What's this feeling? Frustration, weakness, loss of hope. Oh yeah, despair. That kind of sums up my morning. It was my first day of teaching after a week away. Usually these first days are a little rough around the edges. Today it was a train wreck.
Last semester my biggest problem was chattiness and trying to get the students to focus. Now it's quiet in the classroom, a little too quiet. It's all too obvious to me now that the kids have stopped trying. I've hit a wall of apathy and now I am banging my head against it.
The senior one (10th grade) students are divided into six classes, the brightest kids in three classes and the rest in the remaining three. I had four classes this morning, three of them with the not-so-bright kids.
To motivate the unmotivated is like conjuring some magic spell. Some teachers have that gift and I have to accept that I just don't. I'm up against too much. There are too many who don't care and who don't care to such a great degree that I can't even get them to repeat words after me. ("I can't see," a student said to me this morning to try to get out of reading.)
The kids are ranked in their classes from the time they are five or six. From then on, you are labeled a "good" student or a "bad" student. The unfortunate thing is that some of my "bad" students are pretty good at English; they just couldn't care less about learning English.
In my third period class, after 40 minutes of urging students to answer questions and read sentences without one hand being raised, I came close to walking out.
"You're angry," one of the students said in Chinese.
I sighed heavily. I was angry, but instead I said, "I'm not angry. I'm just not happy. Every week you are like this. No one raises their hand."
I left the classroom the moment the bell rang and sat in the office brooding and thinking, "There are no bad students, only bad teachers." But the truth is, there are bad students. Maybe if they had more encouragement from parents or teachers early on and even now, this wouldn't be the way things are now.
I'm no super teacher nor a magic conjurer, but I am an optimist. I still have some time to figure out how to break through that wall.
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Do you have any funding for supplies? You need some modeling clay or some visual way to reach them. I close my eyes and I imagine being in your classroom. I think the kids that are not trying don't learn like the kids that do. It is not they are bad or you are bad. It has nothing to do with good and bad. They are the visual artists and need create. Maybe they could take photos of the things you want them to say and do a collage. Can you bring in live items like a real bird or snake or whatever it is you are trying to get them to talk about? I think that and some humor are in order. Assign them all to be teacher for 10 minutes, they may come up with your solution. :)Just some ideas. Good luck Jolie. You are a brave one.
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