Tears!
This week has been busy. I realized that our upcoming trip to Tokyo is going to cost quite a bit more than what we realized, but not so much that it really is a problem. I also realized that there was a simple change I could make in the way I teach to be more effective.
So in our classes we teach phrases like, “I like ______.” We put a flash card in the blank and the kids repeat. I decided that instead of using the stock cards that say, “I like ______,” I will instead make a ton of cards that have single words. This may sound basic and stupid, but it has a lot of repercussions. Now the children can see “I” as a single word associated with a single meaning. They can see how things fit together and how they can be rearranged. They will be able to read smaller units of English and understand the grammar a little better. This of course comes at the cost of slowing down temporarily for the children to adjust to newer and smaller cards.
I used this today. Today I had some classes that are, as my previous teacher wrote, “My worst classes.” In general they are great, but there is one boy who breaks the whole thing. He doesn’t do homework, so the other kids don’t. He won’t say anything in class, so the other kids won’t. He has essentially pointed out to all of the kids how we as teachers have little to no authority over their actions in class.
We had previously called his mother and said how he has never done homework, never participates, and everyone else suffers for it. She responded by saying that she thinks he has some kind of autism (But she doesn’t know, and won’t find out) so just listening is fine.
I also had all of the kids write down answers to questions like, “What kind of English do you want to learn, ” or, “What do you like to do in English,” or, “What don’t you like to do in English?” This one child wrote that he wants to learn, “Strange English,” likes to, “Play games,” and hates, “Everything except games.”
Real helpful that kid is.
So today I granted the request. Using the loose framework of small cards I was able to make most of the class like a game where they had to constantly adjust to new and familiar English words and phrases. The trick was they had to do it competitively.
As soon as the games started, the child cried. Then he started hitting his head on things when the JT went to help. The rest of us kept playing. We tried to get him to join, but he refused and sat silently.
After lesson he cried to his mom that he hates English and doesn’t want to come back. That mother in turns talks to the mother whose house we taught in, who in turn talks to us. The mother is upset because usually the child says he has fun. This time he didn’t. He also added that we told him he couldn’t play and implied he wasn’t smart enough.
Here are my problems with this:
- The mother was never upset that he wasn’t learning English.
- She is only upset that he isn’t having fun.
- She said that only “listening” was fine.
- The child wrote that he ONLY likes games.
- We’ve been teaching the same thing for 3 weeks and the child has yet to participate.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:32 pm by rl