How do you handle a class that doesn’t respond to any of your questions (regardless if it’s in English or Japanese)? Their HRT often leaves during my class (I’m T1) and even if she is there, she would just stand in a corner. Even if I try to pull her in and try to make her participate actively during class, she would eventually go back to her corner.
I am at my wits end here.
Tried being friendly, no response.
Tried being funny, no response.
Tried making them work in groups, no response.
Tried making them lead, no response.
I plan to talk to the HRT soon regarding this. Any advice?
22 comments
Is this elementary or JHS?
If the class hates the HRT (I assume this is ES) then often its a lost cause, because they need to be in the room and the students are doing it for spite.
You may want to ask other teachers who have the class such as the gym teacher, shodou, arts and crafts etc if they have the same problem or go watch those classes.
I had a class where the JTE was the HRT and they would not participate. I tried everything but the class just didn’t respond. Why didn’t the class like him? He smelt like an old man……????
Strangely, the HRT had to go to hospital for the last semester and with a new HRT the class was completely different.
Of course this was also the class that the dispatch company wanted to always watch.
Just give the same amount of energy as everyone else.
You don’t get paid enough to go over and beyond.
Take a chair and sit down for the rest of class
You’re not really in a position to make any meaningful changes that would be a solution to this. As an ALT, this is far above your paygrade. Design lessons that don’t require interaction from the students, or don’t ask any open ended questions. You could try just directing questions directly at students rather than asking openly and hoping someone answers. You can stare at one until they give you a response. Won’t make you popular, though.
There’s always one class that’s just quiet and not participation focused. Sometimes starting with warm up activities has helped me and sometimes starting with something funny (like accidentally stubbing your toe on the floor outlet) might help you break down those barriers a bit.
I agree a little with comments blaming the HRT for the unresponsive class.
I had this few a years ago as a teacher, agree mix of poor hrt and low level English ability sometimes can keep classes quiet.
When this happened I gave them a rock scissors worksheet board game using erasers for board pieces. If they don’t know English they can still play.
Assuming it’s in Japan, unless you’re a licensed teacher I believe they can’t really leave someone in the class alone, perhaps someone could clarify that point.
Write the students’ names on popsicle sticks and put them in a can. Draw a stick, read the name, ask the question. If a student answers correctly, praise them and give a big smile. If a student can’t answer correctly, don’t make a big deal out of it. Perhaps say “That’s OK. Can anybody help [Student 1]?” If nobody volunteers to help, draw another stick. If you get (say) 3 people in a row who can’t get it, say “This is a hard one, maybe!” and tell the class the answer.
Above all, don’t get angry. This will just create a hostile and antagonistic atmosphere where students are even less likely to volunteer. Try to create an easygoing mood where there’s a reward (your praise) for getting it right, but no loss of face for getting it wrong.
Drawing names may feel like a pain in the ass, but students will quickly learn that the fastest way to move the lesson along is to just answer. And I think this is the underlying issue: right now, they know that the easiest way to get through the lesson is to do absolutely nothing.
Some people may object and say that teachers shouldn’t call directly on students, but I strongly disagree. In the real world, your boss can call on you in a meeting (“What’s your opinion on this [name]?”) and you can’t just sit there and say nothing. So it reflects reality, in a sense.
Having name-sticks in a can is super old fashioned, to be sure, but it’s cheap, easy to implement, easy to bring, and it’s random, which the students realize, so you can’t be accused of favoritism or “picking on” students.
This is when you put the “A” back in ALT.
You are not, and never should be, the main teacher. The other, real, teacher is being lazy and disrespectful to you by leaving. The message to the students is, “English isn’t that important, so I will take a break.”
Not to mention the liability issues. By law, there needs to be a licensed teacher in the classroom at all times. Especially with young kids, anything can happen and the ALT cannot be responsible.
Time to train your Kapanese colleagues on your actual role.
