Sorry that I have been kind of sporadic lately with the blog updates recently. I have been stuck with writer bloc the past couple days and frankly, I have had that same problem tonight. I have set a goal for myself to make sure that I update it regularly so tonight I am going to push one out.
I suppose that this more of plea for advice more than anything. Since I have been here my experience with teaching the classes has been nothing but positive. With one exception: class 15. That class is my bad apple and they are a pain to teach. Let me explain:
The class struggles with listening. The concepts that I am teaching are so simple that if they listen, they will understand despite however big the language barrier might be. The kids always find ways to get distracted. Even when I try to get them to be quiet it never works. This last week they were being a little defient. The thing that breaks my heart with this class is that since they don’t listen, they never seem to understand and thus the class isn’t fun. None of my other classes have any problems like this.
So here what I have done and what I plan to do to fix this problem. After I taught class 15 this week  I had the best student take me to their English teacher. I told the teacher that I wanted to talk to her about the class after I taught them next week. On the way walking back to the classroom I talked to the student about why listening is important.
Here are the things that I plan to do with the class: there is another female student that is kind of the mischievious ring leader of the class. I want to talk to her and help her also to understand why listening is important and hopefully she can influence some students as well. I am also going to focus next weeks lesson wholey on Class 15 and their needs.
To solve all of this really quickly I could just have the English teacher discipline them and all would be fix but I really really do not want to go that route because it usually doesn’t end to nice for the kids. I am hoping that the things that I plan to do will work so that we can have more fun in that class.
So this is where I am. I need your advice. What would you do in my situation? What other things could I do to change the way that things are happing in the class? Any help would be greatly appreciated and would truly be of great value to me. So leave a comment and share your ideas!