Teaching Basics

As I just hit a month of being here in Poland I've spent a lot of time thinking through teaching. I can't help but go back to all the times I talked with my Tech Team students at Bridge about behavior management. It always goes back to the basics. On days I've struggled and wondered what the hell went wrong I always go back to thinking about the basics of teaching. Not necessarily trying something fancy. But making sure I have them engaged. Not trying to yell over the kids (which is hard because acoustics in this school are horrendous!). Building relationships.  Thinking about reasons that kids are not listening and misbehaving. Be prepared and know your students. It's crazy to think that even as I'm in my 11th year of teaching it still goes back to the basics.

This week I was totally stumped by a class.  They are older and I thought things were going great with them.  Then on Tuesday I quickly had a rude awakening when it was a terrible class. I had to have the principal come in and talk to them....That's pretty bad as I've never had to do that before. But I thought after that things would change. I reevaluated what I was doing and took a step back to help the students who were struggling and causing a lot of the behavior problems. Only to then have students who are more advanced in English begin misbehaving because they were bored.  It got me to realize that the class was extremely split in their abilities  for conversations in English. Not just a little difference! Like some are pretty much fluent to the other end that the kids have never spoken a word of English. While it was a difficult week with this class it was nice to figure out what was going on by the end of the week. It took taking time to reflect and evaluate what I was doing, what I needed to be responsible for and what they students are responsible for.