English Teaching Jobs Abroad in Hell!

Today, I’ve got a quirky guest post written by Todd Persaud about English Teaching Jobs in Hell!

He contributed a story recently about what Teaching English is all about.

Here it is!

English Teaching Jobs in Hell!

Teaching a highly unmotivated classroom full of disruptive, angst-filled students, who find ways of sabotaging your most carefully orchestrated lesson plans and materials… This is my very definition of hell, and one that you must try your darndest to stop at all cost. That is, if you are to retrieve the most gratifying reward that is to be had in this profession, namely peace of mind.

Teaching English overseas can be amazingly rewarding, but sometimes you literally have to go to the bowels of hell to find those rewards; with students waiting for you there, which is like double hell.

Negotiating in Hell

It turned out, my students weren’t liking my program of teaching, my lesson plans, PowerPoints, just about anything. Nothing I taught seemed relevant.

Many business authors suggest, even urge, to give customers what they want, not what they need. Michael Masterson, in Ready Fire Aim, argues persuasively that at least 90% of the population buy on wants, not needs.

I, then, resorted to planning the day with them. We would negotiate for fifteen to thirty minutes. Working with their whims made me feel vulnerable and anxious, naturally. It wasn’t what I was expecting. In truth, these casual conversations actually became the lessons. We would sit around like bored teenagers discussing random teenager things.

What to Do With a Rebellious Class or an Unruly Student

This is what the 8^th circle looks like. You find yourself completely drained from all the work you put in to make the class work, spinning your wheels for hours upon hours trying to figure out what to do. Think of it as the ultimate battle of attrition. What’s your move? You better plan ahead. Teenagers will eat you alive, and not in the cool zombie way.

Ask the student to leave the room.

You certainly can’t hit the students or worse, make them fight each other, for your joy and amusement, while you pelt them with Skittles. Not that I have or would ever do that. Check first if you are allowed to do this, but most schools I have found do not allow some form of this.

Kicking a student out of the room is by far the least harmful of the array of punishments that you could possibly exact on your students. I usually don’t do it aggressively. When I tell a student to leave the room, I do it calmly, almost casually, and with a straight face. Byron Katie, self-help guru, would surely be proud. I give my reason and point to the door, so the student knows what I am requesting.

Some teachers would find this harsh. But if you’re in hell, in a corner where you see no way out, pointing your finger can sometimes be the most gratifying move of your entire life. Point the way out! It’s an amazing move. Plus you just sent your problem down the road to someone else, and that’s delegation. Can you say Leadership trait?

As a side note, if you’re in a private school with students paying directly for learning English, you will never have these sorts of troubles because students are already motivated and incentivized. They want the English classes (no, not just British Slang), so you will be teaching in a class essentially of pre-qualified prospects! It’s a win-win!

Talk to the student outside of class.

A good way of managing in-classroom behavior is to manage the outside-of-classroom behavior. Try to speak with the troublesome students while they are not in your class, ask what’s going on, and describe to them the behaviors you notice.

If you’re teaching young students who have barely formed moralities, this might not work out so well. You could just be creating a Bart Simpson instead of Martin Prince. Their eyes might just glaze over and go to a zone out mode. Kind of like a really bad date. You can try offering bribes – after the class.

Build alliances

Do this with some of the more obedient students, so you aren’t alone in the battle. Part of creating a loyalty program, as I’ve discovered from reading No B.S. Maximum Referrals, is to highly reward customers most loyal to you, lavish them with praise and hugs, even candy and high fives if that’s what it takes.

Make those un-loyal customers feel the pain of not being devoted and obedient to you. Play favorites, so you can make those terrible students feel like pariahs and urge them to get back on The Path again. It hurts, but I have found this strategy to work on many students who don’t like being un-favored. No one gets through Hell (or life, for that matter) without a little bit of pain. Being ostracized is a terrible feeling. Please, seeing someone get their comeuppance is, oh so, satisfying.

Conclusion

It takes nerves of steel to kick a student out, but I highly urge you to do so if you can. Sure, re-examine your own role in the situation, but acnokwledge also, please, that sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures and you need to manage your class and bring it back to a state of equilibrium, where you can just chill out; and to do so in a way that won’t damage your overall relations with the students.

In the end, I’d like to think that I had some impact on the students despite the structural challenges I faced with them. Most importantly, I had to learn to adjust my thinking to the school environment, to the community, and to the definition that this particular culture had given to foreign English teachers. I had to change and adjust, or else I was going to be living in a world of hell for the rest of my young adulthood, which would have been incredibly tragic. Especially since it was most of my own doing, and it would only lead further down the rabbit hole to Hell, where there was no way out.

I had to be flexible and resilient. Resiliency is sort of a buzzword, but hopefully, the above strategies work in your favor. Don’t be like I was before I saw the light.

Take action today!