[little sage]

Quote chocopie

There are a lot of little things I do, but in general I try to avoid yelling as it just tires me out and I FIRMLY believe that it doesn't work, and I believe the kids feed off of it. If I'm yelling it just shows that the students have succesfully gotten under my skin, it doesn't demonstrate my authority. Also, if you save yelling for those really rare times when they've been SUPER-bad, it has a greater impact, as they're not used to hearing you get angry.

I like your management tips. I agree completely with the bit about yelling. I used to yell, out of frustration I guess, in my first year or so. But now I do the exact opposite: I fold my arms and wait.

With younger kids, I praise whoever is doing what I what I've instructed (book open and ready or book put away, etc) and the rest usually follow. If it's a noise issue, I stare down the noisy one with a look of perturbation on my face, but without saying anything. The class usually catches on pretty quickly. One class of 7 year olds even likes to fold their arms like me and say: "I'm ready teacher!". It's pretty cute.

The same technique also worked with the highschool boys class I had once a week. I surprised myself there. As I was thinking about how to shut them up, I silenced them by not saying anything, unplanned but successful. The silence I create is usually weird enough to get their attention. Good point (above) not to overuse any one technique though, because then kids just tune it out.

I also use a points/reward system at least in the first few weeks of a class so that everybody knows what behavior will and will not be tolerated during class. Sometimes the physical reward system (stickers, prizes) just naturally fizzles out and sometimes I have to keep it up for as long as I teach the class (months, years ???). I've been lucky the past few years and haven't had to deal with any true go-ahead-punish-me types, I've had mainly younger, more malleable, age groups.

My biggest displinary problem this year was completely unexpected: my housewives class was shockingly insensitive to my silent treatment (they'd usually go right on chatting away in Korean when I got to class), I even had an issue with one dominant-type student who took away my chair when she claimed it was her spot!

I was honestly baffled at having to exercise authority with such disrespectful adults, all of whom were older than me. I had relied on the unspoken terms of common decency and was never too vocal about establishing rules. I hadn't thought of myself as a mousy type of teacher, but I guess I'd come across as a wallflower type with this particular group of women.

If anyone has advice on how to "discipline" adult students, please advise. I'm going to be teaching more adult classes this upcoming year and I'd like to be prepared for the odd pitbull type student or class.

Thanks.

[Eric]

hey, nice list!

i use a lot of what you two use. silent treatments, yelling only when necessary, etc.

For those "don't-care-if-the-teacher-sends-me-to-the-office-I-hope-I-can-piss-her-off-and-score-points-with- my-friends kids" i try to use positive reinforcement. i find that these students thrive on getting attention from me and the other students. it really doesn't matter if the attention is good or bad.

so for those students i try to praise them heavily when they do well and not assume the worst in them (easier said than done). I had one student who loved attention and loved showing how little he knew. he loved the attention from his classmates and he loved when i yelled at him. so i changed my strategy, i started praising him very strongly when he did something well. after that his attitude changed in class. he started answering more questions and his behavior got better too. he was receiving attention and he was feeling good about himself. somedays this method worked better than others. for these kind of students you really have to be consistent with the praise.

anyway, thats how i handle the students who don't care.

eric

[fishead soup]

Korean students can be self policing. The way to do this is to tell them that if they act up there will be no game. If the class gets too noisy I simply stop whatever game we're playing and make them take out there text books and do five to ten minutes of listen and repeat.

[little sage]

Fishead Soup,

I like the idea of simply stopping the game. Noisy disruptions = Forfeit game, I think is a good lesson in consequences and choice. I am wary of having kids associate studying with punishment, though, so I never do writing as punishment (I know you didn't mention that). I sometimes do a couple minutes of silent waiting (and hope no one gets the giggles).

Do you worry that your kids will starting thinking of study time as the punishingly dull part of the lesson, and the game time as the best part? Just curious how you deal with that. I don't know if it's just me being wishy-washy or what.

Thanks,
Karen

[fishead soup]

Good point alternatively you might want to write the amount of time allocated to preffered activity time. You do this at the beginning of the class and start your standard lesson. Everytime someone disrupts your lesson simply substact one minute from it.

Actually the idea of preffered activity time is a standard classroom management tool. I think there are some activities almost all students hate.
Example choral repetition.

[Eric]

Quote fishead soup

Good point alternatively you might want to write the amount of time allocated to preffered activity time. You do this at the beginning of the class and start your standard lesson. Everytime someone disrupts your lesson simply substact one minute from it.

I forgot about this one. I use this, but only on my really loud/bad/crazy classes and it is SOOOO effective. I do it a little different, but it has the same affect. I just basically write my lesson plan on the board. For example

1. Review
2. Introduce new material
3. Writing or production activity
4. Game using the new material

Since my games rule ( ) they always want to play them. If they get noisy i dont even have to say a word. I just look at my lesson plan on the whiteboard and watch the seconds tick away on my watch. The usually clam up in about 1.3 seconds.

Thanks for the reminder on that one fishead soup!

[Pix]

I used to do a fair bit of tour leading, interspersed with my teaching and travelling lifestyle, and I discovered that positively the WORST listeners were teachers.

I dreaded the August trips which would invariably be full of teachers who were so used to doing all the talking and being listened to that they couldn't bear to have someone telling them anything.

The use of silence worked like a charm and would instantly shut them up, while trying to talk over them failed absolutely.
So silence is my number one trick for adults.

Using praise and giving positive attention or responsibility to the naughty ones is good although sometimes you just want to throw them out of the class but unfortunately you can't. Often people are naughty because they are bored so I give the naughty ones extra tasks like handing things out so they can't mess around in the meantime.

I split friends up if they muck about together and put naughty people at the front.

I also have the group in teams and deduct points for bad behaviour from the team so that encourages peer pressure to keep the naughty ones in line.