I remember posting about this issue about 2 years back about a first grade class that was a total nightmare teach, well two years later they've gotten nothing but worse. Keep in mind this is middle school.

I teach at 3 middle schools and a total of 18 different classes, this problem is only particular to 3 of those class in the same grade at one of the schools.

These classes are notorious amongest the Korean teachers for being trouble makers, but it goes way beyond that. They would freely swear in Korean in front of the Korean teachers and they wouldn't bat an eye, as an example.

My school has an A and B class system, however for my class, class A and B are combined, which results in essentially a clustefuck of a situation. The good kids know the class is garbage and don't even try in class, I guess they are used to being ignored by teachers, and the bad kids will just get their way all the time.

I am also guilty of ignoring them, but after an entire year of trying differment methods (rewards,punishments systems....etc you name it) and nothing even came remotely close to working. I pretty much just gave up. If I wanted I could spend an entire period screaming at them to be quiet every 30 seconds but then what's the point. And it would also be unfair to punish the good kids along with the bad. My problem I guess is that there are too many bad kids and I have no tools in which to deal with them.

There is no way for me to remove the disturbance, because I can't send them outside or to their homeroom teacher. Imagine sending 5 of these kids out side, they would just run around and cause disturbances to the other classes. I can't talk to them or discipline them. My co teacher tries but obviously it doesn't work. He would do old-school things like make them stand up or kneel on the desks, as soon as it's finished they go right back to their own things.

When I speak no one tries to understand, completely apathetic.
I cannot.describe fully how bad these classes are through text, but I hope I've painted a picture at least.

I have no problem at all with any of my 15 other classes, great relationships with the students. It's just these three that are just completely indescribably bad.

I still have 4 months left on my contract and an open class with one of these classes coming up (lucky me), whAt if anything can I do to get through this?

Now I don't even try to discipline them in class, should I start cracking down like I used to even though nothing comes of it ? Because ultimately my classes are for interest, and there is 0 interest in this class with the amount of disruption that is there. If there were a way for me to remove all the b class students it would be very teachable, but there is no such possibility at my school.

What are your thoughts on this problem , have you ever encountered something of this magnitude?

Can't offer much advice, but be glad you don't work in a bigger school with C, & D classes. C's are bad. But D's are like sub-25% students on every test.

I'm pretty sure most of them would be in d class if we had one...

I don't know if this will help but try to empathize with them a bit.  Remember how bad middle sucked or at least how bad you would rather be doing something else? You can't blame them for rebelling against this opressive school system. I would if I was them.  In other words, don't take it too seriously or personally. They are kids caught in a shitty situation.

This is precisely why I've stopped punishing the class, making them write lines, keeping them after class etc... I get that it's shitty. I can sympathize but the problem still stands that I can't teach a single class with them, have not this year since the start of the semester, without having shit hit the fan. There is no middle ground. I either sit back let them do what they want, in which case I'm not doing my job. Or I crack down super hard and have them look at me with jaded stares as I force them to do what I want. I really think this goes beyond the notion that "kids will be kids" 

I have the same problem with one of my high school classes.
After the 1st 3 weeks of students doing whatever they want and not listening to me in class (I do have a co-teacher, but she's totally ineffective) we've come up with trying 2 things...
1) Students usually have class with me in the English room, so instead, they'll have to have their English classes in their homerooms. Basically students come into English class (sometimes late) and think "oh English classroom is 'the play room'." So they see it as fun time instead of study time.
2)We will have students sit according to their numbers (essentially alphabetical order). This will hopefully prevent students from gathering with friends and disrupting class.

I don't know if you've tried either of these, but it could be beneficial. Also, the best suggestion I have is to ignore the bad students (they want attention) and the students that are at least trying to do what you ask of them, praise them. A lot. Give them rewards for doing the right thing (this can be candy, stickers, whatever). There's 5 students running amuck in class. FINE. Let them do it. But keep your focus on the rest of the kids there that show even the slightest of interest in English. Because really, that's all you can do anyways. Let the co-teacher deal with the hooligans.

1) Students usually have class with me in the English room, so instead, they'll have to have their English classes in their homerooms. Basically students come into English class (sometimes late) and think "oh English classroom is 'the play room'." So they see it as fun time instead of study time.
2)We will have students sit according to their numbers (essentially alphabetical order). This will hopefully prevent students from gathering with friends and disrupting class.

I don't know if you've tried either of these, but it could be beneficial. Also, the best suggestion I have is to ignore the bad students (they want attention) and the students that are at least trying to do what you ask of them, praise them. A lot. Give them rewards for doing the right thing (this can be candy, stickers, whatever). There's 5 students running amuck in class. FINE. Let them do it. But keep your focus on the rest of the kids there that show even the slightest of interest in English. Because really, that's all you can do anyways. Let the co-teacher deal with the hooligans.

