[ESL中国] Class Discipline: Bad Students & Bad Teachers.
11 November 2017 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
the single most frequently asked
question I get about teaching English is quote are the students well behaved close quote and I get that so often because it's not just people who are addressed it in teach English that asked me like my girlfriend's parents ask people were just interested in my life or life in China ask people who have never been teachers themselves seem to be toast in this question sometimes they're asking because they have a stereotyped notion that students in China are really really well behaved and sometimes it is the diametric opposite I don't know if they get the idea from watching like a particular movie or something but sometimes they have the idea that the students in China will be really really poorly behaved right so I'm doing university level teaching she's teaching kids jump anytime you want to jump in but yeah just this morning I was talking to my friend so she did a set called someone back in the States and this friend that was one of her I should explain that they're in school so many hours a day that you know it's understandable for them to for it to be hard for me to hold their attention right today even at the university so my students are all 20 or 21 years old but let me tell you at 5:30 they were 5:30 p.m. they were really rundown as opposed to 4:30 p.m. yeah the students that I teach they I just asked them a couple days ago when they get out of school and they said they get out of school at 10 p.m. and they must have time to do extracurricular stuff because they come to this after-school program that if that is basically including the extracurricular stuff that's on campus so some of them are doing volleyball and some of them are doing English practice club or whatever until 10 p.m. yeah yeah they're including it all on campus activities but if some of them want to tell me yeah it's true that we just came home from getting some food or something last Sunday night it was around 10:00 p.m. and you have students we're leaving the campus and some of them are doing dance practice and like it's not optional they have to practice doing a dance for the annual school ethnic minorities festival yeah there's a lot of stuff but I'm just saying that's school in the broadest sense of the word school that they're staying on campus until 10:00 p.m. yeah still not great and not great for the quality of behavior and attend you're gonna get your students if they're that rundown whether your students are eight years old or are 21 years old so notice they want to answer in two categories here are the students well behaved my concern when coming here was well okay I already had a lot of experience living in Asia and teaching in Asia and living in China my concern was actually not about their in classroom behavior this might surprise you a little bit when I was applying for this job I actually asked about the bus that I would take to and from work because I at a campus like most university campuses so it's a ways out of town and I asked do I have to take the same bus as the other students I was really imagining that some of the students might you know I hope he just says with my class it might be a bit rowdy or rude or confrontational you know that being on the bus like a student with the other students might actually be a bit sketchy you know and I was young once I can imagine myself in the students position so in terms of the students behavior outside of the classroom context when you meet them walking around downtown when you meet them on the bus when you meet them at a restaurant or what have you which does happen all the time their behavior is exemplary I'd say in that context the behavior is much better than students in North America and much I would say better than any other part of Asia I know of so that was a pleasant surprise but I remember I asked one of the other professors that I said well am I actually gonna be taking the bus with the other students and he actually recognized the problem he and he said no he said don't worry there's a special bus that's for teacher professors only what everyone say so you know probably he knew right away what I was talking about like oh yeah maybe being a you know like literally you know sitting next to the other student more experienced in other Asian countries obviously this is the first time I have taught and so I had I hadn't really thought about it but it's true that when I see students you know outside of school they're happy to see you yeah right and if they talk to you it's not inappropriate or you know you know I've sometimes students ask me questions about English grammar or something when the puppets you know what one did today you know how you know but little kids especially they seem really excited to but anyway yes yeah well the okay well again we're talking about a huge age Ridge here aged eight page 21 basically here between two of us um so but no your students are also excited when they see I just remember like oh yeah yeah that way so that's cool now you know in terms the other side of the classroom think the other thing is who I am and how am I carry myself I don't get drunk I don't get drunk with my students I don't drink any alcohol at all and that does change other perceive me China is in many ways a very Pro drinking culture almost all socialization is done through alcohol and there really is a sense in which I could say I have no Chinese friends because I don't eat meat and I don't drink alcohol however it probably does make me seem much more upright and respectable in my students eyes from day one and I think I am treated better for that reason there are a lot of white foreign professors who drink alcohol with their students drink alcohol or drink alcohol