to ear and given me their complete and enthusiastic approval . . . and yeah.
While I was talking about this with the co-teacher the other co-teachers at the table, all of who I have taught with, were in agreement with me that I wasn’t being too strict at all. I don’t think they were just saying that to be nice because more often than not when a difference of opinion happens between a native teacher and a co-teacher the other co-teachers side with the Korean teacher.
I think the other co-teachers also agreed with my comment that it’d be nice if all the teachers and classes at the school adopted the same classroom rules and expectations of behavior and penalties so that the students would know across the board what to expect from class to class, and not have to constantly be changing what they can and can’t do based on who the teacher is . . . that’s being rather idealistic, I know, but if it did happen I imagine the school would be a lot more peaceful and that classes would become more productive.
I’ll finish with the two other classroom behavior management techniques I use.
The first is I draw 10 X’s on the side of the white board. At the beginning of each semester I usually only have to use the 10 X system for about a month and by then the guys learn that I’m serious about the consequences that come with all 10 X’s being erased off the board.
Each time I say “Please be quiet” or “Please pay attention”, the two most common classroom commands I use during my lessons, I then put my hand up in the air and count down from five with each finger going down as I say the numbers . . . by the time I reach 1 if the guys haven’t stopped talking or doing whatever they’re doing I erase an X–when 10 X’s are gone it means the entire class loses 30 minutes of free time during lunch and has to either clean, or if the class has been really bad, go outside and duckwalk and do push-ups.
At the start of the last fall/winter semester when I first arrived and began teaching, and explained the classroom rules, it took me taking two classes outside and duckwalking them during lunch (when all the other students are outside and playing soccer and enjoying the tiny bit of free time they have during the day) and then word got around that I was serious about my classroom rules and would enforce them.
I don’t say “Please be quiet” and/or “Please pay attention” more than once, and I do NOT yell it (well, most of the time anyways, lol, sometimes the guys are just being guys and I have to raise my voice), and when the count down is finished if someone is still talking, or not paying attention I erase an X. I don’t get angry, I don’t get frustrated, I just erase an X.
Now there are a few classes that have more than a few students who like to cause problems. I realized that punishing all the guys wasn’t fair and that I needed to modify my classroom behavior management system a little, so I introduced “orange cards.”
I cut up several dozen orange colored paper cards and gave the guys one week to adjust to the new system before enforcing it strictly. I told them that if they got 3 orange cards, or warnings, that it was like baseball and that they’d struck out. If they strike out they have to leave the classroom and stand in the hallway for the duration of the class. After the class a punishment and time would be set up during lunch and if they skipped or were late they would have 3 more days of lost lunch time added.
Overall, this classroom behavior management system has worked really well for me. I rarely if ever have to draw the 10 X’s on the white board after the first month of the semester, and the orange card system only had to be used for about 3 weeks with a few classes and then they changed their attitudes and behaviors and I didn’t have to use the cards anymore. Occasionally a class will act up and I’ll go to the white board and draw the 10 X’s, or pull out the orange cards and teach while holding a small pile of them in my hand . . . but overall the guys accepted the system, and adapted to the rules.
In almost all my classes I’ve also noticed that several of the guys will also help me out by telling the other students to be quiet when I start counting down and some of the guys don’t listen–now THAT tells me they’re okay with the system, and the fact that they actively participate in helping me manage the class reassures me the system is a good one.
After explaining the basic ideas about my classroom management system to this young co-teacher the topic got changed . . . I think he saw that the complaints were likely coming from students who had broken the rules, and who wanted a more “relaxed” aka “disorganized” classroom environment in which they could do whatever they want to do even if the teacher is teaching and they’re supposed to be learning.
Maybe I’ll drop in and see how this teacher’s class behaves some time this week. I wonder how THAT would go, lol.
J
Kimchi Icecream 
13 comments
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July 13, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Chris Backe (AKA Chris in South Korea)
An interesting system. It doesn’t sound overly strict – but it does sound complex. Combine that with the rules they have in every other class with every other teacher. Compared to those, your rules could be perceived as strict – especially if the Korean teachers do far less.
Being tardy is a big problem with quite a few kids – for every minute late they do one bow in front of the class. 10 minutes late? 10 bows. It’s simple. They get it.
Regarding the comment from the co-teacher: the questions you asked were valid – and worth pursuing. Otherwise, the comment would be rejected by yours truly as irrelevant.
July 14, 2010 at 4:04 am
Dan
Firstly, good on you for trying to maintain order consistently. Actually, I think a lot of inexperienced teachers are actually intimidated by a well-run (“strict”) classroom, because there’s all that extra time you have to fill with, you know, teaching. If your transitions are sloppy and your class is chatty the students won’t notice if you’re disorganised or make mistakes, or forget what it was you were supposed to do today, and that’s probably 10 minutes out of the lesson (waiting for late students, everyone deciding their done working well before the bell, general stuffing around with basic stuff like finding the right page and getting lost pencils….etc) which you don’t need to plan for.
