Buckland Weekly #21 - Some Thoughts On Classroom Management

Classroom Management

So, you have completed your orientation, settled in at your school and turned up for your class. What can you expect, and more to the point, what can't you expect? What issues are likely to come up in class that will make class management more difficult than you expected?

Missing or broken equipment

Most Chinese classrooms are equipped with computers but you cannot always be certain that they will be working. If you want to create computer-based lessons that's great but always have a backup plan in case the computer isn't working. It's true wherever you teach – whether in China or anyother country – you should not count on all equipment always working. Always have a non-technology plan in reserve just in case.

Difficulties in producing handouts

You could have twenty-classes of eighty students in a week – that's 1600 students. If you want to give two handouts to each student that would be 3200 pieces of paper. That's clearly not practical. You need to keep handouts to a minimum and keep them reusable. The other problem is photocopying. If you are lucky your school may have free copying facilities providing you only want sensible amounts but that isn't always the case. You may have to go to commercial copy shops and copy things for yourself. While copying is very cheap, it soon adds up if you do a lot of it.

I have never seen a laminator in China so don't count on that being an option. It is possible to laminate with wide strips of sellotape but it is time-consuming and not very easy. My tip is to photocopy enough to give one copy per group for one class and then seal them in plastic wallets (you can buy them in most stationery shops), hand them out and collect them back in. Print a couple of extra copies because some will get damaged or not returned.

Physical layout

Classrooms may be laid out in various ways but however they are organised the problem remains that there are a lot of students in a fairly small space. The most common layout of the desks is in rows facing forward but it does vary. Sometimes they will be laid out so that organising students into groups is easy, sometimes it won't. As you have only forty minutes and MUST leave everything as it was at the start there is no time to change things around. It can be a challenge but you have to work with what you are given. If you have completed any kind of teacher training at home you will have learned that you should mix up the groups, arrange them differently so that they speak to different people, perhaps group them according to ability.

That's not really an option here. You are more or less forced to group students simply with the other students sitting near to them. Anything else takes too long to explain and too long to organise. I just walk around the class indicating with my arms and saying “Group1, Group 2 etc.”

Environmental issues.

Depending where you are based you may find classrooms too hot or too cold or too noisy. This is the same for everyone and there is nothing that you can do about it. Just try to be patient and remember the old saying that what can't be changed must be endured. One thing about noise is that often it will be coming from outside the school. Last year one of my schools was next door to a building site and the noise reached very high levels. Again, there is nothing you can do about this. What it does mean is that you need to make extra efforts to keep the noise level INSIDE the classroom, the talking and shouting from the students, to a minimum. If you are aware that there is a noise problem (as I was on the second day of the building work) have some activities that the students can work on with little input from you. It isn't ideal as this is supposed to be an Oral English class but it is better than nothing.

All these issues will impact greatly on your lesson planning and on the range of possible activities.

Activities that involve a lot of motion around the classroom – such as the mingling activities typically used in language teaching in the west – are best avoided or adjusted. One way to adjust them is to make sure that they require only six or eight people and then break the class into appropriately sized groups. Then, effectively, they can mingle without leaving their seats. Activities that involve a student from each group coming to the front (vocabulary races, pictionary etc) can be easily organised.

Finally there is the issue of discipline.

Discipline

For the most part classes here are reasonably well-behaved and disciplined but they are still children and like children everywhere they might misbehave. We'll look later at what you can do if you are unlucky enough to have a particularly badly-behaved class but first let's look at some of the low level problems you will meet from time to time.

Sometimes you may find students sleeping in class. They aren't being disrespectful to you. Students here work very long days and they are, especially in the mornings, often tired. What you do about it is up to you. I have had teachers advise me to just let them sleep because if they are asleep they are quiet. That doesn't sit well with me as I believe I should be trying to reach everyone in the class. I generally wake them up and then if they fall asleep again ask their nearest classmate to keep waking them up.

