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Fri 18 May, 2007 02:11 am
I am quite confused about this. I began to teach at a prestigious high school in Prague last fall. It is supposed to be one of the best high schools in our country and our students often go to study at Cambridge, Oxford or Ivy League universities.
So soon after I started to teach English there, I was pleased to hear that my students were happy with my lessons and I could feel my colleagues accepted me very quickly as one of them. I also felt that students enjoyed my lessons and I was happy I could improve their English. I would say they learn at least
5 new words in each lesson, a couple of expressions, I often correct their grammar mistakes when necessary and they spend a great deal of time speaking about different things so they can practice what they have been learning recently, etc.
Of course, from time to time, they disagree with something, for example grades - why is it necerssary to be so strict when grading our essays... for example, or why is it necessary to do these exercises... this happens once a month or so and I try to explain. One group is less positive than other groups and seems to have objections every now and then. The other two groups are very calm about this and I feel we get along very well.
Anyway this post is about one student that doesn't make sense to me.
As I told my students that I would like them to learn to communicate problems with people who are higher in the hierarchy, without being rude or negative or aggressive, I encourage them to come up to me during a break and discuss whatever they feel could be better or whatevet they think I should change. They hardly ever do come to discuss. Well, maybe three times a year. So to me it is a message from them: You are doing fine, we have no major complaints.
But last time this student asked me to have a word with me during a break.
She is very popular with her classmates and they like her a lot. She is also very talented, more talented than most other students and I know she reads books in English, she has American friends and she knows a lot of colloquial English. I also know that for some reason she basically ignores my lessons, always somehow tries to show me and others that what we are doing is waste of time. When she makes a mistake and I correct it, she acts as if I was wrong. She acts as if there was nothing she could learn from me. For example when I asked the students to speak about past, say last weekend, in simple past, she used past continuous instead of simple past and when I corrected her and said something like See, you can learn! You can learn from your mistakes so don't waste your time and do your best, she just made a face like I don' believe you.
When a student asked her What did you do yesterday? She used things like I was reading a book. I was watching TV. So I told her that simple past is necessary unless she wants to stress it was a situation or that something happened when she was reading... No, she doesn't believe me.
When she is supposed to read an article about a little interesting region in England, she says: I don't care about Britain, I will never go there and I don't care about their castles. So I am not going to talk about it.
She often says things like Who cares, I don't care. But , gee, I don't believe this little 16 year old girl doesn't care! I dont' believe she is cynical, I know her classmates like her very much and she has a big effect
on them, so she can give me a hard time if she acts like Ignore this stupid teacher. I can sometimes feel that some of the classmates struggle trying to decide if she should follow her or me. Although the lessons continues normally and everybody does what they are supposed to do, I feel some students have a look at her and go - maybe she is right, maybe I should ignore him, too.
Yesterday when she asked me to talk to her during a break, she told me she hadn't learned anything from me. I said, well, my lessons are for all my students, not just you, so I cannot do much about it. We are using this particular book, it is a good book and we have to follow this book. If you don't like the book, I can't help you. But at home I realized that what she said is nonsense. She can learn a lot of new words, expressions, correct her grammar mistakes, participate in activities positively and help other students communicate, etc, etc. Her test results haven't been very good recently. She occasionally gets C or D. I am absolutely sure my lessons give her a lot of opportunities to improve her English. But I can imagine she would like to read different articles, learn different grammar, and speak about different things. Well, this seems pretty selfish and unrealistic to me.
So I don't know what this is about. Should I just ignore her or should I try to convince her that she is wrong? I can't imagine that she would be so talented and so stupid at the same time. Or so caring and so cynical at the same time.
Maybe the way I encouraged them to come and politely tell me what they don't like was a mistake and I should not discuss my lessons with them at all.
I discussed this with an American colleague, who is also her English teacher, we share the group and she told me "Don't worry, you are doing the right thing, her English often doesn't make sense, she cant' express herself clearly, she has bad grades in tests and complains all the time. So it is not your fault if she says she hasn't learned. She can learn, definitely. "
I sometimes feel like telling the students "Listen, just because some of you are very talented, and just because I encourage you to express yourselves and tell me what you don't like, that doesn't mean you don't tend to overestimate yourselves. You have very little experience
in life, you haven't achieved anything yet and you should be more grateful for all the hard work we teachers do for you every day sincerely. Even a mediocre English teacher will bring articles, exercises, tests, they will correct your mistakes and you should be grateful for this opportunity to learn and get ready for universities and your real life. Tell me what you think, but if you don't make sense, I will ignore your objections."
