Student Centered, Sort of

Today was a decent teaching day, in spite of the unrelenting heat and mugginess (it rained, sort of, for about ten seconds). I had the 6th graders run a couple rounds of hangman on their own, 9th graders did a paper pass, and 8th graders read some T.S. Eliot (it was "Macavity", but still. Funny. :-))

The biggest obstacle to more student-centered learning is logistical; with fifty students in a class together, just maintaining a quiet (ish) environment is hard. Hard for me, especially, since I've never taught in an urban school, or had more than a couple difficult classes. Some of the students don't speak English at all (because they don't speak it at home), so communication is tricky (though they all understand "be quiet"). It's unfortunate that I'm having to expend so much energy being a disciplinarian; that's not something I'd expected; in fact, I'd anticipated the opposite. I think kids do see me as the 'fun' American teacher (who won't hit them; this happens here, even though it's illegal), but they're also just not USED to being asked to work together, or to listen to each other. I can just about deal with students talking while I'm talking; I hate when they do that to each other.


One of my colleagues at K.V.M.M. told me that a possible reason for some of the behavior issues is that kids here stay younger for longer. In some ways, the commercialism, hyper-sexualization, and 'adultness' of teenage life in the US hasn't touched many of these kids yet (at least the ones I've seen; above are 6th graders, but the same is true for my older students). I'm glad for that, in some ways, but surprised at their immaturity, which is both endearing, and frustrating.

Addendum: A couple more recognizable behaviors: students do work for other classes in my class, and they copy each others homework without apology. The culture of cheating--or what looks like low level cheating-- here is disheartening, but probably has a lot to do with the necessity for success. And, student culture here is way more teacher centered; it makes sense that kids want to impress the adults in the building, who have so much authority over them.