What grade is it? I agree that you shouldn’t be the only teacher in the class and, probably, not T1 for 5th, 6th. If the HRT is in the classroom, being T1 for lower grades is fine. They should be supporting you at least. Not sure what you can do about it though.
Man, I feel you. Been there, done that. It can be very uncomfortable. Sometimes I got through it just by counting the minutes and reminding myself I was getting paid.
As others have said, it may be impossible to fix.
Also, don’t take it personally, it’s (probably) not you.
You could try:
1. Low effort games that are tangentially linked to English that don’t require them to do anything “embarrassing”. Word bingo, hangman variants Pictionary if it goes well. Anything where you can divide them into teams (with points) usually works better
2. Heavily scripted activities: dialogues that require pairs. Loads of practice and changing partners culminating in them “performing it” at the end.
3. The thing that was my breakthrough moment when I had this situation was I set up a 1-to-1 “test” outside in the corridor. I told them exactly what kind of questions I would ask and then we did two minutes with each kid.
Once you took them out of the group it was crazy the difference. The “smartarses” were lost without their audience (and I actually felt a bit sorry for them), the shy kids finally got a chance to say something without the popular kids around, and surprisingly I found that some of the kids that I thought were “dumb” were actually kind of bursting to speak. One kid that had honestly just said “eh” or “wakaranai” for a year said “well hello salizarn, nice to see you today” when he was sitting down.
Also after that although it didn’t change completely, the dynamic was a lot better once I’d sat down with each kid and they’d seen I was actually okay 1-to-1
In my first year I used to have a teacher, who was a new teacher freshly graduated, who’d just leave the entire class and go and play basketball with the 6th graders, I’d try to continue the class as I was expected to be T1 for all six classes each day but the kids just refused to listen and would just start talking amongst themselves, I eventually just let them socialise as trying to yell over a classroom of 37 students was next to impossible.
I also had one such class like the OP where the students would switch from being really loud and genki to utter silence when the English class started and they simply refused to speak or answer any question no matter how fun it seemed while the HRT would slowly drift to the back of the room and type away on her smart phone for the entire lesson.
Both teachers then complained to the principal about me despite me being T1 for all the classes, apparently because due to my accent being Australian it was difficult for the students to understand who became bored with my lessons very quickly, I definitely tried my best to plan lessons but it was difficult as I never had a single spare all week, it’s a bit different now with a JTE taking over all the classes letting the HRTs scuttle away to the teacher’s room free from responsibility, there will always be hard classes however just doing one’s best as an ALT and maybe getting a few students to laugh or enjoy themselves is the best goal to aim for.
Grab a pack of durries, light one up and be like [deep bogan Aussie accent] ‘oi carnts, shut the fuck up and siddown!!! You’re here for proper cultural immersion, not that softcore Japanese shit with all the exciting parts blurred out!!!’
If anybody questions you, tell them to STFU coz you’re the ALT and you’re there to teach them all what school’s like in ‘Straya.
I used dice. If I roll your number, you have to answer. Don’t answer? I wrote their name on the board (your teachers should have lists with names and numbers, so just translate those).
That was it, no real consequence. I even erased the names at the end of class. But kids *hated* having their names publicly displayed.
Have you made it clear that you don’t *need* the right answer, you just want them to try? Do you have a reward system in place? If not, you’re probably not positively reinforcing their participation and negatively reinforcing apathy. And yeah, at the beginning, you should praise every little thing. “What letter is this?” “…” “One star for trying.” “I don’t know” ” That’s okay, nice try! Who can help? Anything is okay!” And give a star/point etc for trying, two points for the right answer. The most points at the end of the day/week/month whatever you want, they get a prize. You *need* to incentivize it, because otherwise the process of practicing language will just be too uncomfortable and they’ll avoid it as much as possible. They might do the homework, but actual class participation is going to be rough.