and mix company of students professors or just get drunk somewhere downtown where the students see them and talk about them you know where the students gospel you know the professor was at the disco last week and a couple of students are there on saw him getting drunk and dancing or whatever and a lot of professors sleep with their students at this point in 2017 to 2018 comes up I mean I warned my students about it and I talked to other professors about it and I've met and talked to tons of professors face-to-face professor some conveying professor some Beijing festers Mother locales who themselves do it or who know they're surrounded by the professors do it so there are a lot of things like that that would obviously change the dynamics that's at the classroom you want you bet oh sorry you just you put you put our hand to my knees I love that all right so you know that is part of it how we are perceived to some extent it's gonna reflect the rules you choose to play by and in a world where you can earn more money being a waiter or a waitress back in the United States where you can earn more money working at Starbucks in Canada then you can being an English teacher in China you're surrounded by people who are here for reasons other than money you might think that money is a tremendously impure motive in this muffin in this life but there are other there are other motives I don't think ever told you but you know my other teacher my Chinese teacher in couldn't man she knew an extraordinary example of that she told me about a guy who was over 60 years old some of the foreigners come here to teach English in their 60s and their retirement years and his thing was deflowering virgins here in China and he had a stack of photographs you know he kept you know obviously in his cellphone or whatever but he was very proud of him he obviously saw this as his life's work he wasn't just you know seducing younger women he was specifically into deflowering virgins and he deflowered a remarkable number of them and my teacher told me of this partly because she you know she knew this guy as a fellow poor fellow member of the teaching profession whatever want to say but she she really tried to talk to and counsel one of his girlfriends one of his girlfriends who fell in love with him and she was just exploit look this guy every year he just sleeps with more students name a bunch of students come in he's like you know you got to realize you're gonna be discarded and the girl really believes no I'm different I can change him I'm not like the other girls sad situation so you know in case you think nobody gets hurt or nobody gets their heart broken sure they do it yeah that's that's not a shrinking side of teaching ESL in China and it's very much a growing side partly due to the economic and bureaucratic factors I talked about in a video prior to this one that'll be in the same playlist the teaching notion China playlist so I realized for a lot of you you didn't think this video was gonna go in that direction I think it really is necessary going that I shouldn't talk about that stuff openly now in terms of behavior in the classroom it's pretty bad it's pretty bad I don't know where this stereotype comes from that that I Chinese students are meek yeah my friend was really surprised when I told her that the students that I judge are often too loud for me that I can I can't even hear myself talk I mean I'm not I don't have a loud speaking voice but still like I am projecting as much as possible sometimes the students are just so rowdy and so if I were to generalize like if you think of the students as like the the best students the highest level of ability and the weakest students and then those in the middle all three groups are badly behaved yeah so like it's not the case that only the bad students behave badly you have students who are excellent who are very advanced in English or they're good at studying they're good at classroom participation they're good at speaking class whatever you want to say they're good at being students but they're still badly behaved no you know it would be hard for me to say that their behavior is really worse than Canadian University students where I've just been in Canada the behavior was was really really bad but you know in Europe or in the Western world you can definitely be in an environment where the students really feels they're do just sit and look at the professor silently to at least keep the outward appearance of paying attention even if they are sitting there or you know fantasizing about what kind of car they're gonna buy like their mind is wandering they're daydreaming or whatever it is you know where what's going on in fact paying attention but they they are at least keeping up the outward posture of a student playing attention I would say here it's really the exact opposite even the best students you know even whatever your top third or top quintile of students they will very openly not pay attention not participate what have you and today I picked out just two students as examples in two I taught about four classes with two two groups of students to cool two cohorts of students and in each class I picked out one student two to point this out because we were talking with the issue of classroom discipline and eating it's probably part of practicing I was just an English lesson and you know one of them I went over to her I just I just picked up her phone and held it up for the class they could all see she was playing a massively multiplayer online game she was playing a video game on her phone and I said look so this is an example I mean I can choose to be a mean teacher I can choose the Punisher or I can choose to say you're not allowed to use your cell phone again or something or I can say look it's your choice like this is an opportunity for you