Give him a smack

How do you punish your students?

What do you do when the little shits are so naughty you want to throw them out the window? How the hell do parents deal with their children day and day out??? 

My "situation" at school has changed somewhat dramatically over the last few months, where I have gone from teaching basically no classes, to me teaching 85% of classes WITHOUT a co-teacher. How and why this happened I still have no idea, but it is both a blessing and a curse. Blessing because the kids don't enjoy his classes, but a curse because suddenly discipline has become an issue and so has their comprehension of the topics. Unfortunately the kids are missing important points because there is no one to translate what I say. But that's another issue. For now, I am mainly concerned about how to keep them from making me want to do a midnight run. 

What exactly are they doing wrong?

  Are they just talking or are they being violent with each other? Most of the time, in my classroom, the kids are just being rowdy. They know I don't speak Korean and they take advantage of that by ignoring me. I mean, what am I gonna do? Go mime to their parents or homeroom teacher? No, I need a strategy.

  When they are talking, I tend to just stand at the front and look angry. This works most of the time. Eventually at least 1 student will see that I am pissed and start telling the others to shut up. With 4-1 the other day I made them sit in silence at the end of the class rather than race out the door to show them who is boss (its clearly not me, but they don't fully know that yet). Sometimes one loud "HEY" will get their attention long enough to start the next activity too. 

  The next stage in my annoyed teacher phase is to single out the trouble makers. I point, or go up to the kids responsible for pissing me off and get them to stand up while I tell them off. The kids don't know exactly what I am saying of course, generally there is at least one kid that understands enough to know what I am harping on about. But even if they don't, the message is clear - Bonnie Teacher is angry and its my fault. 

  If they keep it up, I send them out. I did this a few times earlier this year and the kids were going back to their homerooms. Eventually my co teacher asked me why I was doing it. I told him straight up I don't have the language to tell them off for being naughty, so I make them leave. He seemed on board so I kept doing it. They have cleaned up their acts a bit so I haven't had to boot anyone in a while.

  Today I took it to the next level and booted the whole of 5-3 out of the room. There was only 5 mins to go so I didn't care much but they were driving me crazy so I told them all to piss off. They were super confused and knew I was mad, and I could tell they were afraid to go back to their homeroom. They loitered outside the English room until the bell went. And they were quiet as mice. 

  Now, I have had kids beat each other up too, or bully another kid and that sort of thing. I will not tolerate this in my class. Any kid punching or slapping another kid (in a non-playful manner I mean, the kids are forever hitting each other here) have to leave. I drag them to Co and let him deal with them. When I can't find him I drag them to their homeroom teacher and say "tell her/him what you did" and they tell their teacher what they did. Without fail they tell the truth. 

  Once, one of my Gr 4 kids picked up a chair and threw it at another boy. It missed, but the violence of it was cray. He was so upset, the chair thrower, that he was in tears. He was so frustrated and mad at this other boy he expressed it like Hulk. Even though he was upset I dragged both him and the boy who was upsetting him to their teacher. They came back 15 minutes later and both apologized. 

What does Co do?

  Well, when he is in class he has a few tricks up his sleeve... Some of his faves are:

- Standing at the back of the classroom with arms in the air

- Standing at the front of the room with the forehead on the whiteboard

- Hurling insults at them (e.g. you are so stupid, you are fat, your parents will be angry etc)

- Sending them out

- Grabbing their cheeks and shaking their face

- Make them grab each others cheeks and shake (when there are 2 students involved)

- Smacking them on the head with their workbooks

And the worst I saw - slapping them in the face (I am not suggesting that the little shit didn't deserve a smack, but shouldn't it come from a parent?? If at all???)

  I don't want to start a debate on the best way to punish kids, but I would be interested in how other people get their brats to STFU. And this list isn't exhaustive, other things I have tried include limiting game/movie time, bribery etc. 

Honestly, they are all generally pretty good, but sometimes I want to lock them all outside.

xoxoxo