Sometimes it takes a
moment of creativity to come up with a new solution, at least for me, to a
never-ending situation.
How can I encourage
students to pay attention? Is it that
today’s television has 30 seconds commercials in between 5 minutes of whatever
show? Is it that kids today have video
games and computers flashing at them all day long? Is it that they are attached
to ear buds and cell phones? Am I so boring?
No. That can’t be it. I may be crazy, but not boring, just ask my son. I
guess I may not be as interesting as the person sitting next to them: they are
so missing out!
The age-old situation
is me presenting a lesson to 25 some students and 4 of them just seem to think
that my talking is a signal for them to talk.
It is kind of creepy. I talk and
then it is like an echo of little voices.
Sometime I think that I am hearing things, and that may indeed be true,
but most of the time it is not my imagination. It is just my reality and a
challenging one at that.
My new solution: have
students stand up. That’s right, just simply
stand up right at their desk. The beauty of this is that I do not have to stop
class, speak in English, or write up anything for the principal. After all, who
wants to stop class or take time to write up a student who is already taking
too much energy away from me and my teaching? Not me.
So, one day I got an idea. I simply said to the chatty student “Levez-vous.” and waved at him as a sign to stand. At first they didn't
get it. Why would they? They weren’t paying
attention to begin with for starters.
The lucky student then gets to have a better view of the class and is
free from distractions and distracting.
They have to stand until I tell them to sit down and a funny thing is
that I often forget and they can go for quite a while, sometimes I don’t know
how long. C’est la vie!
This new “standing
solution” seems to be working. I do have
a few students who seem to want to stretch their legs more than others. One got to do so four times the other day. I
started having him stand closer and closer to the door. Maybe I will have to try the “nose to the
corner” idea? Could I get away with
that? How about duct tape? Let’s just say I am going to have hope that standing
will work just fine!
Working to find
simple solutions to age-old challenges: This
is why I teach!
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