Found in Drafts...
I have been teaching this writing course and I realized that it has turned in to more of a grammar class conforming to the typical korean style classrooms we have heard plenty of disparaging remarks on over the last months. I had to pick the material for this class from a bigger book at the beginning of August and honestly have been mostly unhappy with my work. Not that I chose poorly, but considering what we talked about in terms of writing that should be useful and practical as a function of L2, it is miserable.
As the next session nears, I have luckily had some good student reviews, so have been asked to come up with some course ideas for our winter bonus classes, one of which needs to be writing. Last week's discussion has given me a lot of good direction in choosing material that is both useful and meaningful. As I spend the next couple hectic weeks picking through material, I think keeping that meaningful terminal objective as my primary goal will help immensely.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Pardon me sir!
Found this in the draft pile. iPhone doesn't like to publish I suppose...
How to deal with disrespectful students.
What attitudes do we set up for out students to adhere to during class? A lot about what we assume our students will do based on cultural behavior towards teachers is true. Most are respectful, and treat us with as valuable source of knowledge. From time to time though, we get students that can cause some problems for us in the classroom, and I don't mean a normal kind of trouble maker. I mean the ones we create by trying to be more open and accessible with as both educators and friends.
For the most part, we experience quality relationships in classrooms where students feel more comfortable expressing themselves with an instructor that wants to help them through interaction. On occasion, I feel we can confuse the student by inadvertently eliminating their boundaries of respect toward us. Because they aren't used to a teacher that expects equal interaction from them, they can also avoid accepting us as a superior in the classroom. These situations a rare but also bring a challenge to the teacher in how to respond to a student and how to interpret whether their action is a purposeful dismissal of our authority or a mistake in understanding what they can get away with.
The end of the semester is nearing and I have started having a few issues with students that are a good example of this situation. I have a few that I have contacted initially through Kakao message that have responded with concern, and quickly tried to apologize and change their behavior. These students show a simple misunderstanding of the teacher student relationship, and that their real desire wasn't out of their normal disconcerting attitude. A few others are less apt to respond, so I have had to approach them in class, usually when they turn up 45 minutes late or more. I have been surprised to get a few students react very abrasive my and assume I owe them some courteous reception even after being warned on multiple occasions.
This is the real test for composure on my part, and I feel I have learned a little from both successes and failures. Remaining calm even with a student who is rude is normally the best bet. Being harsh has backfired too many times to make it effective. But there have been two extreme cases where sternness and an abrasive tone have really been beneficial. I think the best is to keep as much personal emotion out of it and realize that even with overtly verbose or reactive students, softly softly catchee monkey is best.
How to deal with disrespectful students.
What attitudes do we set up for out students to adhere to during class? A lot about what we assume our students will do based on cultural behavior towards teachers is true. Most are respectful, and treat us with as valuable source of knowledge. From time to time though, we get students that can cause some problems for us in the classroom, and I don't mean a normal kind of trouble maker. I mean the ones we create by trying to be more open and accessible with as both educators and friends.
For the most part, we experience quality relationships in classrooms where students feel more comfortable expressing themselves with an instructor that wants to help them through interaction. On occasion, I feel we can confuse the student by inadvertently eliminating their boundaries of respect toward us. Because they aren't used to a teacher that expects equal interaction from them, they can also avoid accepting us as a superior in the classroom. These situations a rare but also bring a challenge to the teacher in how to respond to a student and how to interpret whether their action is a purposeful dismissal of our authority or a mistake in understanding what they can get away with.
The end of the semester is nearing and I have started having a few issues with students that are a good example of this situation. I have a few that I have contacted initially through Kakao message that have responded with concern, and quickly tried to apologize and change their behavior. These students show a simple misunderstanding of the teacher student relationship, and that their real desire wasn't out of their normal disconcerting attitude. A few others are less apt to respond, so I have had to approach them in class, usually when they turn up 45 minutes late or more. I have been surprised to get a few students react very abrasive my and assume I owe them some courteous reception even after being warned on multiple occasions.