in your whole life have you ever had a foreigner teach you English no so this is your one opportunity and you're blowing it you know like if you want you can at least pay attention you can talk you can you know said after you leave you're like next year you know you're never gonna be able to afford sorry - my students are poor I mean you know it maybe I've had rich students in the past I've lived in have lived in many different parts of Asia but currently my students are generally poor people they're never going to be able to afford to employ a you know a white Western English teacher for one-on-one tutoring or something this is the one opportunity and they're blowing it so I did that a totally nice way and she didn't get defensive and the class didn't get hostile and I wasn't quite I didn't kick her out of the class you know we just talked about it well look this is what's happening in the class I can choose to force you not to use a cell phone have you uh but yeah regardless of their level of ability and regardless of their level of motivation because me the other student I spoke to she's very highly motivated and she smiled to me she was actually kind of delighted she liked getting the attention when I did the same thing to I went over and I picked up her cell phone this is a different class different group of students I said you know and I said to her last year you were one of my best students and this year you're you know you're just playing on your cell phone all day in class and at the end of glad she was smiling and affable about it she was nice but she agreed you know she knew it was true at the end of class she came up but you want to prove to me even though she was using her cell phone she was using it for research linked to the content of the course that she was doing schoolwork she wasn't just playing the video game so somewhat different but nevertheless okay so she's one of the most highly motivated students but her classroom behavior is disruptive and bad and not participatory and and not even feigning the outward appearance of paying attention in class or just a lot of what goes on in in the Western world is pretending to pay attention when you don't yeah I don't know where the stereotype comes from either that I know I think I think the other thing to remember is and this is totally Evert able this is just a management level decision in schools we are treated as not real teachers and English is treated as not a real subject sure her boss is a wonderful person don't get me wrong but you know the students in your class they don't behave at all the way they do at their own school for a real teacher in a real you see no different that is yeah when they actually are in class they're quiet so right you know it is different they're they're at an after-school program they don't consider it a real education although in many ways it's a much more extraordinary opportunity they ought to take advantage of their care then there are the usual classes no offense you know but just to give an example every semester at the University of the university level teaching my exams are not scheduled during the exam period why what you know why are my exams not real exams why do I do my exams in my classroom as part of my class schedule and not part these have to because it's not a real class I'm paid more than my own boss they pay my airplane ticket to fly you're from Canada it's a lot of money if anything they should take it more seriously they you know the institution and the students should regard my classes more important than a default class but they don't so this is in terms the behavior of the other professor is the attitude of the institution there there really is kind of an attitude like my class is sort of the cherry on top of theirs like oh look we paid a foreigner to entertain you and not like hey guys like this is your one shot to learn how to pronounce what is it my favorite examples the words society basically none of my students can pronounce the word society and the end of my year teaching here I think still none of them will be able to pronounce the word society and you know today you know not that stops okay society lets you know let's try together because they use the word a lot you know talk about social issues a lot in class yeah so look that's it guys um you know III don't know there are teachers who clown around more than I do there are teachers who try to be more entertaining to the class that I do I think they probably have a worse experience you just saw the new teacher here who's a Russian guy you saw him trying to clear out with the students I don't think planning what the students gets you more compliance or more respect or better behavior if anything it's worse I think probably my more scholarly approach probably I get the best behavior out of my students possible in that sense and I like currently you know this wasn't the case in the first couple of months of teaching but right now my students respect me and they respect the curriculum I'm presenting they really get the fact that I'm not just teaching them random crap I'm not just teaching them something because the textbook tells me to that I really am putting together something that that matters whether or not they choose to learn it it's up to them whether or not they put in the time to really to really get it and that kind of respect is earned it's earned for everyone but probably if you're more of an informal and clowning teacher it probably takes you more time during that respect I would say even when you have that respect and even when you have university level students you still will not get good classroom behavior in mainland China in 2017 and I think that's true age eight age 21 it's not gonna happen it's not just that they play video games in class I think they have the fundamental attitude that this is not a real class this is something more like a video game
