Category: Advice for Teaching Abroad

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.

If there’s one thing that all teachers abroad eventually learn it’s that kids will be kids no matter the country. Most people have this idea that children in Asia are kind, smart, and never, ever cause a lick of trouble. I’ll give you one good guess which of these qualities isn’t always true.

Teaching private lessons is a great way to make some supplemental income, and it’s a lot of fun – but if you’ve mostly taught in a classroom, you’ll find that there’s a big difference when it comes to keeping a one-on-one lesson interesting and engaging – not to mention managing your time and payment.

It’s one thing to talk about establishing clear rules right from the start of class, but it’s another thing to implement them effectively. It’s crucial for classroom management, to have a simple set of rules that you enforce consistently and fairly.