Today marked my last full week of teaching. I celebrating by giving the lecture of all lectures to my 5th grade boys. They have spent the better half of a year talking, playing, walking around, and just being plain disrespectful in my class. I've tried so many methods without showing anger. But today I thought "what the hell"...the first thing I told them was to "shut up"...I would never ever tell a student to shut up, but I really wanted them to listen. I explained to them that they are kids and I'm an adult. My job is to teach you and your job is to pay attention and learn. I was not hired to babysit and I'm not their mothers. I also told them they were being very disrespectful to their Korean teacher and that the problem isn't the teachers, it's them. I also explained that if they wanted to play go to the playground but when they come in my class they will be quiet, show respect to me and their classmates and try to learn something.
I'm 99.9% sure they won't change, but I felt like I had to say something. With a few students it's clearly problems at home, but with a 2 or 3 of them it's discipline problems. Boys in Korea can get away with almost anything. I sometimes wish they would do stay with my father for about 2 weeks. They'd never be out of line again. I think that a lot of people confuse discipline with abuse. You don't have to beat your kids but you do have to set limits and consequences. I won't lie, my parts did beat me, and it worked out well for me. But it's not for everyone, kids react differently. But I would take a beating any day to my parents saying things like "I'm disappointed in you". The beatings hurt but the pain would go away, however those words would be on repeat all the time.
So would any of you ever teach? If you do teach how do you deal with classroom disruptions?
I would love to get formal training in teaching and actually teach. I do enjoy it but I think I'm done with teaching English in Korea for a while. I don't want to turn people off on Korea, but some places aren't for everyone.
On that note, are there any popular cities, countries, singers, tv shows or even restaurants that you just can't stand or just don't care for but everyone else seems to love?
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