question I get about teaching English is quote are the students well behaved close quote and I get that so often because it's not just people who are addressed it in teach English that asked me like my girlfriend's parents ask people were just interested in my life or life in China ask people who have never been teachers themselves seem to be toast in this question sometimes they're asking because they have a stereotyped notion that students in China are really really well behaved and sometimes it is the diametric opposite I don't know if they get the idea from watching like a particular movie or something but sometimes they have the idea that the students in China will be really really poorly behaved right so I'm doing university level teaching she's teaching kids jump anytime you want to jump in but yeah just this morning I was talking to my friend so she did a set called someone back in the States and this friend that was one of her I should explain that they're in school so many hours a day that you know it's understandable for them to for it to be hard for me to hold their attention right today even at the university so my students are all 20 or 21 years old but let me tell you at 5:30 they were 5:30 p.m. they were really rundown as opposed to 4:30 p.m. yeah the students that I teach they I just asked them a couple days ago when they get out of school and they said they get out of school at 10 p.m. and they must have time to do extracurricular stuff because they come to this after-school program that if that is basically including the extracurricular stuff that's on campus so some of them are doing volleyball and some of them are doing English practice club or whatever until 10 p.m. yeah yeah they're including it all on campus activities but if some of them want to tell me yeah it's true that we just came home from getting some food or something last Sunday night it was around 10:00 p.m. and you have students we're leaving the campus and some of them are doing dance practice and like it's not optional they have to practice doing a dance for the annual school ethnic minorities festival yeah there's a lot of stuff but I'm just saying that's school in the broadest sense of the word school that they're staying on campus until 10:00 p.m. yeah still not great and not great for the quality of behavior and attend you're gonna get your students if they're that rundown whether your students are eight years old or are 21 years old so notice they want to answer in two categories here are the students well behaved my concern when coming here was well okay I already had a lot of experience living in Asia and teaching in Asia and living in China my concern was actually not about their in classroom behavior this might surprise you a little bit when I was applying for this job I actually asked about the bus that I would take to and from work because I at a campus like most university campuses so it's a ways out of town and I asked do I have to take the same bus as the other students I was really imagining that some of the students might you know I hope he just says with my class it might be a bit rowdy or rude or confrontational you know that being on the bus like a student with the other students might actually be a bit sketchy you know and I was young once I can imagine myself in the students position so in terms of the students behavior outside of the classroom context when you meet them walking around downtown when you meet them on the bus when you meet them at a restaurant or what have you which does happen all the time their behavior is exemplary I'd say in that context the behavior is much better than students in North America and much I would say better than any other part of Asia I know of so that was a pleasant surprise but I remember I asked one of the other professors that I said well am I actually gonna be taking the bus with the other students and he actually recognized the problem he and he said no he said don't worry there's a special bus that's for teacher professors only what everyone say so you know probably he knew right away what I was talking about like oh yeah maybe being a you know like literally you know sitting next to the other student more experienced in other Asian countries obviously this is the first time I have taught and so I had I hadn't really thought about it but it's true that when I see students you know outside of school they're happy to see you yeah right and if they talk to you it's not inappropriate or you know you know I've sometimes students ask me questions about English grammar or something when the puppets you know what one did today you know how you know but little kids especially they seem really excited to but anyway yes yeah well the okay well again we're talking about a huge age Ridge here aged eight page 21 basically here between two of us um so but no your students are also excited when they see I just remember like oh yeah yeah that way so that's cool now you know in terms the other side of the classroom think the other thing is who I am and how am I carry myself I don't get drunk I don't get drunk with my students I don't drink any alcohol at all and that does change other perceive me China is in many ways a very Pro drinking culture almost all socialization is done through alcohol and there really is a sense in which I could say I have no Chinese friends because I don't eat meat and I don't drink alcohol however it probably does make me seem much more upright and respectable in my students eyes from day one and I think I am treated better for that reason there are a lot of white foreign professors who drink alcohol with their students drink alcohol or drink alcohol and mix company of students professors or just get drunk somewhere downtown where