what kind of teacher are you?

I get asked quite often "What kind of teacher are you?" Is there a way to answer this? What are people looking for when they ask me this question? Do they want to know if I am strict? Easy-going? or do they want to know how my class is structured? maybe how I relate to the students? I never know what to say.

This is my first time being a teacher, but this is not my first experience dealing with children. I have coached basketball teams with varying ages since I was 14 years old. Starting with my nephew and niece in rec leagues from ages 6- 12, a few different middle school teams, eventually landing a job at a high school and even being offered a job at a JC as an assistant. Because of these experiences I think I am at a slight advantage compared to other new teachers. I KNOW I do not know it all or even close to it all about teaching but I do know that I have been well prepared for this job.

So now that I have time to sit and think about the question, "What kind of teacher are you?," my answer would be unconventional (although there are probably other teachers who have similar strategies to mine). Here are a few examples as to why.

Talking
If a student is talking in class and I ask them to stop talking and they decide against their better judgement to keep talking  I will take an off the chart strategies to shut the kid up.

Example: One of my students is always chatting it up in class. After not being able to stop it I crumpled a paper and threw it at him (I have awesome aim and hit him right in the head). He had no idea it was me. After he was hit it forced him to look in my direction because he was trying to figure out who threw it. For a few minutes this kept his attention (as he was trying to figure this out he started participating!). After a while he went back to chatting so I threw another and again he tried to figure out who threw it and again started participating. After my third thrown paper to his head he stopped chatting and since then I have only had to do this one other time.

If a student argues with me and it is in English, I will entertain his or her argument and even fuel the fire JUST so they will keep speaking in English.

Example: One of my students argued with me that giraffes were not the sexiest animals in the world (later an explanation on how this started). Of course we all know that they are but HE thinks it is a peacock, so I asked why and he gave his reasons, the tail, the colors and they fly. I gave mine for giraffes, their walk, their neck and their tail. For about 5 minutes we went back and forth while the class watched, laughed and some putting in their opinions on which animal was sexiest. We both even demonstrated the movements of our animals to prove the point. My belief is that if the kids are paying attention, listening or speaking English no matter what the topic is, they are learning something.

Participation
All teachers know that getting students to participate can be worse than having teeth pulled. Everybody has the 4 students who will participate ALL the time while the rest sit their and stare. I have effectively eliminated this problem with the Participation Ball. In all of my classes I have a plush basketball that I have named the Participation Ball. It works very simple, if I throw the ball at you, catch it (or try) and then you must participate. BOOM.

Lessons
I have a textbook that I must teach out of, it isn't the best text book ever (could there be a good textbook though?). Every lesson in the textbook follows the same format and is pretty dry. So I like most other teachers throw in my own material to spice things up.

Example: In my PowerPoints I always include funny pictures, pictures of myself, random pictures that have nothing to do with the lesson to grab the students attention, funny videos and bright colors. During a lesson about comparisons I compared an giraffe to a peacock and listed that the giraffe is sexier as one of the comparisons (which started the argument above) and take this type of off the chart strategy in all of my PowerPoints. I have also included into my different lessons a video of myself dancing to Beyonce - Single Ladies (video is at the bottom for your entertainment), pictures of me as a child, celebrities, historical figures doing strange things, cropped in students photos onto different bodies and of course awesome songs to go with the lessons ( Michael Jackson - Do you remember was my most recent, I even taught myself how to moon walk).

I always edit the ESL games as well and throw in a physical component or extra activity with in the game to make it more difficult.

Example: Everybody has played the telephone game. You separate the students into teams and have them line up. You give each team a sentence or phrase which they must pass down student to student to the end of the line by whispering it to each other. The first team to have it right wins. My version is a bit different. First, each team has a different sentence and second the team members are not standing side by side, they are spaced out so they must run to the next person.Giving the teams different sentences eliminates cheating and/or makes it completely obvious. Spreading the students out ups the difficulty on remembering the sentence, students are usually so eager to out run each other they forget the sentence and must run back to hear the sentence again. For my more advanced classes I will make the students do an activity in between passing the sentence along such as a answering a question that deals with the lesson or any other little activity to throw them off.

With vocabulary I always show the Hangul version of the word and have them translate it to English. For added fun, I have them teach me how to pronounce it. This is always entertaining to them because my mouth just can not make the sounds that Koren requires and I know I sound like an idiot. 

Interacting
It is hard to relate to many of the students when their English ability only goes as far as the textbook learning but I do my best. I will go and watch them play soccer or dodgey- ball (as they call it), I will let them show me new dances (I learned how to gangnam from my 6th graders) and new music, I tell them about my life and what I do over the weekends (of course I eliminate the things they don't need to know) and I ask about theirs.  Even from simply just TRYING to read and pronounce their names has given my tons of brownie points with them. I have realized that any little gesture that shows interest in them goes along way.


Overall, I think back to all of the teachers that I have enjoyed over the years and I try to pull from them and use their strategies in my own classroom and as of month 2 it seems to be working :).

#CHEERS2LOVINGYOURJOB

Ps: I won that argument with that student. I just informed him that the male peacocks were the only ones with the big "sexy" tail.

Kala Teacher- 1
Student- 0

Here are a few pictures from PowerPoints, sorry to my friends and family who have been involuntarily involved.

I HAD TO :)

 

and me, as the FABULOUS Beyonce.