Back in Australia we used to have something known as after school care, where children can go after school and hang out while they wait for their parents to come pick them up from work. The Taiwanese also have a form of after school care, also known as Anxin-ban, which really just resembles more school.
My cram school has classrooms above where I teach, which are used as Anxin-ban before and after class. The Taiwanese work until pretty late, so some of these children don't go home until 9pm. The kids are given dinner, and someone will watch over them while they study (because 1st graders apparently need to study you see) I didn't know about this until recently, because whenever I walked past I always thought that they were just doing more class.
I feel like I've discovered the answer to all my problems in regards to homework.
To be honest I don't really care if the children don't do their homework. I can get the Chinese teacher to tell their parents, but after that if they don't do it, it's no issue of mine. If they don't know the grammar and they fail that's their problem.
Or so I thought.
I discovered after the first month of teaching that I have to write giant long progress reports about everyone of my students at the cram school, and part of this report is an average of all their homework scores. I thought OK, fair enough, I'll just average up what they have so far. But no, apparently I can't do that. In order to write the homework average I apparently have to add up every homework that they have been given, blank spaces on the green sheet are a no-no.
Which inevitably means that I have to make them do their homework, and if they don't, I have to follow up on them and make sure they do.
At first I made them stay back after class until they finished it. This was really tiring on my part because I was working for nothing, and it can be a real battle to try and make these children do work. I even had one student who repeatably refused to do his homework no matter how much I threatened or bribed him.
Then one of the teachers I work with advised that I take them up to Anxin-ban and tell the teachers there what they have to do.
I've discovered that this is actually really amazing. Whenever one of the kids don't do their homework I now accompany them upstairs and tell the teacher watching them what they have to do. I don't know how they do it, but the kids then hand in their completed homework the following lesson, and I can go home on time.
Maybe walking in with your English teacher looks bad. The supervisor will always look disappointed and say "Oh no not again," to the kid. Yesterday I had to follow up on a kid and the supervisor really chewed into her in Chinese. "Why didn't you write this! why is it blank!" It's so awesome because it makes my job so much easier.
Talking about my class, classroom relations in my class of 1st graders has taken a turn for the worst recently. Being kids they occasionally have issues, and yesterday they were really ripping into each other. There was fighting. They were yelling things at each other such as "Go away! and you are boo!" Given how childish it is I think it's a bit funny, but I don't want my class to be a bad environment for the children. After class one kid was even yelling "I hate you!" in Chinese. It's sometimes hard to work out what's going on with these kids, because they do it while my back is turned. When they're really upset they won't talk to me in English.
Hopefully they'll have all forgotten about it by Friday.
My cram school has classrooms above where I teach, which are used as Anxin-ban before and after class. The Taiwanese work until pretty late, so some of these children don't go home until 9pm. The kids are given dinner, and someone will watch over them while they study (because 1st graders apparently need to study you see) I didn't know about this until recently, because whenever I walked past I always thought that they were just doing more class.
I feel like I've discovered the answer to all my problems in regards to homework.
To be honest I don't really care if the children don't do their homework. I can get the Chinese teacher to tell their parents, but after that if they don't do it, it's no issue of mine. If they don't know the grammar and they fail that's their problem.
Or so I thought.
I discovered after the first month of teaching that I have to write giant long progress reports about everyone of my students at the cram school, and part of this report is an average of all their homework scores. I thought OK, fair enough, I'll just average up what they have so far. But no, apparently I can't do that. In order to write the homework average I apparently have to add up every homework that they have been given, blank spaces on the green sheet are a no-no.
Which inevitably means that I have to make them do their homework, and if they don't, I have to follow up on them and make sure they do.
At first I made them stay back after class until they finished it. This was really tiring on my part because I was working for nothing, and it can be a real battle to try and make these children do work. I even had one student who repeatably refused to do his homework no matter how much I threatened or bribed him.
Then one of the teachers I work with advised that I take them up to Anxin-ban and tell the teachers there what they have to do.
I've discovered that this is actually really amazing. Whenever one of the kids don't do their homework I now accompany them upstairs and tell the teacher watching them what they have to do. I don't know how they do it, but the kids then hand in their completed homework the following lesson, and I can go home on time.
Maybe walking in with your English teacher looks bad. The supervisor will always look disappointed and say "Oh no not again," to the kid. Yesterday I had to follow up on a kid and the supervisor really chewed into her in Chinese. "Why didn't you write this! why is it blank!" It's so awesome because it makes my job so much easier.
Talking about my class, classroom relations in my class of 1st graders has taken a turn for the worst recently. Being kids they occasionally have issues, and yesterday they were really ripping into each other. There was fighting. They were yelling things at each other such as "Go away! and you are boo!" Given how childish it is I think it's a bit funny, but I don't want my class to be a bad environment for the children. After class one kid was even yelling "I hate you!" in Chinese. It's sometimes hard to work out what's going on with these kids, because they do it while my back is turned. When they're really upset they won't talk to me in English.
Hopefully they'll have all forgotten about it by Friday.
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