I am currently undergoing my formal education as a teacher of English and German as a second language, but I've been a full-time private tutor for 5 years. I'm not supposed to teach in a school yet, but due to the state of the education system in my country, there was a lack of teachers and I got invited to teach in my former high school. I teach a group of 11 thirteen-year-olds 6x45 minutes on Mondays and Tuesdays.
I felt like I was doing quite well, but today devastated me. We had our second lesson in the canteen (due to lack of available classrooms) and it was a disaster. I try my best to plan engaging, exciting lessons, so after a short vocabulary test they were due to write, I asked them to go around the classroom and ask each other some questions related to our new unit, I even made and printed them a spreadhseet with their names that they could fill out. They started asking each other for the information in our native language, no matter how many times I asked them to speak in English, and after the time was up, I could not, for the life of me, get them to settle. Half of them were shouting and chatting, the other half were eyeing me, waiting for my response. They are generally quite lively, but today was the first time I could not get them to settle.
Now, I never yell. I do my absolute best to respect everyone, just like I promised them the first time we met. However, I asked for their respect and cooperation in return and I can see that faltering. They got used to me, got bored with me, I don't know.
Initially I thought I would have more problems with the boys, but they are okay. It's the girls, they mature faster so they are already these moody teenagers. I can't get them all to do their homework, even by giving them bad grades for it, can't get them to engage, put away their phones, nothing. I tried interesting debates, topics, but it doesn't work for more than 5 minutes. Nothing I've seen in movies, experienced as a student myself works anymore. They don't have the attention span. They are under- and overstimulated at the same time and cannot sit still, but cannot do a stand-up activity in an organised manner, it turns into chaos.
Academically, they are bright and have a very good level of English thanks to video games and movies. They do fairly well in tests, but they won't improve unless I manage to get through to them. I have some rules in place and I stick to them, so I have given them a few bad grades, etc. but I don't feel like it's enough.
For information, I'm barely taller than them and I'm a 25-year-old, younger looking girl so I'm not very intimidating. I'm also not mean-spirited and never talk down to any of my students, but I realised I need a modified approach to teaching in a group compared to teaching privately.
I would appreciate any insight or tips on how to achieve a calm and disciplined environment in which I can actually use the fun stuff I work hard to prepare.
Could you expand a little bit? Why do you think that would be a "death sentence for discipline?" And what "the opposite" would look like?
I think "discipline" itself is a bad way to frame education. I had similar troubles in my classroom when I gave classes to the sixth and seventh grade, and it was quite effective in the sense that I didn't have further trouble with noise or side discussions. I took a whole class to ask them what did they expect of classes, why some wouldn't collaborate, etc. In the end, there was one or two who wasn't really interested in the classes but needed to stay there to earn government assistance for their families. We agreed that those who didn't wish to participate could do so in silence to respect the others, and that was it, never had any trouble with those classes again
This is really interesting and not something I would have otherwise considered. I like the idea, but I do have some concerns that I would appreciate your thoughts on.
This in fact happened with my students at the time as well. It's just noise lol, I acknowledged their suggestion, though I said it was outside the purpose of the class, but I would "consider their suggestion." Obviously it didn't make sense to put the students to listen to a Fortnite rap song on YouTube
No they are not, but the purpose is to connect with your students and understand their interests, not to follow their suggestions. The idea is to gather a bit of their interests so that you'll have things to work with that will be close to them. For instance, consider a large part of students like a particular cartoon or something. You could then describe some stuff about the cartoon in English, like the characters, their relationships, etc. When they are interested in the subject, they are much more likely to pay attention and learn.
Not sure what you mean, like how would you present to them? "Hello, everyone, today we will do things differently. We'll have a talk about our classes," or something.
Honestly, comrade, don't expect this to solve your problems. In my brief experience giving classes, it worked, but it was a tactic that worked after battling for months with those students. Since you've been giving classes to a group of students only recently, you will have a few troubles in the beginning while you adapt and find creative ways to overcome those problems... There are a few case of students who are very tough to work with, so don't beat yourself up if you can't get everyone's attention. Hey, we've all been students, we all have classes we aren't interested in, but we have to be there.