This has been a week of learning, grieving, and growing. Last Friday the second and third year classes began their unit on Classroom Commands. Thus unit has been very fun because it involves a lot of listening (as learning another language usually does) and responding. We have been learning common classroom commands like “stand up,” “raise your hand,” “look up a word,” “circle the answer,” etc. Overall the classes have been great and really enjoyed the involvement. I have been assigning more homework to make up for their general lack of studying, and some don’t realize how much not doing their homework is affecting their grade.
I began having more one-on-one times with students who are really suffering with a low grade. I ask them to stay after class in order to discuss their grade, how often they haven’t done their homework, and what they need to be doing to get on the ball. Carlos is one such student in my third-year class. He rarely does his homework, and has an F average for tests and quizzes. He says he wants to come to school and is interested in learning, but doesn’t try very hard at all – by choice. Hopefully, after my last discussion with him, he will study a little more for our next test tomorrow (Friday).
I pretty much had a teaching disaster on Tuesday of this week with my first period class, segundo curso B. They are generally my rowdiest class and resultantly my poorest performers. But they are very kinesthetically motivated, and love talking, raising their hands, writing on the board, singing our songs, etc. In fact, they have been by far the most enthusiastic about singing “This is the day,” and have picked it up better than any other class so far. So, although I enjoy their energy first thing in the morning, we usually end up behind, because it takes so much longer to plow through the constant chatter to the directions, explanations, etc.
Tuesday’s lesson plan involved group work with dictionaries. Since it was the first time to work with dictionaries or in groups at all, I made sure to go over the classroom procedures before we entered the room. What is the procedure if you have a question or something to say? “Raise your hand and wait for the teacher to call on you.” Once they entered the room in which we were to work in groups, chaos broke out. After reminding the students of the procedures and practicing them several times, I realized that the students were not responding to them at all. I started telling the students, “You need to stop talking or it will be impossible to start our activity.” I had to leave the room for a moment and said, “Absolutely no talking.” The second I left chaos broke loose and when I came back in the room I started writing names on the board of all the students I heard talking. Some of the students said, “Everybody was talking, you have to write everyone’s names.” I said, “OK,” and then finished writing everyone’s names on the board. After this I still had to send a student to sit with Tom in another room for the last 5 minutes of class and we had a meeting with him during break.
After the students realized that I was serious and was indeed enforcing discipline, they became enraged. At least half the class objected to their demerits and one girl even told me that everyone in the class hated me now. Needless to say it was a hard day and I had a lot of opportunity to question my actions and think about what other ways I could handle the situation in the future.
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