This is the real test for composure on my part, and I feel I have learned a little from both successes and failures. Remaining calm even with a student who is rude is normally the best bet. Being harsh has backfired too many times to make it effective. But there have been two extreme cases where sternness and an abrasive tone have really been beneficial. I think the best is to keep as much personal emotion out of it and realize that even with overtly verbose or reactive students, softly softly catchee monkey is best.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Cultural reflections
One of the challenges I have had in some of my classroom during this semester is finding ways to work in lessons for ICC. The material we have covered in class has been interesting as a way to better understand classrooms and potential issues we might have with understanding students, especially in a multicultural classroom. I really wish I could have taken this course before I taught my refugee classes in the states a few years back, but now I find myself in a place where I am the only foreigner, out often own country and culture and surrounded by students of common nationality, race, age, culture and quite often thought processes. This has been the challenge of trying to stimulate some useful reflective though for my students, and see some acknowledgement of unbiased opinions. To what effect this has happened, I cannot really be sure, but I think I haven't made a dent.
This particular lesson was built around a common theme for my classes over the last 2 years. Teaching in a beauty arts department has given me a lot of insight on how Koreans view outward appearance, beauty and acceptance based on looks as well as expectations for family and marriage relationships. As well, this lesson provides a mix of cultural practices that have spread or are spreading to other parts of the world that are synonymous with my own culture, unfortunately ones that I particularly loathe. In any case, I set the lesson up to trigger student responses on culture, in particular I wanted them to think about how behaviors in their home country might resemble or differ from the ones in the article. I wasn't sure how the would respond initially, or how the writing production might allow them to reflect on a given perspective.
This lesson had to take place over two classes, but I think that worked better because students only got half of the information to solve which country this might be, so they were at least interested to learn the source. They were very quick to decide that the images were Japanese and the story was either from America or England. The latter was set up because the article was printed originally in England then for online in America, so had currency values for both. This threw them off just a bit however they were quick to decide the woman in the picture was from Japan because she was ugly and for her eye shape. The second picture was a bit surprising as a lot if students said she wasn't attractive because of plastic surgery. That surprised me because of the massive amount of money that is spent in this country on cosmetic enhancements and how it should reflect a social view of appearance. I should say that a lot of students wouldn't admit to surgery in the first place donut is no surprise that they would lie about their expectations of beauty. A lot of their answers in the writing production were varied. Some took an overly harsh tone accusing the guilty party of wrongdoing.
I think the discussion stages of these lessons are the most difficult to achieve. Typically the students either don't share their honest opinion, or they sit back and just agree with the one or two people that tend to dominate the discussion. They only instances where good discussion has occurred is when I have had high level students that have spent time abroad. They tend to have a broader perspective and might disagree or at least question korean cultural norms. When none of them are in a class, it tends to be really weak participation and no strong opinions are given. I'm not sure how to go about directing lower level students in more productive cultural discussion, but I suppose if I did, I wouldn't be taking this course.
This particular lesson was built around a common theme for my classes over the last 2 years. Teaching in a beauty arts department has given me a lot of insight on how Koreans view outward appearance, beauty and acceptance based on looks as well as expectations for family and marriage relationships. As well, this lesson provides a mix of cultural practices that have spread or are spreading to other parts of the world that are synonymous with my own culture, unfortunately ones that I particularly loathe. In any case, I set the lesson up to trigger student responses on culture, in particular I wanted them to think about how behaviors in their home country might resemble or differ from the ones in the article. I wasn't sure how the would respond initially, or how the writing production might allow them to reflect on a given perspective.
This lesson had to take place over two classes, but I think that worked better because students only got half of the information to solve which country this might be, so they were at least interested to learn the source. They were very quick to decide that the images were Japanese and the story was either from America or England. The latter was set up because the article was printed originally in England then for online in America, so had currency values for both. This threw them off just a bit however they were quick to decide the woman in the picture was from Japan because she was ugly and for her eye shape. The second picture was a bit surprising as a lot if students said she wasn't attractive because of plastic surgery. That surprised me because of the massive amount of money that is spent in this country on cosmetic enhancements and how it should reflect a social view of appearance. I should say that a lot of students wouldn't admit to surgery in the first place donut is no surprise that they would lie about their expectations of beauty. A lot of their answers in the writing production were varied. Some took an overly harsh tone accusing the guilty party of wrongdoing.
I think the discussion stages of these lessons are the most difficult to achieve. Typically the students either don't share their honest opinion, or they sit back and just agree with the one or two people that tend to dominate the discussion. They only instances where good discussion has occurred is when I have had high level students that have spent time abroad. They tend to have a broader perspective and might disagree or at least question korean cultural norms. When none of them are in a class, it tends to be really weak participation and no strong opinions are given. I'm not sure how to go about directing lower level students in more productive cultural discussion, but I suppose if I did, I wouldn't be taking this course.
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