Can you guys please share what textbooks you are using for your hagwons for middle school students and what you think about them (good or bad)?

I started working at a hagwon for middle school and my boss wants me to change the textbooks because the students find it boring. The book we are using now focuses on the core 4 (reading, writing, listening, speaking) and the topics are irrelevant to them, boring, and dry. I checked the hagwon's library and they've used Side by Side, a popular one on this forum, and another book that I found looked really good which was calling Speaking Topics for Teens (or something like that) - both conversation textbooks. I asked the students how they feel and they just don't want textbooks. All textbooks are boring for them. My boss wants them to speak more (but not necessarily have a speaking focused textbook or class).

For textbooks used in schools, they have a book with a media CD right? For example, in the YBM or Daekyo CDs, you can go 'into' the book and type things out, listen to the audio, have some videos in there. Is there anything like that that isn't used in public schools? Because all of my students go to different schools and I think they all use different publishers' books. I'd really love something like that because I feel like they can focus on something and interact with the TV and be more vocal.

The books they use in hagwons, they most they have is an audio CD and we have to skip tracks on a CD player. So for example, I'd have to click 62 times to get to track 62. It feels very 90's and it's so boring and terrible.

And I need a textbook series because my hagwon has a lot of levels (I think up to 10 right now, so 10 different classes. So the first 5 levels has a textbook series and the last 5 has a different textbook series).

-- Feel free to skip the rest of my post from here on if you're not interested in reading my experience  --

The issue is, middle school kids are at this weird time in their life where they do not want to speak AT ALL. And they seem to have NO interests (at least my kids). All of their hobbies are 'sleeping'. The boys play online games. SOME girls listen to kpop, but then have different groups/singers that they like. They are too scared to share their opinion to other students (fear of being made fun of? or having a different opinion?). They refuse to give me on an opinion on literally anything. "Do you guys want to watch a movie? (They say 'yes'.) What kind of a movie (genre)? (Everyone refuses to suggest a genre or movie in fear that one random student wouldn't like the movie or that they'd be judged for liking that movie)." If I ask a question and call out one student, EVERY SINGLE student will have the EXACT same opinion because they're too scared to share a different opinion. For example, I read out a dialogue where a girl asked her dad for a new phone and he said he won't buy it for her because new phones will always be coming out. I asked one student his opinion and he said he agreed with the dad because he didn't have money (no where in the dialogue stated that the reason was because the dad didn't have money). I asked every other single student in the class and they just repeated what the first student said (they are no low level and can certainly make their own sentences).

It seems like no students in the same class go to the same school and are not the same age. Some just started going to the hagwon, some have been together for 3~4 years (since elementary school) in the hagwon but they don't seem close or friendly at all. When I put them in groups they refuse to even look at each other. It's not like they hate each other or anything. It's actually super weird. Do middle school kids have no social skills?!

At this point, I feel like there's no point in changing the textbooks because they would just find them all boring. I told the students I'm willing to change the class to what they want and asked them what they want to do but they don't even want to play games or watch videos or anything. It's so weird to me. It's my first time teaching middle school and I'm not asking them to be enthusiastic or anything but they're worse than zombies. They're like corpses... And it's vacation time right now. I can't imagine how they'd be like when they have school and then come to the hagwon afterwards. I am convinced I would have to wheel them into class in wheelchairs because they're so lethargic now, they're going to be comatose by the time school rolls around.