I had a problem similar to the first one in elementary school a few years back.  My co-teacher was awful and I think having Aspergers or some other problem which meant she didn't seem to have any natural relationship or understanding of anything.  So basically, I was a human tape recorder and as she never played games the students knew as soon as they were in the surrounding of the English room, that it was messing around time and no concentration.  The students even threw paper at her, so when they saw her they knew it was crap time.  So I understand the logic behind some settings being conducive to certain behaviour. 

The 2nd one is good, but I'd go further and say that if you taught these students a lot you may know who they should and shouldn't be sitting with and make your own seating plan based on that.  Vary it every week, so when the students come to class you, in essence, have a psychological advantage because they can't sit where they would naturally want to sit. 

I think everyone here has suffered similar things to varying degrees.  When I first came to Korea I taught in a countryside elementary and the 6th grade class was awful.  When I walked in, the teacher walked out.  I did the chair changing, names in the 'naughty box' on the board, stickers for the good work and answers etc.  It takes time and you need to take time for things to sink in. 

Another one was a talking box on the board and the number of penalty points in the box related to the number of minutes they had to stay in during their break.  One middle school class I had that was bad was taken outside and the number of penalty points related to the number of times they had to run around the football pitch. 

I'm a big believer in 'you waste my time, I'll waste yours'.  I am a stubborn person, I will stick to it and I will be really strict the first week just so they know that I will implement what I said I would.  I'm not frightened about doing it.  I found after a while (a month or two) that things improve, it is just a case of sticking to it.  But maybe as it has carried on for some time that it may be hard to pull it back.  But I'm sure it is possible.  See it as a challenge.

At one of my schools the worst students were boys, but boys who loved playing football.  So as I love football too, I played at lunchtime with them and messing around shooting, taking penalties, coaching them etc.  This was really good as a kind of bonding thing, I never saw teachers taking the time to do this outside of class, so a kind of friendship developed.  These boys then became some of the best at concentrating in class when I asked them.  If you see your worst students doing something that you may fancy doing, ask if you can join in and see if that may work.  Sometimes the foreign teachers don't see much outside their classroom as something to get involved in.  But I found it to be very constructive.

Good luck!!

 
I'm a big believer in 'you waste my time, I'll waste yours'.  I am a stubborn person, I will stick to it and I will be really strict the first week just so they know that I will implement what I said I would.  I'm not frightened about doing it.  I found after a while (a month or two) that things improve, it is just a case of sticking to it.  But maybe as it has carried on for some time that it may be hard to pull it back.  But I'm sure it is possible.  See it as a challenge.

I have tried that, but again thats punishing the whole class due to some bad students. Also what would end up happening if they would waste more time than break would allow. And the CONSTANT stopping of the timer is extremely ineffective. They eventually figured out they can screw around for the whole period for the lowly cost of 10 minutes break and it was business as usual. But i think youve highlighted a good point about being stubborn. Being stubborn with these kids just bring me more stress than I'm willing to endure for the sake of this job i think. Every day was a battle for control. At the end of the day the kids have more energy and power than a foreign teacher at my school.

Quote from: jakjak4161 on April 05, 2017, 05:10:24 PM

Quote from: Dave Stepz on April 05, 2017, 04:05:59 PM

 
I'm a big believer in 'you waste my time, I'll waste yours'.  I am a stubborn person, I will stick to it and I will be really strict the first week just so they know that I will implement what I said I would.  I'm not frightened about doing it.  I found after a while (a month or two) that things improve, it is just a case of sticking to it.  But maybe as it has carried on for some time that it may be hard to pull it back.  But I'm sure it is possible.  See it as a challenge.

I have tried that, but again thats punishing the whole class due to some bad students. Also what would end up happening if they would waste more time than break would allow. And the CONSTANT stopping of the timer is extremely ineffective. They eventually figured out they can screw around for the whole period for the lowly cost of 10 minutes break and it was business as usual. But i think youve highlighted a good point about being stubborn. Being stubborn with these kids just bring me more stress than I'm willing to endure for the sake of this job i think. Every day was a battle for control. At the end of the day the kids have more energy and power than a foreign teacher at my school.

Ok, so the bad kids are the majority.  It does depend on the class chemistry.  If you have some powerful good students they can slowly wrest the control back from the bad students.  But it sounds like the bad students are not in the mood to be kowtowed by peer pressure which makes it more difficult. 