the students see them and talk about them you know where the students gospel you know the professor was at the disco last week and a couple of students are there on saw him getting drunk and dancing or whatever and a lot of professors sleep with their students at this point in 2017 to 2018 comes up I mean I warned my students about it and I talked to other professors about it and I've met and talked to tons of professors face-to-face professor some conveying professor some Beijing festers Mother locales who themselves do it or who know they're surrounded by the professors do it so there are a lot of things like that that would obviously change the dynamics that's at the classroom you want you bet oh sorry you just you put you put our hand to my knees I love that all right so you know that is part of it how we are perceived to some extent it's gonna reflect the rules you choose to play by and in a world where you can earn more money being a waiter or a waitress back in the United States where you can earn more money working at Starbucks in Canada then you can being an English teacher in China you're surrounded by people who are here for reasons other than money you might think that money is a tremendously impure motive in this muffin in this life but there are other there are other motives I don't think ever told you but you know my other teacher my Chinese teacher in couldn't man she knew an extraordinary example of that she told me about a guy who was over 60 years old some of the foreigners come here to teach English in their 60s and their retirement years and his thing was deflowering virgins here in China and he had a stack of photographs you know he kept you know obviously in his cellphone or whatever but he was very proud of him he obviously saw this as his life's work he wasn't just you know seducing younger women he was specifically into deflowering virgins and he deflowered a remarkable number of them and my teacher told me of this partly because she you know she knew this guy as a fellow poor fellow member of the teaching profession whatever want to say but she she really tried to talk to and counsel one of his girlfriends one of his girlfriends who fell in love with him and she was just exploit look this guy every year he just sleeps with more students name a bunch of students come in he's like you know you got to realize you're gonna be discarded and the girl really believes no I'm different I can change him I'm not like the other girls sad situation so you know in case you think nobody gets hurt or nobody gets their heart broken sure they do it yeah that's that's not a shrinking side of teaching ESL in China and it's very much a growing side partly due to the economic and bureaucratic factors I talked about in a video prior to this one that'll be in the same playlist the teaching notion China playlist so I realized for a lot of you you didn't think this video was gonna go in that direction I think it really is necessary going that I shouldn't talk about that stuff openly now in terms of behavior in the classroom it's pretty bad it's pretty bad I don't know where this stereotype comes from that that I Chinese students are meek yeah my friend was really surprised when I told her that the students that I judge are often too loud for me that I can I can't even hear myself talk I mean I'm not I don't have a loud speaking voice but still like I am projecting as much as possible sometimes the students are just so rowdy and so if I were to generalize like if you think of the students as like the the best students the highest level of ability and the weakest students and then those in the middle all three groups are badly behaved yeah so like it's not the case that only the bad students behave badly you have students who are excellent who are very advanced in English or they're good at studying they're good at classroom participation they're good at speaking class whatever you want to say they're good at being students but they're still badly behaved no you know it would be hard for me to say that their behavior is really worse than Canadian University students where I've just been in Canada the behavior was was really really bad but you know in Europe or in the Western world you can definitely be in an environment where the students really feels they're do just sit and look at the professor silently to at least keep the outward appearance of paying attention even if they are sitting there or you know fantasizing about what kind of car they're gonna buy like their mind is wandering they're daydreaming or whatever it is you know where what's going on in fact paying attention but they they are at least keeping up the outward posture of a student playing attention I would say here it's really the exact opposite even the best students you know even whatever your top third or top quintile of students they will very openly not pay attention not participate what have you and today I picked out just two students as examples in two I taught about four classes with two two groups of students to cool two cohorts of students and in each class I picked out one student two to point this out because we were talking with the issue of classroom discipline and eating it's probably part of practicing I was just an English lesson and you know one of them I went over to her I just I just picked up her phone and held it up for the class they could all see she was playing a massively multiplayer online game she was playing a video game on her phone and I said look so this is an example I mean I can choose to be a mean teacher I can choose the Punisher or I can choose to say you're not allowed to use your cell phone again or something or I can say look it's your choice like this is an opportunity for you in your whole life have you ever had a foreigner teach you English no so this is