I am afraid most of them would be cynical about this and some of them would not understand - I understand all possible opinions and values are melting and struggling in their minds, so I will probably be more reserved next time without trying to explain what is wrong with their attitude to school and learning in general. I sometimes don't know if I should try to explain why they are wrong. I have 20 years of experience teaching EFL, I know very well what works and what doesn't work when you want to learn English, I know what it takes to improve. I know how I myself learned and made progress in English and how teachers could help me from time to time but I had to do the job, homework, study, practice, speak, read, write and listen. All the students who have followed my orders, tips etc have learned from me. Those who whine instead of working usually don't learn much. From any teachers.
Possibly this pupil needs a referral to an educational psychologist? There may be issues in her life outside school or in her life history that you are unaware of.
stach, it sounds as though your obstreperous student is being rebellious on purpose. She recognizes that her peers like this and is using it against you as a substitute for hard work. Don't allow her to do it. You could use the behavior mod technique and ignore her, or you might try the following approach: Have a week of student teaching whereby you pick a person to teach the rest of the class in any given area of English. Your evaluation will be based on the success of that particular student in accomplishing his goals.
A spoiled and petulent child.
Ignore your troublesome student Stach all the time.
Give praise or reward, and plenty of it to every other student in the class except her, but no praise for your troublesome student. Give her opportunities to meet or attempt to meet your expectations but unless she does ignore her and praise the students who do attempt to meet your expectations. Any attempt to attempt to meet your expectation on her behalf should be praised and rewarded.
At all costs you must not allow her to rule your classroom.
At the end of the day you do need to seek ways to engage your students, all of your students.
A few suggestions: What would be wrong with using popular culture to engage your students occasionally. can you get American or british magazines such as Rolling Stone magazine, Cleo or Dolly. can you use Utube video's for translation practice? Could popular English speaking Movies be of Value? Radio streaming over the internet? Many teenagers know the english words to pop songs but do they really know what those words mean?
Why don't you do something really out of the ordinary and teach your next lesson whilst sitting in a tree (You in the tree not the students.)
Are there any exchange students in your area? A visit from an international exchange student could be interesting. Rotary, AFS, STS. are all organisations involved with international student exchanges.
Have a look at this web site.
http://www.cultures-shocked.org/forum/index.php
Perhaps the young people on that site could give you some insight in how to deal with your student.
Is this one of the students you were showing favoritism to earlier in the year?
sozobe wrote:Is this one of the students you were showing favoritism to earlier in the year?
i don't know exactly what student you mean but if you mean the whole big affair i started here at the forums and had arguments about morals etc,. no this is a different school, thank God, and I don't do these elementary mistakes any more - at least at this school I am trying to make sure everything I do is really professional
but i tend to take things personally and approach students personally at this school - sometimes we discuss philosophy, religions, i tell them stories from my own life and they seem to enjoy these things - they like these kind of friendly, chatting lessons - at least I suppose so because otherwise they would probably stop paying attention to my talk and started rolling their eyes or doing something else, but they are very interested and engaged all the time and show support
but I don't give any of the students any signals that I am interested more than a teacher, you know what i mean
dadpad wrote:A spoiled and petulent child.
Ignore your troublesome student Stach all the time.
Give praise or reward, and plenty of it to every other student in the class except her, but no praise for your troublesome student. Give her opportunities to meet or attempt to meet your expectations but unless she does ignore her and praise the students who do attempt to meet your expectations. Any attempt to attempt to meet your expectation on her behalf should be praised and rewarded.
At all costs you must not allow her to rule your classroom.
At the end of the day you do need to seek ways to engage your students, all of your students.
A few suggestions: What would be wrong with using popular culture to engage your students occasionally. can you get American or british magazines such as Rolling Stone magazine, Cleo or Dolly. can you use Utube video's for translation practice? Could popular English speaking Movies be of Value? Radio streaming over the internet? Many teenagers know the english words to pop songs but do they really know what those words mean?
Why don't you do something really out of the ordinary and teach your next lesson whilst sitting in a tree (You in the tree not the students.)
Are there any exchange students in your area? A visit from an international exchange student could be interesting. Rotary, AFS, STS. are all organisations involved with international student exchanges.
Have a look at this web site.
http://www.cultures-shocked.org/forum/index.php
Perhaps the young people on that site could give you some insight in how to deal with your student.
I am glad you came up with these ideas. Because the strange thing is that I actually spend about 75 % time teaching based on the official book - reading, excercise, writing, debate etc, the TEFL style and about 25 % we discuss something - for example what is it like to be a teenager in the world of adults, or what do you think about what makes people happpy, we discuss things like drugs, environment, we watch movies in English without of with English subtitles, we play scrabble, we sing songs, lots of different things. So I think When I teach a "regular" lesson, I just follow the book because I should complete at least three moduls a school year, which is about a third of the whole book. We are pretty busy with the book and all the very difficult grammar.
Actually I learned at the TEFL course how to engage all students all the time and how to keep them busy. I think my lessons are very lively, they work in couples or groups most of the time, I keep asking them questions, elicit things all the time instead of lecturing so I guess I am doing fine in this regard.