Another way to motivate kids is competition; pit them against each other, and they’ll do a lot better. Understand that they don’t know any English, so the game should have three steps (for the kids anyway) that can be easily and quickly understood through gesture, modeling, and a practice round. Especially if they know nothing, don’t try to make them form a sentence or read, just give them a word. Make English easy *first*, then build a rapport, then start pushing them. Give one point to the loser in games, two to the winners. If there’s cheating, give points to the other teams. If one team is horsing around, give points to the other team, etc.
Ex (asterisks are teacher steps):
* T draws lines at the top of the board labeled with the row/column number, gesture and point as you say “team 1”, “team 2” etc
* T writes three words/letters on the blackboard. Alt: tape corresponding three pictures
* T gathers all the kids in the last row/column and whispers the word/letter
1) S learns the word/letter from the teacher
* When all kids have returned to their seats, T does a countdown 3-2-1 go
2) S whispers to the next student in the row/column)
3) Last student touches the corresponding word on the blackboard
* First team wins a certain number of points, all other teams receive #-1 points. So if first gets ten, the rest get 9. Or you can just do 2 and 1 for simplicity.
With this sort of setup, it’d be best to do a “practice round” with the most visible team, i.e. the front row can do it by themselves once. If you notice anything that needs fixed, tell the class and set forth your expectations, rules, and consequences. ALWAYS warn them of the consequences before following through (“Is whispering before I say “go” okay??” “No!” “No it’s not! If I see you whispering, everyone else gets 1 point.”), but make sure you follow through. If you have too much time, or if it’s too easy/hard/ you can level up or down. “Listen” + writing, down to “Listen” + picture, or up to “Listen” + speaking i.e. tell the teacher.
Do you speak Japanese well?
If so, just ask em
that’s what I used to do when I was an ALT
I have a junior high school class that is unresponsive no matter who the teacher is. I tried wracking my brain for interesting warms up and worksheets and found that just feeding their screen addiction is the best for everyone.
https://www.taysteachingtoolkit.com/
This is God’s gift to English teachers. Use a high quality PowerPoint game and put your kids into groups. Even my do-nothing class was into it. You can just change out the pictures and words and reuse them for different lessons.
I agree when someone said not to get upset. I think the best policy is to only have bigger carrots instead of sticks, as frustrating as it is.
I’ve been going through the exact same thing at my main school with ES 5年生＆6年生 and it’s such a massive pain. I hate it too since I’m there 3 days out of the week. Good luck.
If you can, maybe you could get away with just showing an English movie for the whole period, then kick back on the laptop. Maybe like once a week or so. That’s what I did at times for classes that I could tell just didn’t care to learn anything.
>If I try to pull her in and try to make her participate actively during class, she would eventually go back to her corner.
So, your ~~JTE~~ HRT ***is*** participating, she just isn’t ***leading*** the lesson. Are you discussing your lessons beforehand with the ~~JTE~~ HRT and making your expectations clear? She is probably more confused than anything. If you didn’t plan a role for her in your lesson, then the confusion is on you. It’s unreasonable to expect every ~~JTE~~ HRT to understand what you’re trying to teach *as you’re teaching it*. I’ve also had lessons ruined by JTEs who didn’t get the point or thought they could do my own activity better than me. This is why planning (打ち合わせ) is so important. If you and your ~~JTE~~ HRT aren’t on the same page before the lesson begins, it’s a recipe for disaster.
In the future, when you plan your lessons, try to consider what you want the ~~JTE~~ HRT to do during the lesson.
For example, if you’re modeling a dialogue or doing a role play, then the JTE needs to read a part or take on a role. If you’re doing an activity with students individually, then make an evaluation sheet for each student that the ~~JTE~~ HRT can fill out in his or her cosey corner.
You can’t just show up to class and expect the ~~JTE~~ HRT to just “get it”.
Plan
Plan
Plan
When you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
Just move on with the lesson. Give everyone a fair chance to respond, but forcing students to participate probably won’t endear yourself to them. Nor will it help the lesson go smoother.
You’re performance in class is rarely judged to any particular effect, so don’t feel obliged to work harder than you feel is necessary. If you are unsuccessful in one particular class, take the L and move on with your day.
Try your best.