About gaining control of a Korean Classroom

To Elynnor and everyone else,

I’ll be the first to admit that I can be a bastard in the classroom.
Let me explain. I don’t put up with any disrespect in the
classroom. If a kid acts up then I make that child stand up and I
walk right up to him and yell at him. If two kids hit each other
then I make the children go up to the board and put their nose on the
board ( a little trick I learned from Jonathan). Like I mentioned,
most of the time I’m the only teacher in the class and I’ve gotta
regulate.

I also tell them that if they are talking and I’m talking, I’ll start
a count. If I get to 3 they all have to copy a sentence ten times like,

“I will not talk when the teacher is talking because it is rude and
stops others from learning.”

I didn’t do this last year and I had some miserable classes where I
simply could not regain control.

Don’t worry, the kids quickly forget- you only see them once a week
after all, and they’ll remember for next week. This week I only had
to count to 1 and as soon as I did every class was silent.

They may not all understand English, but they all understand tone of
voice.

Dan

About the Author

Daniel

Daniel Gray is a Korean adoptee that returned to Korean in 2005 because he wanted to try and find his birth mother and to learn about Korean culture. He started a restaurant review blog in 2007, www.seouleats.com, that became a local and international hit. He and his blog has been featured in the New York Times, Monocle Magazine, The Kimchi Chronicles, Bizarre Foods, Rudy Maxa, Olive Magazine, Euronews and much more. He now is a partner at O’ngo Food Communications (www.ongofood.com), which is a culinary tourism and consulting company that offers Korean cooking classes and restaurant tours to travelers. Their food tours and cooking classes are ranked as one of the top attractions in Seoul according to tripadvisor.