Moreover, our school is really active in all kinds of things - the students play theatre in English, play theare in Czech, go to sports competitions the school organizes, there is alot of students exchange with France and England, the students travel around Europe visiting museums, sightseeing, they go to international students' meetings where they learn to debate, etc.
I feel these students tend to be very proud of being at this particular school and they tend to attack a teacher, who shows some kind of weakness, be it academical or moral or professional and me, being such an open person I am, I like to admit my faults or I sometimes say - you may be right, I will discuss this with my colleagues and will let you know what we have decided to do. I think they mistakenly consider this as lack of professionalism on my side. Intead I am trying to teach them that whoever wants to succeed IRL, they should be able to admit that they don't know this and that and should be always ready to learn and improve, be it teachers, students, bosses, ministers, workers in factories, everyone. I think I am trying to teach them to be openminded, humble and be able to see things realistically. For example they will never have an ideal teacher and they will never become perfect people. There will always be some conflincts and misunderstanding at school, companies, offices and the point is to be able to switch from one sided views and negative emotions to willingness to see the situation realistically, and consider any chances to improve the situation realistically.
contrex wrote:Possibly this pupil needs a referral to an educational psychologist? There may be issues in her life outside school or in her life history that you are unaware of.
Most teachers say that it is difficult to get along with her, on the other hand, she is supposed to be really loved by her classmates and they consider her extremely talented, creative and caring. She must have some kind of personal problem with me. But my American colleague acrually says that she also does strange things in her class, for example starts singing silently or mumbles something to herself and that she doesn't make much sense most of the time when she is asked to express herself. IT seems she can't cope with the fact that although she would like to sound like and American native speaker, I speak better English than her, correct her mistakes and don't understand what she says, and my colleague has the same problem. Just because she hangs our with this American girl in her free time, she thinks we should adore her marvelous English. In fact she mumbles, but I have to admit she hardly has any Czech accent and she sounds American.
contrex wrote:Possibly this pupil needs a referral to an educational psychologist? There may be issues in her life outside school or in her life history that you are unaware of.
Actually I have an idea what the problem might be.
I remember when I was about 23 and our country got rid of the communist rule, and loads of expats came from the US, I quickly signed up for a course in this American language school. I thought I was smart, intellectual, I thought my English was already very good. I went throufh a huge nasty culture shock. I started to hang out with these interesting American teachers and could not cope very well with the feeling that I am a complete idiot compared to them. I had a hard time understanding their intellectual conversiations, I had no idea about basic American values they talked about, had no idea about what is going on in the US and they sounded like whoever doesn't know what is going on in the modern world is barbaric. I felt really bad. I remember I tended to react in this immature way - I didn't take their English lessons seriously, I had doubts about everything they said, when I was asked to write an essay on this or that, I would write some kind of sarcastic protest or parody making no sense. I was a lot like the student I am talking about. But later I gave up and started to adore my American teachers and friends. I decided to open up and learn. I started to ask them questions, and the way I am, who I am these days, my values, my life style was hugely influenced by these friends and teachers from the US. I was also much older than she is . SHe is still a perfect teenager, it will be difficult for her and her pride to open up and learn anything from me. THere is nothing special about me that might interest her. So she will try to sleep through my lessons or something. I had very similar attitude with my first American teachers encounter.
Insecurity
Is your student's problem insecurity?
As old Hegel said, people act out a desire for recognition. One can acquire this recognition through merit or force. A healthy person acquires recognition by what they do and how they are as a person. They have no need to force anyone to agree that they are a valuable human being.
Such a person has developed talents and a personality that naturally attract others. People with weak, insecure egos need the bolstering brought by power and authority since they cannot achieve recognition on their own. Domination allows them to have a sense of self.
Re: Insecurity
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:Is your student's problem insecurity?
As old Hegel said, people act out a desire for recognition. One can acquire this recognition through merit or force. A healthy person acquires recognition by what they do and how they are as a person. They have no need to force anyone to agree that they are a valuable human being.
Such a person has developed talents and a personality that naturally attract others. People with weak, insecure egos need the bolstering brought by power and authority since they cannot achieve recognition on their own. Domination allows them to have a sense of self.
Yes, that makes a lot of sense. But she is only 15 or 16. All of these students must suffer from insecurity at that age. The question is why do most of them
just do what I tell them to do except her? I think she is confused about herself and cannot find balance between adoring herself and hating herself. But there must be something personal, too, something between me and her that I am not aware of. I noticed she never wear glasses in my class and when I see her in the school halways, she alwyas wears glasses. In my class she wears contact lenses. I don't know. Maybe I should not care so much about it. I still believe I can learn from these difficulties and it is great to get feedback from experienced and sincere teachers from around the world. I wish I could talk to her mother. If she is
intelligent, she should be, the gens should work, and if she is over 30, which she should be, too, she should be a wise lady and it would be nice to talk to her about her daughter. But she could be a negatively, defensively tuned proud intellectual who will accuse me of being boring, stupid, clumsy and not being understand her daughter's needs and feelings.