your one opportunity and you're blowing it you know like if you want you can at least pay attention you can talk you can you know said after you leave you're like next year you know you're never gonna be able to afford sorry - my students are poor I mean you know it maybe I've had rich students in the past I've lived in have lived in many different parts of Asia but currently my students are generally poor people they're never going to be able to afford to employ a you know a white Western English teacher for one-on-one tutoring or something this is the one opportunity and they're blowing it so I did that a totally nice way and she didn't get defensive and the class didn't get hostile and I wasn't quite I didn't kick her out of the class you know we just talked about it well look this is what's happening in the class I can choose to force you not to use a cell phone have you uh but yeah regardless of their level of ability and regardless of their level of motivation because me the other student I spoke to she's very highly motivated and she smiled to me she was actually kind of delighted she liked getting the attention when I did the same thing to I went over and I picked up her cell phone this is a different class different group of students I said you know and I said to her last year you were one of my best students and this year you're you know you're just playing on your cell phone all day in class and at the end of glad she was smiling and affable about it she was nice but she agreed you know she knew it was true at the end of class she came up but you want to prove to me even though she was using her cell phone she was using it for research linked to the content of the course that she was doing schoolwork she wasn't just playing the video game so somewhat different but nevertheless okay so she's one of the most highly motivated students but her classroom behavior is disruptive and bad and not participatory and and not even feigning the outward appearance of paying attention in class or just a lot of what goes on in in the Western world is pretending to pay attention when you don't yeah I don't know where the stereotype comes from either that I know I think I think the other thing to remember is and this is totally Evert able this is just a management level decision in schools we are treated as not real teachers and English is treated as not a real subject sure her boss is a wonderful person don't get me wrong but you know the students in your class they don't behave at all the way they do at their own school for a real teacher in a real you see no different that is yeah when they actually are in class they're quiet so right you know it is different they're they're at an after-school program they don't consider it a real education although in many ways it's a much more extraordinary opportunity they ought to take advantage of their care then there are the usual classes no offense you know but just to give an example every semester at the University of the university level teaching my exams are not scheduled during the exam period why what you know why are my exams not real exams why do I do my exams in my classroom as part of my class schedule and not part these have to because it's not a real class I'm paid more than my own boss they pay my airplane ticket to fly you're from Canada it's a lot of money if anything they should take it more seriously they you know the institution and the students should regard my classes more important than a default class but they don't so this is in terms the behavior of the other professor is the attitude of the institution there there really is kind of an attitude like my class is sort of the cherry on top of theirs like oh look we paid a foreigner to entertain you and not like hey guys like this is your one shot to learn how to pronounce what is it my favorite examples the words society basically none of my students can pronounce the word society and the end of my year teaching here I think still none of them will be able to pronounce the word society and you know today you know not that stops okay society lets you know let's try together because they use the word a lot you know talk about social issues a lot in class yeah so look that's it guys um you know III don't know there are teachers who clown around more than I do there are teachers who try to be more entertaining to the class that I do I think they probably have a worse experience you just saw the new teacher here who's a Russian guy you saw him trying to clear out with the students I don't think planning what the students gets you more compliance or more respect or better behavior if anything it's worse I think probably my more scholarly approach probably I get the best behavior out of my students possible in that sense and I like currently you know this wasn't the case in the first couple of months of teaching but right now my students respect me and they respect the curriculum I'm presenting they really get the fact that I'm not just teaching them random crap I'm not just teaching them something because the textbook tells me to that I really am putting together something that that matters whether or not they choose to learn it it's up to them whether or not they put in the time to really to really get it and that kind of respect is earned it's earned for everyone but probably if you're more of an informal and clowning teacher it probably takes you more time during that respect I would say even when you have that respect and even when you have university level students you still will not get good classroom behavior in mainland China in 2017 and I think that's true age eight age 21 it's not gonna happen it's not just that they play video games in class I think they have the fundamental attitude that this is not a real class this is something more like a video game