EPIK eXPERIENCES: Middle School Classroom Management

"What do your students do if they arrive late in an American classroom?" my co-teacher asks as another gaggle of fourteen year old boys bursts into the room, disrupting the introduction of my lesson that hasn't even gotten off the ground yet.

"Well--I taught adults."

Adults, I might add, who had paid to travel to America, paid to learn English. Even when I taught American middle school, I had a teacher who took over the classroom management portion just so I could focus on the details of my lesson plans instead. My current co-teacher looks again as the door opens for yet another gaggle of fourteen year old boys. He glances between my late students and the trouble-makers who've taken this opportunity to chit-chat chatter all over the place and punch their neighbors. 

"Yeah," he says. "You might want to brush up on your rules, then."

One of the first things you hear about classroom management is that teachers should start off strict and loosen up, becoming more friendly as time goes on.

Problem is we don't get a lot of information about what that "strict" looks like. We're told that yelling is out--don't lose your cool. That you want to rely on positive reinforcement--but don't just sit there dangling candy in front of kids for every activity like some psych experiment on steroids. Build intrinsic motivation, they say, by creating interesting lessons.

And while that's all well and nice and the ultimate goal--it's not a feasible reality. There will always be disinterested students, and there will always be disruptive ones, too.

So what does classroom management look like? How does it work? What kind of effort is required of YOU as the teacher, and what kind of responsibilities can you teach students? These questions become even more complicated once you throw in the fact that you're an EPIK teacher, a short-term 외국 who students see maybe once a week and who they only half understand (if you're lucky). I mentioned in my orientation post that EPIK glosses over classroom management for primary school teachers only to leave us secondary folk out in the barrens to fend for ourselves. After yet another teeth-pulling day teaching my second grade boys (aka. 13 year old terrors), here are a few emergency classroom management procedures I'll be implementing after we get back from Chuseok. 

Hopefully you can speak to your co-teachers about adapting and implementing some of these ideas into your own classroom. I mention this because, ultimately, what you can do in your classroom depends on whether or not your co-teacher approves. They might have a system in place already. They might prefer different punishments and rewards. They might be ghosting around somewhere in the teachers' office and don't give a damn what you decide to do. 

The co-teachers at my girls' middle school all have their own systems already in place. They help with behavior, transitions, and the whole big shebang of classroom micromanagement. My boys' school? I'm kind of totally on my own.

Lena? Meet the lions' den.

I've only recently begun implementing these into my boys' classes, so I can't speak to their efficacy in absolute terms. These are, however, management techniques my middle school mentor teacher taught me when I was in grad school.

Positive Reinforcement

Lately, everyone's been hyping up the Positive Reinforcement in educational psychology. Promise a reward and reap the benefits of improved behavior. 

Bribe those kids. By any means.

Most teachers take this to mean giving out bags of candy left and right. Others take it to mean coming up with fancy English games with tons of extra prep-work on your end.

I take it to mean a stamp. They get X amount of stamps? They trade it in for a get-out-jail-free card or a type of candy. --I'll explain more about the jail later.

And how, exactly, do my students earn stamps?
By winning team games.

Where do these team games come from?
From language challenges embedded into my lessons.

I make activities and worksheets competition style. At the start of class I divide students into teams of two, three, or four and give each group ten points to start with. They win a challenge, and their team gets points.

From there, I take points away from teams when I hear Korean, when I see students off task, etc. It's important to note that moving, drawing, or talking isn't necessarily off task--especially for students who need to fidget, for a teacher who knows what it's like to draw through 90% of class time. If students are engaging with English, they're on task as far as I'm concerned. If they're not being disruptive or rude to peers/myself, they're on task. (And it's important to read up on what is rude/impolite based on cultural contexts!)

tudents from the team with the most points get a stamp. This stamp, once accumulated to my predetermined amount, becomes a candy or freebie-ticket.

After-School Speaking Club

I didn't want to double the reward cards for my after-school speaking club, so their system is much simpler and more class-wide. Basically, I keep a Word/Phrase and a Speaking Class Reward Chart on the board for all to see.

The agreement is that at the end of class, I determine whether they deserve a point/check on their Reward Chart. Students can monitor their behavior by a short word or phrase that I keep beside the chart--they misbehave and they lose a letter. Usually, I relate the Word/Phrase to a promised reward for reaching a certain amount of checks. (VIDEO for movie day; PHONE for free-time on their phones; etc.)

If we get through the lesson without completely losing the word, students get a check. Once they reach X amount of checks, it then translates into the reward mentioned above. This reward can include board-game days, movie days, bringing in sweets, modified sports, ten minutes of free time etc. 

Negative Reinforcement

My negative reinforcement--aka punishment--is relatively simple. Kids don't do the work and their teams lose points. Kids are disruptive and their teams lose points. Usually, the competitive nature in my all boys' school leads to the teams holding their members accountable even if there isn't an immediate reward. 

But for the moments and days that are really just absolutely rough I have a Yellow Card system. They get a yellow post-it at any point in class and it means they're behaving poorly. They have to write their name on the paper so it can go in a jar. At the end of class I choose anywhere from 2-3 names, and those students will have homework. All yellow cards, though? They get the missing out on recess. The five to ten minutes sitting in the classroom. The lecture.

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Good Cop/Bad Cop Combo

The reality is that it's true--the better your lesson, the less time you'll need to focus on classroom management. But even so, without classroom management in place the best lessons can blow up. I know I just went through the whole gross explanations of rules, rewards, and punishments...but there is a four-step, simple reality:

1. Have clear and realistic expectations for your students.
2. Make it so your students know your expectations.
3. Create and ensure smooth transitions between activities and lesson flow.​
4. Build Rapport--Learn their names.

Admittedly, I'm struggling with that last reality as I'm bad with names to begin with. Having so many Minseos and Junseos gets my head spinning when I, unfortunately, only see each of my 22 classes once a week. I recognize faces, I remember details about their lives that I've begun collecting like secret hoards of knowledge--that my loud "trouble-maker" is also captain of the soccer team, that one of the reluctant readers is also an amazing artist. I know if I learn names, then this gets easier. I've seen it in my other classrooms, from the EFL adults to the Maryland sixth graders.

So now that I've helped with the classroom management...anyone got tips on learning 500 two-syllable Korean names?