Ajarn Forum - Living and Teaching In Thailand - View Single Post - What was your worst classroom discipline experience?

Lizara · 25th May 2008, 11:39

Well, this pales in comparison to some of your stories, but here's mine...

When I started my first teaching job at an ECC franchise in Korea, I had no teaching experience and no knowledge of how to effectively manage a class. The school didn't help out much; their only advice was to send bad students to the head teacher to be disciplined. Within a couple of months I'd worked things out with most of my classes, and they were behaving pretty well, but I had one class of twelve Grade Six boys who were immune to anything I did. They'd chatter all class, play with toys, swear at me in Korean, get up and run around the classroom, crawl under tables... they were mostly about as big as I am and I, a 5'2 shy girl, was far, far out of my league. If I gave them extra work, they wouldn't do it. If I tried to send them to the head teacher, they'd go to the bathroom or something and come back five minutes later and lie that they'd gone to the head teacher. I had no idea what to do, so I'd mostly give them worksheets and spend the class going around standing next to each student until he'd finished. A couple of times I just gave up and sat at the front of the class doing nothing for the twenty minutes or whatever it was until class was finished.

Eventually, six months or so later, the class was split up and given to two different, male, more experienced teachers. Faced with having to do real schoolwork, most of the bad students quit within a couple of months. I've sinced learned how to discipline more effectively, and can now play the mean teacher when I have to.

25th May 2008, 11:39	#42 (permalink)
Lizara Lizara is really missing Europe :( User. Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 1,653 vCash: 500 Blog Entries: 4 Rep Power: 532	Re: What was your worst classroom discipline experience? Well, this pales in comparison to some of your stories, but here's mine... When I started my first teaching job at an ECC franchise in Korea, I had no teaching experience and no knowledge of how to effectively manage a class. The school didn't help out much; their only advice was to send bad students to the head teacher to be disciplined. Within a couple of months I'd worked things out with most of my classes, and they were behaving pretty well, but I had one class of twelve Grade Six boys who were immune to anything I did. They'd chatter all class, play with toys, swear at me in Korean, get up and run around the classroom, crawl under tables... they were mostly about as big as I am and I, a 5'2 shy girl, was far, far out of my league. If I gave them extra work, they wouldn't do it. If I tried to send them to the head teacher, they'd go to the bathroom or something and come back five minutes later and lie that they'd gone to the head teacher. I had no idea what to do, so I'd mostly give them worksheets and spend the class going around standing next to each student until he'd finished. A couple of times I just gave up and sat at the front of the class doing nothing for the twenty minutes or whatever it was until class was finished. Eventually, six months or so later, the class was split up and given to two different, male, more experienced teachers. Faced with having to do real schoolwork, most of the bad students quit within a couple of months. I've sinced learned how to discipline more effectively, and can now play the mean teacher when I have to.