I work at a private high/middle school, and unfortunately, I often get angry and scold the students. When a student is not following a rule, I have threatened him or her that I would get angry (like a warning – and usually it works). In some occasions, I have made a student just stand and watch the class instead of letting him participate (which also usually works). I have also given the class a lecture and have threatened it that I would let the home room teacher know (which works the best). I hope I will never have to pull “I will have to talk to your parent” card, but I guess that will be the next step.
How about you guys? How do you discipline or motivate students to do better? If you have a better or different way, I’d love to learn! 🙂
Edit: okay – It’s my fault using the word “threaten.” I simply meant, “If you can’t follow a rule, I will be angry.” Or “If you can’t follow a rule, I will let the home room teacher know.” I do not yell or get emotional. Period.
Additionally, I am not talking about the effectiveness of my methods because they are working. I didn’t describe too much about every possible situation that I am in because I do not need your advice. I just want to know how other ALTs handle the situation.
Of course, I discuss this issue (?) with Japanese teachers (home room and other English team teaching teachers). Again, I am just wondering how other people do it.
18 comments
It really depends on the student and the situation. Every kid is different, especially comparing junior high kids to high school kids. I think high schoolers can handle a lot more responsibility. They’re at an age where the hand holding is over. Junior high kids tend to require a more hands on approach. What kind of rule breaking are we talking about?
In general, I find a quiet conversation after class, away from their friends is more effective than shouting at them in front of everyone. I’m pretty consistently harping on students for little things in front of everyone, but if it’s serious, I think it requires some thought from the student’s side. Get them to tell you what’s wrong. Do they understand the situation? Can they articulate what they did and why it’s not acceptable? Can they tell you what they think they should do next time? This is how I see Japanese teachers around me do it and it seems to work pretty well. I think it also requires a team approach. If this kid is a problem in your class, they’re likely causing trouble in other classes too. Talk to other teachers–especially the HR teacher–and find out what they’re doing so you can attack it collectively.
All this is pretty general advice as I don’t know really know the context of what you’re dealing with.
P.S. I’m really interested to hear what other people have to say. I love this topic and I hope there’s some good discussion here that we can all learn from.
If you are threatening students you probably shouldn’t be a teacher.
I teach at a very yanki high school and oftentimes have to deal with terrible behavior. My advice is to not let them get to you. Fire feeds fire. Are you solo teaching? If not, I would put the responsibility on the japanese teacher. If not you can tell then to be quite, but for sure talk to their homeroom teacher.
I always treat them with respect but slowly start to treat them like a child the more they act like it. Threatening to do anything is a bad idea. Just talk with their homeroom teacher.
Threatening is a lost cause as a long-term strategy my dude. There’s not one single cause and one single solution, so start developing a basket of strategies. At a younger age set, you may want to look at some of the tools offered by Chris Biffle, which are almost entirely proactive management; if you are able to speak one to one to students, but you’re not finding yourself effective, pick up a tome like “How to speak so kids will listen…” which is built for any adult working with kids who are on a different maturity level. I think between these two books, you’ll have 30-40 things to consider.
Upon further reflection, you may find that your class structure and actives can be improved. Are the kids able to work quickly under the own direction ? If not, why not? I’m not going to get into a long discussion but I routinely have had to help a teacher out solve a discipline issue to find that it’s a lot more of a “this teacher doesn’t know how to get the kids switched on, so they’re rebelling in a way no strategy is fit to magically resolve.”
You must stay dispassionate. It can never be about your emotions or feelings. They broke a rule? Lunch detention. If they argue back, Two days of lunch detention. Tell them calmly that they have received these punishments and move on. For more serious stuff, tell them to go to the principal’s office or trust they have after school detention (whatever your school’s discipline structure is) but again do it in a clearly dispassionate voice. Even a hint of annoyance and that will trigger some students to push harder. Yes, you’ll fail at this a few times. That’s okay. Just do better next time.
I think it really depends on the behaviour. I was taught that any misbehavior is essentially my fault for not structuring the class or activity for success. I usually start from there.
Another situation is school rules. I follow what the school sets out as consequences. For example using your phone in class leads to having that phone taken away and the child’s parent coming to school to get it back.
For stuff that other teachers don’t enforce but I do, such as sleeping or talking when others talk, I call them out immediately before it gets out of hand. I don’t speak unless they are all silent. I stop immediately if someone starts speaking.
I think these rules would apply to any age group.
Your mileage may vary, but for me it comes down to Honest communication.
If I’m ever loud for the sake of control, my words still contain compliments on their strong points. “You’re smart kids! You’re fun to be around! Balance your mischief with studying better!” Things like that
Being realistic while also laying out harsh truths allows the kid a safe person to speak their mind to.
I had a boy who was trying too hard fess up that he thought I was kind of lame, and then I was able to level with him about my own Yankee past and the trouble it landed me in. We had a talk about how it’s fun to discover yourself, but that your life is better if you put the work in. It was a good talk.
Another kid did the whole “I hate learning this!” Bit.
So I was like ‘Okay, well do you hate me?’
They clammed up pretty good and I said something like
‘Well that’s good. I don’t hate you either. Your future is my job, and school helps your future. Come on. 20 minutes left. Give me your best 20 minutes.’
When I can’t reach kids’ class behavior no matter what I do, I usually just try to get them to open up about their own issues on their terms. Are they sad alot? Is everything okay at home?
I think I can count on one hand the kids that were genuinely seeking to be awful out of hundreds taught.
ALTs are not responsible for discipline. If you are an ALT and you behave as you are describing you’re going to not get recontracted.
School context is also a thing. I once worked at a private high school where a passing grade was 25% or higher and if a student did not get 25, final grades were to be written in pencil.
