In teachers' aid our main concern is to help you with any problematic situations that may arise in your classes.
Disruptive behavior are situations that interrupt the natural flow of the teaching-learnig process. They come out of the blue due to students' preconceptions, ideals, previous knowledge, life experiences, mood, etc.
Luckily, there are many techniques to deal with it, so don't hesitate to ask for advice. You're also welcome to make any suggestions for improvement and share your experiences just by clicking “comentarios” below:
Posts
Dear Tita and Albertina,
ReplyDeleteHi! How are you? well, I’m writing to ask for advice on my adult learners. I teach a secon year of adults and I have one student that disorganizes my classes and I can’t teach what I intent to teach. He is in his fifties and he keeps on talking about his personal life or making analogies with other languages he had studied before and his partners don’t know. While I see this student as an interested pupil, his partners become irritated and see my class as a less profitable one due to his interruption. I just can’t stop him! What should I do?
Dear Marta,
ReplyDeleteFirst things first. Don’t panic! every teaching problem has a solution. Remember that adults have a rich backgroud of life experiences they intend to use, so we as guides should make profit of this. In order for him to use his “backgroud knowledge” try to organize activities in which the contents are life anecdotes. as a teacher of second year you may well be familiar with simple past. Ask students for common topics of anecdotes, pre teach useful vocabulary and make them interview one another, so that this student doesn’t absorb all your class time.
Besides you can get back to the case in point by asking the student how his anecdote or question relates to the current teaching activity.
We hope our pieces of advice will be useful to you.
Best wishes!
Dear Tita and Albertina,
ReplyDeleteHi! This time I write you because I need help with my beginner adult learners. I just can’t make them speak, they are terribly shy and don’t even dare to talk to each other. I just can’t change this awful classroom atmosphere. What shall I do?
Kind regards,
Sofia from Peru.
Dear Sofia,
ReplyDeletePerhaps your adults may have had prior educational experiences in which talking was punished and considered as lack of respect. Therefore, you should appoint students to talk or answer a question.
Concerning their lack of interaction among themselves we advice you to organize ice breakers games such as “find comeone who” or “find your soulmate” in which students have to talk about themselves to complete the activity . Besides try to organize more individual written work because sometimes silence is the same as being afraid of committing mistakes in public.
Don’t forget to praise your students contribution and to make clear that you do not see talking as bad behaviour.
Good Luck!
Dear editors,
ReplyDeleteI’m writing because I’m really worried about my students attitudes towards me. I’m a young teacher and my adult learners doesn’t show enough respect towards myself.
Every time I tell them to do an activity, some of them react by judging them as irrelevant or by saying it is too demanding.
Besides, they make difficult questions all the time that doesn’t in fact relate to the topic in question as if they wanted to test me.
I do need some tips to handle this situation because inexperience doen’t mean lack of commitment and I really want to improve my relationship with my students.
Thank you very much for your time.
best wishes,
Rita from Costa Rica.
Dear Rita,
ReplyDeleteYou are not the only person facing these situations. Many teachers have faced and still put up with students like this. Perhaps you may handle this situation by asking students what they espect to learn in your classes and after that you can explainthe purpose of your activities .
Every time they ask something you don’t know admit that you don’t know and provide the answer for the next class. Not knowing everithing is not sin, it is human and we , teachers and not walking enciclopaedias. You can expand this idea by saying that teaching is also a learning experience and that learning is a life long process.
Remember to trust yourself, the more self secure you appear to be , the less they will try to test your knowledge.
All the best,
Tita and Albertina