Also, you are absolutely right in saying that foreign teachers have to put up with plenty of crap which the Korean teachers will never encounter. Ever heard of a korean teacher getting ddong-chimmed? Or course, there are plenty of less extreme examples, but do we really need them?
Rather than punishing students who forget their pencils, why don’t you just keep a stack of sharp pencils in your classroom for those who “forget”. That way nobody gets out of work just by forgetting their materials, and you can fix the problem with minimal disruption to the class. While it might seem ridiculous to have to provide materials that every student should already have, they cost next to nothing and if your school does such things, you can just ask the school to order you some. Actually, I keep a stack of blank paper too. It sounds indulgent, but its by far the easiest way to make the problem go away.
July 14, 2010 at 7:02 am
Alex
I also have what’s known as a very strict classroom–and yet I tend to find myself a chapter ahead of my peers at other schools because I don’t waste those 10 minutes asking for attention.
Strict is good.
July 15, 2010 at 12:04 am
kimchiicecream
Hi Alex,
Yeah, I think slightly too strict is better most of the time than slightly too relaxed….though for speaking activities and that kind of thing I try to have a mix of relaxed atmosphere with the students still knowing where the behavior boundaries are….
Thanks for the comment.
J
July 16, 2010 at 12:15 am
Amanda
One of the people at my school told my coworker that the fifth graders will be very happy that I’m not there next year because I’m “the mean teacher.”
Yeah, well, my kids listen to me and they work in my class. They don’t do homework, but I hate homework, so it’s one area I slack on punishment on, so that’s my problem.
I do think you have a lot of rules, etc, but I teach the same kids all day long, day in and day out at an elementary level, which is a lot different. (I keep it to no more than 5 rules. Usually only three. And I use logical consequences for most punishments.)
July 16, 2010 at 12:24 am
kimchiicecream
Hi Amanda,
Wow….Julianne just got back her “teacher evaluation” and one of the few English comments said “diet now.” We suspect it’s from the worst co-teacher she had throughout the year cause she had to have some meetings with the head English teacher and this co-teacher to deal with some unprofessional behavior and a gross lack of support in the classroom. Gotta love the personal comments on evaluations here….not.
I don’t give homework either–it’s nuts. Takes too much time to check, students generally don’t do it and if they do it’s cause they copied someone else’s, and it’s a nightmare to punish students who don’t do it too.
As for the rules….I don’t think they’re too many cause several of them are just plain basic student responsibilities that shouldn’t even really be “rules.” Also, establishing classroom routines is tough when you only see them once a week, and sometimes less.
I haven’t blogged about it yet, and don’t know if I’ll take the time to, but a co-teaching issue I want to write about is how there seems to be this extremely widespread phenomenon amongst Korean co-teachers where they completely switch out of ‘teacher mode’ and go into ‘observer only mode’ when in the classroom with a native teacher. I have several theories about why this happens but when it comes to specific teaching tasks/roles I really hate it when I don’t feel supported by a co-teacher when it comes to classroom behavior management….perhaps that’s why I have such an elaborate system….but for me, personally, it works pretty well.
In practice I probably only have 3 rules that I regularly and frequently enforce, but I think the others are needed too…..
Anyways, thanks for your comment.
J
July 16, 2010 at 5:44 am
Burndog
I was told by a teacher at a nearby school that she has heard that I am very strict. She said everyone knows. I took it as a great compliment! Imagine if someone said, “I hear that you are too lenient.’ Now…that’s an insult!
Keep up the good work!
July 27, 2010 at 5:34 am
Jimmy
Jason, I think this does sound strict, but not ‘too strict’. Some of your techniques almost mirror mine. You give your class 10 ‘X’ whereas I give mine only 3 lives. The punishment involves writing lines during class and after school.
As a native teacher we have no other choice to be strict. The students already see us as assistants who need a real teacher in the class to babysit us.
My biggest mistake when I first started teaching was to go into it thinking I could be the cool fun teacher, without any rules.
After a couple of weeks that fell flat on it’s face. Now, however, there’s a full list of rules that the students must adhere to or they will receive some punishment or another.
To counter it, I promise them games and mini break times if they respect my rules.
Thank God I chose to implement to the rules fairly early on – the classes would have been a nightmare without them. But now I can teach without my co-teachers and things go pretty well.
July 27, 2010 at 6:00 am
kimchiicecream
Hi Jimmy,
Thanks for reading. I’ve also been enjoying reading your blog.
I would never have been able to teach alone during my first contract as I didn’t have a solid sense of how to manage a class full of Korean kids….the classroom rules and how I manage them is based on trial and error, and reading about classroom management techniques…..
My system wouldn’t work for everybody, but I think the core of it to one degree or another would.
And yes, I can now teach without a Korean co-teacher with very little to no problems. The guys no my rules and the behavior boundaries very clearly.