In that case, I'd make a note of the good students and let them go for their breaktime, keeping the bad ones behind, letting them know why the others went.  If they really don't care about their breaktime but see the others getting theirs, over time they may change their tune.  Even if one of the bad ones behaves and can go, it could make one of the others behave and slowly work like a domino effect.  But it will take time, and it is not easy, I understand that.  Like I said, I'm stubborn, I have nothing better to do so if you waste my time, I'm going to waste yours.  I'm not going to fob you off as I want my breaktime, I couldn't give a shit about my breaktime, I have all year to do this, and I'll do it.  I know it sounds stressful, but I'd rather try and make myself an immovable object in spite of their behaviour and hope that after three/four/eight months that there may be some little progress.  Not doing anything is not on my agenda, as there is no chance they will change.  It depends how up for the fight you are.  Each to their own.

Yea I think a lot of the problem lies with me and many of the other korean teachers who couldn't be fucked to deal with their shit. As all of my other classes were fine with just a normal amount of disciplinary action required, I decided to just ignore (not really ignore perse but just teaching them without special displinary actions)  classes. I wasn't here to change lives, thinking back that was probably an irresponsible choice. If I stuck with playing hardball consistently perhaps things would have been different in my classes today.

Then again we are probably completely different people from the sounds of it, I really don't like to punish my students. Unlike the Korean teachers I can't really use it as a teaching tool since I can't communicate with them. Maybe I should become more strict.

I had a class like that, probably not quite as bad as yours sounds though and my co-teacher cared/helped. I mentioned the empathy because that helped me. Since you have tried it and it ddin't work the other thing that helped me was using social and movement lessons. Surveys are a perfect example.  The kids get to do something social like tell their peers their favorite hobby while walking around the class.  Another thing I did was set up the class as an art museum with pictures.  They had to look at each picture and match their ticket/phrase with a friends to make a sentence.  Sometimes the dickhead kids feel left out in this type of thing and will give it a try.  Also, everybody is moving around so the bad seeds are less of a distraction. Finally, movement helps bad actors I think, most of them can't sit still/probably aren't meant to.

I've actually tried circle games with them and they work amazingly well. Sadly cannot do it for every single class. I will try more social lessons but the bad kids are the cool/popular kids, with a few smart kids mixed in. If they are just lounging around its hard to get the rest of the class to do anything. Even when I show movies that the rest of the class loves, with Korean subtitles , they willfully refuse to be a part of anything i put infront of them and do their absolute best to be distracting (had one kid bring in a fire extinguisher from outside when I wasn't looking). I apologize if I'm starting to sound salty. But the more I think about this the more stressed out I get hahaha...  I think maybe I was too hard on then last year when I had them for my afterschool classes, they might just hate my classes now. My co teachers are either of the don't give a shit camp or the stressing out to the point of losing sleep variant. Neither is very helpful to me unfortunately.

2. Be political. Think of yourself as a politician. Tell that crappy student that you like his shoes. Tell him that he has an awesome coat. Tell that girl her glasses are unique. Tell her that her pencil case looks funny. Tell that student that you like his or her drawing and you want something like that if they have the time to draw something for you. Be super nice when you see them, and give them a huge smile as if their presence lights up your day. Then when it's time for class, ask them to behave, most will do so since you were so kind to them. They won't study. They might just sit there tearing pieces of their book on the floor. But I think that is something you would accept if it allows other students to learn.

I think this is a great piece of advice, I typically dread seeing the worst offenders. Sometimes their shitty attitude just ruins my ****** mood, and as a result I think it definitely affects the way I interact with them. It is REALLY hard for me to do, but i think its the most adult thing to do and what a teacher should do.

After their class I just want nothing to do with them, let alone be nice to them.

Kids can definitely tell when you care about them, and they certainly don't react well to discipline if they know you don't give a shit or think quite little of them.

I will try harder to be nice to the dickheads, combined with some of the other suggestions made here (seating plan, desk at the back, taking away breaks).

They need cp obviously. The cane. Fixes behavioural problems in milliseconds and the benefits last a lifetime.

While I was not advocating for CP, I do feel it is foolish for korea to go the way of the west in terms of banning it from the schools yet have none of the infrastructure and support to back teachers up.

In the west we have dedicated counselors and VPs and support networks to deal with kids who have behavioral problems and special needs, here in korea teachers are PERSONALLY responsible for their students and special needs are all but ignored. If they are disrupting your class, deal with it or else you look like a bad teacher.

Sure in the west we would never hit our kids, but we also arent expected to put up with the amount of bullshit Korean home room teachers are subject to on a daily basis. Give down stairs a call and send them on their way.

I grew up with CP and it is what I was used to, and its what these kids are used to as well. Its not like they were given a ****** beat down by their teachers the way you would hear some folks would describe it. If you suddenly take that away from the older teachers with no recourse, you get some really chaotic classrooms.

Cp is much more of a cultural aspect of schooling in Asia than just a cruel punishment as viewed by the west. I do think its nice Korea is moving past it, however, you cant just ban something that teachers have been relying on for decades and not give them anything else.

"Hey, so you are still personally responsible for your classes, but the tools you are used to having is no longer there, also we wont give you any new ones, good luck!"