Thread: how to deal with nightmare classes? - help!

I thought all Thai students at least respected their teachers.lol. can you get alot of nightmare kids in Thailand?
I have never taught abroad but I have taught some nightmare classes in the uk.
IMO The 1 golden rule that is an absolute necessity is this
Do not ever threaten a punishment/sanction that the kids know you will struggle to follow through with for ANY reason. You are like an ineffective policeman with no powers, a joke. Hopefully, you will know the sanctions the school will support you with, so work with them. Ideally sanctions need to be easy to enforce so the kids know that if you threaten it, it WILL happen 100%. Kids are like sharks, the smell blood and weakness they will pounce and exploit any weaknesses in your armour.
If the school doesn’t give a rats arse then I would try the pincer movement. Find a thai member of staff that the nightmare child has a respect for and try and get them onside to help you out by whatever means work for them. This could be a tutor/ a strict teacher that has got the kids behaving. The beauty of it, is that it doesn’t require intervention from senior management who may be useless, it also doesn’t undermine you either.
Adapt punishments to the individual. Eg some kids love to be at the front of the dinner queue so i would threaten them with holding them back by only 30 seconds. Misbehave again and its another 30 seconds and so on. 1m30 is enough to leave them queuing for an extra 20 minutes. They HATE this.the punishment is sooo easy to enforce and even if the school has a no-detention policy you can get away with it if reported as a quick chat with the problem student and not a detention. With another pupil I may threaten parent phone calls as their parents are super strict. Another i may just have to stare. These may not be applicable to students abroad but the key is to find the 1 thing that bothers them as individuals.
If none of the above works then simply throw the board rubber at them...joke.
But i have no sympathy for teachers that don’t give a flying fk about the kids and don’t put any effort in to planning lessons. They deserve the bad behaviour as they are bad teachers. Teachers who just want to see out the final few years, hate kids and want their pension deserve everything they get. If you went to a training course for 8hours a day and the trainer wasn’t remotely interested in your learning with a boring ill-planned course, how long would you last before you couldn’t be bothered either? The kids can smell if you are bothered about them and their learning and even the most stubborn will come around.
As a new teacher I had literally 1 kid who was EVIL and wouldn’t respond who detested me and I detested him. He made my life a misery and I the same. I eventually won the battle by unfair means

If you can't take away their toys, just make them stand up away from their desk. Tell them when they want to join the class, they can sit again. Fortunately my school does allow us to take away such things but they do manage to play them at times.

I have had some hard times teaching difficult sections in Mathayom 6, but the strategy that works best for me is to don´t take the lessons too seriously. If the students are simply desinterested in English, if they have zero motivation to participate in your class, maybe best way to get along with them is to just do activities that they like. My worst classes, with the lowest level of English language are the most encouraged ones when it comes to sing popular songs.

But I do understand that there are classes out there that are real nightmares. I suggest not to break your back on them. Try your best, maybe ask for help from the Thai teachers the students respect. If nothing works, just focus on those students who are willing to learn.

I used a megaphone on odd occasions . When appropriate

Like zeusbeheld said "start establishing some kind of rapport." This is a good one. It works. Group them. Assign "leaders" for each group. (You know who they are already.) You control the leaders. The group leaders control everyone in the group. Now you manage much small group of "leaders" that you've developed a good rapport with. Rotate these leaders out before they start abusing their power. It will happen. Then slowly disband the goups. You will get your class back.
"been there and done that." I hope this helps.
Year 15 in teaching