You will also find students doing various things they shouldn't be – playing with their phones, reading books or magazines or – most often – doing another teacher's homework. Generally I confiscate whatever the offending item is and return it at the end of the lesson. I don't make a big fuss about it because that just loses time and makes the students embarrassed and resentful. Simply take it and give it back later. If in one lesson I confiscate multiple items from one student, I sometimes tell them that one more thing and they will have to go to their class teacher (home room teacher) to get it all back. I have very rarely had to actually do that.

Lateness, especially in the first class in the afternoon, can be quite common. Again, there are various things you can do. They key is to do whatever you find least disruptive to the lesson. I usually ask the students why they are late (“Sleeping” is by far the most common answer) and then let them join the class. Then I make sure that they next few questions are directed at them. Other teachers will make them stand at the side until there is a convenient place for them to join the class.

I have heard of teachers making them do a task, answer a question or even sing a song but this, in my opinion, is not a good idea. It disrupts the lesson and just causes further problems with the student.

By far the most common problem is just noise level. It will, unchecked, creep up to a point where teaching becomes impossible. You need to be clear from the first lesson that this isn't allowed. They don't do it for their Chinese teachers, there is no reason they should do it for you. There are various ways to deal with it. You can learn the Chinese for “be quiet” (An jing). You can ask the class monitor to tell them to be quiet. You can individually tell the noisiest students to be quiet. I find it effective just to stop speaking and stand at the front, possibly looking directly at the worst offenders. One thing you shouldn't do is start shouting at them. You can't make things quieter by shouting. Also you should not make threats that you aren't able to carry out or aren't prepared to carry out. Don't threaten to give homework to noisy students unless you are going to do it and definitely don't threaten to take them to their class teacher unless you are going to do it. They will very quickly catch on if you are often making empty gestures.

One final issue of classroom behaviour, though not of discipline as such, is that often, if you ask a question to the whole class no one will answer – even if it is an easy question that you know they can all do. Similarly, asking a question to an individual student might get a blank look or a shake of the head. This is because, even if they know the answer, they are afraid that they will look foolish and lose face if they get it wrong. From the very start I make it clear that I don't mind wrong answers. I won't be angry or annoyed, I will just help them find the right answer. They can take some convincing but when they eventually learn that this is what you will do things usually get better. It's also useful to let them work in groups and then ask the group for an answer as that way there is a collective responsibility for the answer and no individual feels embarrassed if it is wrong. 

Very occasionally you may have more serious issues to deal with – fighting, for example. The best way to deal with things that are serious is to either send the class monitor to find a Chinese teacher or put the class monitor in charge and take the students to the office. This is really a last resort though and should only be used for serious problems that you can't deal with in class. Problems that you deal with but nevertheless think are serious enough to need further action, you should report to their Chinese English teacher or the head of your department. Get the class monitor to write down the names of the students so that you can do this. There is no guarantee that anything will happen but usually the schools will take some action, even if it is only to warn the students not to do it again.

So, in general

Keep smiling/ don't let yourself get angry (though I do sometimes pretend to be angry)

Be confident. Speak loudly and clearly but DON'T shout.

Be patient. Just standing and waiting can be effective.

If it's possible separate students who are causing problems.

You can make persistent offenders stand at the front or the back of the classroom.

Don't send students out of the classroom. Schools often don't like this and there is no guarantee they

will still be there at the end of the lesson.

Take only very serious offenders to the office.

Only get a Chinese teacher as a last resort.

Don't threaten punishments you can't or won't follow through on.

Some tips for classroom management

Finally, here are a couple of short tips that might help. Students will often misbehave because they can't understand what is happening or what you want them to do. So you need to make everything as clear as you can.

Use short simple activities for lower level classes.

Plan in advance how you will explain, what you will say and what you will write on the board.

Always write instructions on the board as well as repeating them.

Don't check understanding by asking “do you understand?” (The answer will always be “yes”, whether they understand or not.) use concept questions instead (How many words do you need to

find? What kind of words do we want?)

Speak slowly and clearly. Repeat at least three times.

Always walk around the class and check if the students are on task. If more than one group has the

same misunderstanding stop and go through the instructions again. Help groups with the task if they

need it.