I was told: these kids could fail anywhere, their parents pay a lot of money to pass here.
As you can imagine, discipline was a nightmare. A kid once punched a teacher. The teacher quit. The student showed up to class the next day.
Anyway: you get angry, you lose (says the guy who got angry in a uni class two days ago).
Don’t engage in a “battle” you can lose. If a kid openly defies you/refuses to do what you say, what do you do? I once told a kid he was close to crossing the line. His response: what happens then? And I thought, “that is a very good fucking question.”
I have had only a few major problems in the past decade or so, but if a simple warning does not work and kid is being disruptive to others my default now is to contact the office and ask them to remove the kid because he is interrupting the lesson for the other students.
I have never had to do that, but if you throw down some kind of gauntlet and lose, that ain’t good.
Also use some understanding. If kid has been up all night working, you are not going to keep him from sleeping. If he he has developmental issues, you aren’t qualified to deal with them. If he is trying to get a ride out of you, don’t bite. Sometimes just having them change seats fixed the problem. One student in the back was a total asshole. I put him in the front with empty seats next to him and he became one of the students most likely to speak up in class.
Hope some of this helps.
I don’t discipline students. I have rules, and they either follow them, or they are asked to leave my classroom.
So far, it’s only been necessary to request that they leave. They apologize, and the class continues.
As for worrying about students doing better, that’s not my job. My job is to provide the opportunity to learn as best as I can. What they do with that opportunity is not my concern.
>I have made a student just stand and watch the class instead of letting him participate (which also usually works).
This is probably a very bad idea ™.
While this particular approach is probably not crossing the line explicitly, it is close enough to the line that I would… think very hard about using this approach, especially in JHS.
>I just want to know how other ALTs handle the situation.
If you are an ALT an unlicensed, than you shouldn’t technically be punishing students (or teaching alone) at all.
However, as it is clear both those things do happen I think the answer depends on your level of familiarity (how often you teach) with the students.
If you are not familiar, than you do not do anything other than to ask their main teacher to handle it.
Beyond that, even if you are with them regularly enough that you could be in a position where setting rules was reasonable… you should be looking for advice (and following the lead) of other full-time teachers. There is no secret approach for ALTs, and every school will have its own approach.
hint: not allowing students, especially JHS students, to participate in a lesson is unlikely to lead to any sort of diserable result.
As a mere ALT it was made very clear to me to leave classroom management to the HRT/JTE so I ignore almost everything,even when the HRT abandoned me (mostly treated as a JTE as there can be no T1 without a T2).
If you don’t have a teaching license and have never completed an official degree that taught you how to ethically and lawfully manage classroom non-compliance and behavior issues then yes, you absolutely do need advice.
Language teaching has unique challenges when it comes to classroom management. Any negative corrective strategy runs the risk of discouraging communication, which will directly impact the student’s ability to learn in the class. Using questions as punishment, raising your voice, showing visible annoyance or anger, any of these can immediately and permanently discourage not just the target student’s motivation and production, but also other students as well.
If threats and displeasure are your go to tools, especially as a language teacher, you may want to consider some retraining and professional development focused on the topic.
As for what to actually do, I have taught at a somewhat rough but very high standard boys only school for quite a while. If a student crosses a serious line, I have an honest and direct discussion with them. In Japanese if need be. If students are loud, they know I will wait and watch them until they’re quite. Not angrily, but they are aware if they waste time it means more homework they have to complete at home. If you know how to set standards early and clearly, you don’t need to create a hostile classroom to enforce them.
Edit: the downvote button is not an “I don’t like you” or “I disagree” button. Ideally this is a board for education professionals, let’s be better than that and have a conversation if you disagree.
Discipline is a joke in Japanese schools and as an ALT you are just along for the ride.
So I’m not an ALT, I solo-teach and am responsible for my classes including discipline. My system is:
1. Everything I ask my students to do is something I think is worth their time to do. I try to make students feel like class is worth their time. Basically, I try to stop a lot of behavior problems before they happen by making it worth students’ time to follow my rules.
2. When I enforce a rule, I try to make sure the student I enforce it on understands why. For example, I make students tell me when they leave for the restroom because I need to know where they are. I’ll almost never say they can’t go to the toilet- the last thing I want to do is police their bladders. But if they can’t tell me where they’re going, they don’t get to go.
3. I scold students much harder for disrespecting each other than for disrespecting me. Talk while I’m talking? I just hold up the lesson in awkward silence until the student stops. Talk during a classmate’s presentation? That’s when I break out the speech about respect and manners.
It doesn’t work perfectly, but it works for the majority of my students, and anyone it doesn’t work for, I can usually get useful advice from their homeroom teacher.
If you’re an ALT, you shouldn’t discipline. It’s not your classroom nor your students. You’re not even qualified to discipline.
As an ALT, I wish I could. Not physically, of course. But, there are some students that REALLY need to be called out for their poor behavior during class. You know its bad when the other students are telling them to shut up or sit down during class. Its bad enough when even the homeroom teacher has had it with the students and have basically given up trying to discipline them. I can’t even imagine how these kids are at home if they act like they do in school.
Generally, keep rules simple and with an obvious purpose besides it just being a rule. Then you just work up a warning system. Glance, call their name, talk to them explicitly, pull out of class and chat, call parent etc. If it’s something really bad do what you have to do.
Compulsory education, lots of times students and you are in this situation just because. I think this realization is pretty important. Definitely motivate kids and all that jazz but keep it real. Sometime the kid just needs your class for a meager passing mark. I normally like to make sure my kids are considering their future and how current things fit into that. If they come to conclusion this class is pretty meh in it, so be it but just don’t want them getting in the way of others.