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I just started teaching Adults in a Community College Adult Education Certificate Program. I had thought it was a great second job, until I started to look at the expressions of the faces of some of the students. I had thought I was doing well and was pretty interesting. I was doing my best to engage the students in activities, question and answer and games but maybe not. Some of the people looked like they could not wait to leave!
All of a sudden I was not a middle aged professional but a 14 year old boy in his first public speaking class with the other kids laughing and smirking at me. The students could sense I had lost my cool and the mood of the room went dark.
What do you do when you see the students look terribly bored?
I admit it, when they get bored, I get bored. Start cracking jokes, asking more interactive questions, give a 10 minute break, or attempt to relate the content to something recent in the news. Sometimes, there's just nothing you can do. Focus on the few people that seem genuinely interested. All you need is that 1 person.
It doesn't affect my confidence and poise at all...what it does affect is my future lesson planning and causes me to reassess my delivery methods. Also...there is nothing wrong with scrapping the planned lesson when you realize that the students aren't into it - and going a different direction that is unplanned. Flexibility is very important in teaching.
Certain subject matter just is not exciting or fun for students to learn about...and they aren't always going to appear engaged for every minute of every lesson. It shouldn't affect the teacher's confidence, but I can understand why it might. Teachers have to be pretty tough in that area, yet not so tough that they can't recognize when they need to make some changes in their teaching methods.
It can't be taken personally when students are yawning and dozing off, but there are little things that you can do when you're losing them - give a 5 minute break; make a joke or funny comment about the boredom; tell a personal story that relates to the lesson; use more props to make your lesson interesting; etc...
I just started teaching Adults in a Community College Adult Education Certificate Program. I had thought it was a great second job, until I started to look at the expressions of the faces of some of the students. I had thought I was doing well and was pretty interesting. I was doing my best to engage the students in activities, question and answer and games but maybe not. Some of the people looked like they could not wait to leave!
All of a sudden I was not a middle aged professional but a 14 year old boy in his first public speaking class with the other kids laughing and smirking at me. The students could sense I had lost my cool and the mood of the room went dark.
What do you do when you see the students look terribly bored?
I teach two different classes for toddlers and preschoolers and I experience the same thing. The class is supposed to be interactive between the parent and child, but most of the parents sit and drink coffee and chat amongst themselves while the kids run wild. I can tell that that parents think the class is a waste of time, but how am I supposed to engage 10-12 toddler/preschoolers without the parents' help?
Surprisingly enough it is actually the older kids in the class (2 1/2- 3 1/2)that are the biggest problem. The babies (1 1/2- 2 1/2)sit quietly with their parents and sing the songs and do the activities. When I try to do the same activities with the older group it is pure chaos. It is really eye opening to see just how much parental involvement (or lack there of!) encourages behavior!
And if I hear one more parents say, "Oh, boys will be boys..." when their kid slugs another, I am going to totally lose my cool!
So, yes. To answer the OP question, it DOES shake my confidence even though I don't want it to. I have been doing this for a long time and I know what I am doing. I find this batch of parents appalling and frustrating though.
The whole thing upset me so much that I decided to bring in experts. I found two people through friends who were college instructors in communication. I got them to attend my class as students and check out my teaching style and then give me advice.
I was particularly interested in how to deal with the students who believed that it was perfectly OK to just attend class and not pay any attention, or participate. Many would draw pictures, doze or just stare into space. In other words they believed that it was OK to just attend class and put in their time.
This is a certificate program where the understanding was historically that if you attended class every time, you would pass. Then you could put the certificate on your resume and job offers would be easier to achieve. The other teachers say they just ignore the interested students. Why can't I?
I am going to meet with my "consultants" next week, hopefully they have some advice? Do you have any?
I taught college composition for a number of years. I had two strategies for bored students: Mr Nice Guy, and No More Mr Nice Guy.
Mr Nice Guy would engage them in debate, ask them questions, make relevant and/or funny analogies to explain the reading. But sometimes they don't even want to talk about THEMSELVES - that's when you know it's a bad day
So, No More Mr Nice Guy would occasionally just walk out. I would say "well it seems that you're not really interested in working today, so we'll resume on Friday." And they would get a real shock from that. I didn't do it for shock value though, I did it to teach them that they have a role to play in class and if they're not fulfilling theirs, I'm not fulfilling mine. Obviously you can't do this too often, but I've never needed to.
If it's adults, it's possible they're out of the routine of being in the classroom and they're used to coming to work and talking to coworkers, reclining in their chair, and taking their own sweet time. It can be hard for adults to get back into the school routine of listening and paying full attention, and to stop acting like "hey I'm in school but I'm all grown up now and can do what I like!" It may just take them a while - quite a while. It's harder when they don't want to be there or have busy outside lives, but they signed up for this class out of choice and have to learn to suck it up. They don't have to have the time of their lives there, but they need to be decent about it.
As for whether it affects me personally - sometimes I would feel angry that they weren't listening and didn't care, but I think a lot of the time they are too tired or distracted to care because of other stuff going on. I would find that I didn't plan as much fun stuff for a class that didn't give me good input though.
Good luck!
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