I am starting to reaaaaalllly appreciate the very well-behaved students I teach back at home. The teachers here don't have any management strategies, and next to nothing when it comes to knowledge about good teaching practices. It seems to be cultural, but at the same time....it makes me wonder if the kids are learning anything at all. I have been in the classroom for 2 days now. The kids are sweet kids that are very excited to talk to me, but as far as learning goes, I am just not sure it is happening. There is no knowledge of the fact that some kids are just sitting there instead of participating, and no knowledge that some kids are finishing a lot quicker than the other kids. This leads to a lot of problems in management. The kids that are not working are running around like crazy, throwing things at each other, talking to friends, running in and out of the room, and fighting. The teacher does nothing about it. When I get in front of the room to teach, I make sure the kids know my expectations and I follow through with them, I will not let the kids get away with that kind of behavior, but training kids to follow your expectations takes quite awhile....even more so when they have had no expectations for behavior up to this point. They also "learn" by copying words from a book or the board and reading phrases that they don't understand. Needless to say, I introduced many fun learning and English conversation strategies that allow the students to move and participate while having fun.
Even though I don't want to be culturally insensitive to the learning style, I also want to teach the kids as much as I can while I am here, and also perhaps show the teachers some strategies that they can use too.
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