When things go wrong in class

It is not easy to deal with children. Sometimes when things get rough, we can feel that teaching is not for us, but there is always a bright side of teaching that let us look forward.

When doing my teaching practicum, I faced some troubles that at the time were very concerning. Obiously, all children are different. Some of them are quiet and easy going, but others need extra attention. Sometimes, a hyperactive kid can be an internal disturbance in the classroom.

It happened to me that some kids were screaming and trying to call everybody's attention by misbehaving. One day, one of my little students didn't want to make the activity I planned for them. He took his shoes off, layed on the ground and said to me that he was going to rest. I was in the middle of the classroom, trying to make him stand up and work, but my effort was vane. He was a clear distractor for his classmates and I couldn't continue my class until everyone was quiet and in his seat. After 10 minutes of fighting, I finally got the control of the class again, but it was not easy to get out of that situation.

One of the biggest challenges for me at the kidergarten was the time. I always had extra time and figuring out what to do with it, was not that easy. I worried a lot about planning my classes in the best possible way, making fun activities, using as many resources I could, but the children used to finish everything so fast that almost always there was like 10 or 15 minutes to do anything. It was really worrying for me, because when children found themselves without anything to do, they started making a mess in the classroom, with the toys and everything. When that used to happen, I just let them play with the toys because I didn't know what to do.

Another thing that happened to me was an activity not working as I planned. One day, I planned to play a song as a warm-up activity. The song's name was actually "Warm-up time", and when I heard it at home, I found it very entertaining. I prepared my class and planned to play the song at the very beggining of the class. I got all my students together in the middle of the classroom and played the song. I started singing and dancing as a crazy person, but the kids didn't follow me as I wanted. At the middle of the song, all of them were tired and bored, and I had to stop the song and do other thing. I felt really disapointed, because I was in love with the song and my students were not.

Now I know that if I had used some of the tips presented in the chapter 8 of the book "Teaching English to children", my classes would be so different. Unfortunately, I didn't all of them. The one that says how to deal with an internal disturbance in the classroom would be very useful, but at the moment, I didn't remember about it. I think that for my other two problems, I used almost the same tip. To have a backup activity is really important, and I learned that after making the mistakes. Those two problems complemented very well, because when I had extra time, I did an activity, and if that activity didn't work, I had a backup one.

In conclusion, making mistakes is ok, because we learn from them. Your students are never going to behave like "Angels" and there is always going to be something wrong, but you can be prepared and take advantage of it.

If something goes wrong, is not the end of the world.