If their next native teacher is a newbie fresh off the plane out of university with no experience teaching in Asia let alone Korea–I hope they have some powerful innate teaching talent cause without in-country in-classroom Korean teaching experience the high school boys will give them a crash course in how Korean students test the teacher’s discipline system, lol.
Thanks again,
J
July 27, 2010 at 6:12 am
Jimmy
Yeah, although it’s only been four months I cringe at how naive I was. My co-teachers were quick to give me valuable advice and I think having a pretty loud voice didn’t harm matters either.
I reckon I’ve still got a million and one things to learn about teaching but I really am glad I learned the value of classroom management (only learned the value, not quite got the skills down, yet) early on.
Are you still going to carry on the blog when you go to China?
July 28, 2010 at 3:53 am
David
I think in addition to teaching english, it’s important to be an ambassador for your country. Isn’t that the purpose of teaching overseas? Personally, I think it’s important to try and establish a connection with your students. This is a definite challenge as a foreigner, but it can be done. Though your discipline methods seem to work well on a technical level, I think they might be a bit much and only serve to distance yourself from your students.
I’m at an all boy’s high school of around 600 students and discipline is always a problem. But, over the past few months, I’ve gained most of their respect and don’t have to resort to X’s and orange cards to control them. This is not to say I still don’t have problems, but things are now definitely at a manageable level. Yes, the first few months were difficult, but I’m now realizing the rewards.
In the end, I want the students here to remember me as somebody they enjoyed having in their school. I want them to think, “Hey, that American guy was pretty cool and we learned a lot!”. The last native teacher was Canadian and wasn’t very kind to the students. The students continue to tell me how unhappy they were with him. It is the kind of legacy I don’t wish to leave behind.
July 28, 2010 at 5:57 am
kimchiicecream
Hi David,
I don’t know if I agree with you completely….but I’ve heard a fair number of native teachers say something similar about being more ‘cultural ambassador’ than ‘teacher’ when describing what they are and do in Korea….
It’s hard to represent the kind of relationship I have with my classes/students via a blog post–especially one that focuses on classroom management and the system I’ve developed.
I’ve also gotten pretty close to about 60%-ish of my students in all the classes. The remainder don’t seem to be interested in interacting for whatever the reason.
Something I thought I wrote about, maybe I need to re-read the post, was that after establishing my classroom rules and teaching the guys how the system works….after about a month or so, and a couple classes being punished for breaking the rules, the guys settle down cause they know the behavior boundaries, and what I expect from them, and what they can expect from me.
It’s very easy, in my opinion, to say that we’re ‘culture ambassadors’ because it redefines what it means (at least to a small degree anyways) to be a teacher in the EFL/ESL classroom–I think. I have read several EFL/ESL methodology books, articles, and attended a lot of presentations about teaching in Korea/Asia….and I have yet to hear any native teacher or professor say that ‘cultural ambassador’ is really what it’s all about. Being an ambassador is ONE ROLE that we can adopt–I don’t think, however, that it should be how we as native teachers primarily identify our jobs. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying….but I don’t think so.
I don’t “resort to” using my system–I use it when the rules are broken. It’s not like I don’t put tons of prep time and effort into my lessons either–in fact, some of them have been evolving over the course of five years and some, and when I share them with other native teachers I get very positive feedback. But without my behavior management system a lot of the lessons would never be workable due to lack of classroom routines and students understanding what their roles are, and how they’re supposed to behave.
“In the end, I want the students here…..”–this comment sounds a little bit like a ‘new/young teacher wanting to be friends and/or gain students approval’ but we’re not here to focus on ONLY gaining a good reputation with the school/student population. I’ve never worried about being “pretty cool” with the Korean students cause that’s not what I think a ‘good teacher’ is–and if you look at surveys published in books like Jeremy Harmer’s “The Practice of English Teaching” and other sources you’ll see that students are not looking for a teacher who is ‘cool’ but rather things like: passionate, caring, competent at their job, etc….
There’s a difference between “being kind” to the students, and being a competent teacher who maintains a good degree of classroom control in order to facilitate students learning and mastering the lesson goals.
Lastly, after EVERY contract/public school I’ve left I’ve had students emailing me saying they miss me, and the new native teacher always emails me asking me to help them out with tips and lesson ideas and other advice cause they’re struggling to figure out how to fill the shoes I’ve left behind…
Anyways, that’s my two cents on this…
J
July 28, 2010 at 7:10 am
David
I think you read into my post a bit too literally. When I say being “pretty cool” with the kids, that does not literally mean being the Fonz. It means establishing a connection with them in both how you interact with them through both teaching and daily interaction.
Establishing a connection with the kids goes beyond “getting approval” which is all just surface really. But, it is really about connecting with them on a different level which takes time through daily interaction on a daily basis over the course of months. They will remember you for what you were like in and out of class more than anything they actually learned in class. When I think back on the teachers I had back in 1987, I can only remember their personalities more than anything else.
Similiarily, when most of these Korean kids move on to college and beyond, they will probably not be able to tell you one thing they learned from a native teacher. But, they will definitely remember their personalities.