It's funny that you say most of the teachers have a difficult time with her, but the students like her....
Well, perhaps that's because they see her as "the rebel", the one who gives the teacher a hard time, and is fun to be with. I'm sure it's very entertaining to the other students to hear her stories of how stupid the teachers are.
She's probably not doing well in her other classes either.
I like dadpads advice, ignore her.
Your giving her what she wants, attention, but at your detriment.
BTW, let her know that this American agrees that she's not speaking English properly by saying "I was reading a book" rather than "I read a book" Her American friends are no doubt her age, and just don't bother to correct her. Also, with the way young people text message and abbreviate they're really not one's to give advice.
Oh, BTW
Looking at the title of this thread.
You can either choose to look at your part in that sentence and take her meaning that you are at fault, or read it the SHE has been incapable of learning from you, or anyone for that matter.
Funny how when we take a test and do well we say "I earned a good grade", but when we do poorly we're more apt to say "He/she gave me a poor grade".
contrex wrote:Possibly this pupil needs a referral to an educational psychologist? There may be issues in her life outside school or in her life history that you are unaware of.
Psychologists should not be pushed on anyone who is not a danger to others. This, to me, is a huge invasion of someones privacy and if I was that girl, that would have really pissed me off!
thanks everyone
i just felt sad about the whole thing
i don't give this student special attention, but i let her talk to me during the break
do you guys think that i should not discuss with students how i teach or what they would like to do in lessons? i don't mean discuss all the time and let them manage things - i mean once a month for 10 minutes or so to get feedback from them about how they feel and how they think benefit from our work
I think it's great that you talk to your students and ask them what they think. I know I appreciated a teacher who cared enough to to do that. When you ask for their opinion, it makes them feel like what they have to say actually matters and it shows that you care about what they think.
Of course there's a limit to everything and you can't help everyone.
This young girl sounds very much like myself when I was that age and if she's anything like me, she doesn't like being pushed and I wouldn't push her. If she's anything like me, she'll push right back and that's not what you want. She sounds like the type who will learn what she wants, when she wants and that's the only way it's going to be, otherwise she's going to rebel.
As long as she's not disrupting the class, I would just let her be.
Interesting discussion, and I agree with Montana...to a point. I don't like the idea that she blamed you for not learning anything when she has been unwilling to learn. Here's my
I would tell this student that education is a two-way street:
It's the teacher's job to teach.
It's the student's job to learn.
The truth is, stach, you've been doing your job. She hasn't been doing hers. It sounds like she's being a bit defiant, which isn't unusual for 16 year olds. But she needs to get over that if she wants to learn anything. I think she was just pushing you, to see if she could get a rise out of you. Teenagers like to do that, especially with adults who want to be seen as "understanding."
I would talk to her about what she finds interesting about the subject, but I would certainly not discuss teaching methods with a 16 year old.
mm hmm...agreeing with Eva.
I don't think most 16 year olds would be able to really discuss in depth what it is they hope to get out of the class, and how they would prefer you teach them.
Oh, little things of course....I had a latin teacher who made the class fun by sometimes having us sing songs and translate them, it was like a game and we learned from it. We could tell him we enjoyed that.
But to discuss your methods, no.
Montana wrote:I think it's great that you talk to your students and ask them what they think. I know I appreciated a teacher who cared enough to to do that. When you ask for their opinion, it makes them feel like what they have to say actually matters and it shows that you care about what they think.
Of course there's a limit to everything and you can't help everyone.
This young girl sounds very much like myself when I was that age and if she's anything like me, she doesn't like being pushed and I wouldn't push her. If she's anything like me, she'll push right back and that's not what you want. She sounds like the type who will learn what she wants, when she wants and that's the only way it's going to be, otherwise she's going to rebel.
As long as she's not disrupting the class, I would just let her be.
yes, you are probably right about her mentality and situation now
she is more talented than most other students and everyone knows that including her
it is just too bad she doesnt' notice that learning a language includes learning what you don't care about
even if i don't like mathematics, i should know the word "equation" or even if i hate economics i should know what stock market means
Well, now you're projecting on her what you feel is necessary for her to live a fulfilling life.
In this case, I think you are renting her way too much space in your head. You're doing your best to educate everyone as a whole, but there comes a point where the student needs to take an active role.
She's not will to take that role.
You can persuade her, but not force her.
We all have sticking points in our lives, hers is her education at this time. At some time in the future she will probably become mature enough to view things from all sides, but not right now.
Move on.
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