Tag: ESL classroom

Mary McCusker is currently teaching for EPIK in South Korea through Reach to Teach. She has kindly shared with us her experiences and pictures in an interview. She had so much to say about her experiences that we have made this into a two part interview.

I’m sure we can all remember more than one class in high school or college in which we struggled to keep our heavy eyelids from shutting out an instructor droning on in an endless string of statements. Though the teacher or professor was doing their best to share the information in his/her head, very little of that information was entering ours.

The attitude, the rebelliousness, and the constant pushback teachers get from their middle schoolers often leave them with a bitter taste of those classes. I, however, find these classes incredibly satisfying. Here’s why.

Not all disruptive behaviors in your students are created equal. A key to managing your class and keeping everyone behaving is identifying the reason why certain negative behaviors happen, and knowing the best way respond.

The best kind of teachers are the ones that can recognize their mistakes and grow from them. After all, teaching is a huge learning curve, even the most experienced teacher can be presented with a new situation in which to grow from. Getting feedback from students is the best way to see where you are going wrong, but gaining that feedback isn’t always easy especially in a country like South Korea where challenging authority is often culturally inappropriate.

In some students’ minds, “substitute teacher” is synonymous with “blow-off class.” We all remember having those substitute teachers who would turn on a video and retreat to the back of the classroom. Don’t let that be the case if you find yourself subbing.

Ways You Might Be Sabotaging Your Classroom Management: You have a clear set of rules, you apply consequences consistently, you reward good behavior, and you don’t tolerate disruptive behavior. So, what are you doing wrong? Before you write your students off as just a bad class, consider these subtle ways that you might be sabotaging yourself, and see if any of them are playing a role in your classroom management struggles.

It wasn’t too long ago that I, like many others, trembled at the thought of standing in front of a crowd of strangers. Now I do it for a living. Not only that, but half the time, those strangers are kids.