session 5

Session 5

Diego Hernandez

Fulbright ETA Training

June 21-22, 2010

Sharing

• Share difficult/trying circumstances in your teaching past

Difficult Situations

• Facilitating group work

• Dominant and passive students

• An activity you’ve planned doesn’t work

• Structuring and pacing lessons

Brainstorm How to Deal

• Facilitating group work

• Dominant and passive students

• An activity you’ve planned doesn’t work

• Structuring and pacing lessons

Difficult Scenarios

My second semester teaching I had a smart-alecky student who just could not keep his sarcastic, mean, (and he thought funny) comments to himself. I tried several things: Ignoring him, saying, "Excuse me, what did you say?" asking him to be quiet, telling him to be quiet, glaring . . .

Nothing really worked. Looking back, I realize I should have been much sterner more quickly and I should have just asked him to leave at some point or filed a behavioral complaint on him.

It was a horrible semester and I dreaded walking into the room, wondering what I was going to do, say, (or possibly wear) that he would find to comment on that class period. Now that I am older and (I would like to think) wiser, I'd just kick him in the rear.... :)

Difficult Scenarios

In a small class of 10-15, I had a student who didn’t bathe properly. The climate was hot where I was teaching, so it was common to be sweaty (although we had A/C in the classrooms), but he would arrive smelling terrible. Aside from the personal discomfort we all suffered, no one wanted to work with him in a group.

Difficult Scenarios

A student is very talkative and has trouble focusing on the task at hand. One of my students would go off and ramble and was very likeable, but distracted the rest of the class with his winning personality and good sense of humor.

Difficult Scenarios

The students in my class all went to the same high school together, except 2 of them. This resulted in a situation with lots of off-topic chatter and 2 students who felt excluded from the group.

Difficult Scenarios

• I made up a worksheet as a warm-up activity based on the present perfect, which I had introduced the previous class. Students had an inordinate amount of questions and the activity was taking way longer than I had planned for, at the expense of the rest of the material I needed to cover.

Difficult Scenarios

• My reading class consists of 10 students: 2 of whose literacy in their native language is questionable (much less in English), and 3 who read at an upper-intermediate level. The lower level students seem lost and the upper level students are bored when I don’t spend enough time on stuff that challenges them.

Difficult Scenarios

• Students in my class don’t do homework. The class is about 30 students (first-year university-level English majors) and on any given day, fewer than half of them have their homework complete. Homework doesn’t count as part of the grade, since theoretically I’m “treating them like adults.”

Difficult Scenarios

• One student is really causing a negative vibe in the class. He writes things on his tests like, “This was pointless,” and scoffs when I give directions in class. I’m afraid he’ll turn the rest of the class on me and we won’t be able to get anything done.