A silly Spanish-English joke; a play on words with the name Juan and the saying “there's always one”... funny, isn't it? Or maybe not, especially when it's explained. (Edit this?)
In Europe, we're almost at the end of the first term, things should be moving along nicely but so often, there's Juan student who is making things really tricky. We dread going to work that day, we hope Juan our Juan is absent, it's really not good. In one of my classes there's an actual Juan, he's four years old, but he could be 8 or 14 or any age. No need to go deeply into details, suffice to say we're talking to him, his teachers, his parents; there's plenty to consider as we work out how we can help him more. Its not unusual to have a Juan, I think we've probably all got Juan, or two, or maybe even three in our classes. It's a problem, a challenge, a puzzle, how can we help the Juans in our classes and make things work better for everyone, including ourselves?
The TEFLer is a fortnightly language teachers’ companion brought to you by Active Language Teacher Training providers of Dip, CertTESOL and Teaching Younger Learners courses www.activelanguage.net This edition is written by Simon Pearlman.
There are so many reasons for children’s challenging behaviour in class and there are probably a corresponding number of ways to deal with it. We might feel we should know what is causing the difficulty but sometimes we never will. We might be able to make educated guesses, we might be told by their parents but the likelihood we just need to try to deal with the situation, in our context that probably means twice a week for an hour at a time. It's only an hour, we can handle it, can't we? We're the teacher, they're the students, we should be able to control them, maybe we feel a bit embarrassing when we can't. Yes, it's only an hour but often we end up dreading those classes, maybe we even have bad dreams or disturbed sleep because of it.
If it's any consolation, the concern we feel is a mark of a good teacher; we care. We care about our students, and our classes, it bothers us. We've tried everything we know but its not working well enough. How can we find more help?
Start close to home
Hopefully we work in the sort of environment where our colleagues and managers help each other. One of the best places to get advice is close to home. Ask in the staffroom, see what people say. You might well get some really helpful advice, you might talk to teachers who have taught those students before, were these problems around when they taught them? What did they find helped? Maybe you'll get some really helpful insights and ideas. Maybe you'll just get sympathy. Sympathy is good, of course, but it doesn't help much. Sometimes you need to take a different route.
Ask the experts
We could be talking about experts; teacher trainers, school counsellors, behavioural psychologists, for example, people with experience who could help us. But let's talk about the real experts here, the students and their families. If we haven't done so already, let's speak to the students themselves, let's ask them what's going on. Of course, this should be in a supportive, helpful, engaged way rather than a telling off, being finger-pointy or angry. Yes, we might be angry or frustrated or maybe desperate, now we need to be the adult and try to get into it. “You don't seem happy in class, why might that be?”, “You sometimes seem quite angry in class, are you ok?” might be the sort of questions we could ask. If we can create the right sort of space, we can uncover some important things. Where we want to get to is answering the question “How can I help you more? https://www.edutopia.org/article/addressing-disruptive-behavior-classroom has some great ideas around these types of conversations.
The students may or may not know themselves well, who else might? Their parents probably know them better than anybody else
We can speak to their parents too, parents can be amazing; they can be so helpful and might be able to give you ideas to help, they could be so pleased that you're taking such an interest in their child, they could be really engaged. Or, they might not, often parents can feel protective of their children, it could be that they are somewhat in denial, not wanting to recognise, far less talk about their children's difficulties. It is definitely worth a try, again gently; “I've noticed Juan hasn't seemed very happy recently, I just wanted to ask how I might be able to help” and then see how the conversation develops.
Whether you’re talking to the students or their parents, it's worth planning these conversations, maybe even role playing it out first from different angles. Once you've been through it once or twice, you'll be better prepared and ready for however the conversation might play out.
Also, do remember everybody is different; we can have students in very similar situations with similar issues but the possible solutions might be very different for each student. Just because we have had some experience in a certain area, for example, autism, it doesn't mean that we then know what to with all autistic students. We have to try to ask the experts, the students and their families.
Look further afield
One of the beautiful thing about our profession is that there are so many people who are ready, willing and able to help, TEFLers are generally very supportive and love to help people. You can access teacher groups through social media, you could look for “TEFL Teachers in…. (wherever you are)” and make connections and ask questions there. If you're thinking about inclusivity issues, Lottie Galpin runs a Facebook group “Reflecting Reality”.
Where do you go for support around complex students and inclusivity issues?Please do share in the comments.
An AI role in problem solving
AI can help too. If we give it a good enough prompt, we can get some great ideas and insights. Trying putting your situation and a question to AI and see what happens. “I'm a primary school language teacher teaching English. One of my students his autistic. How can I help?” In a couple of seconds you'll get a long, detailed answer that can be really helpful. You can ask follow up questions too, of course, its not called ChatGPT for nothing, it wants to chat. Al; it's truly amazing, its so powerful and AI can be really helpful for us when we're thinking about how we can help our students more and how we can deal with our Juans and the classes we dread.
We can't however talk about AI without recognising the dark sides too. AI is energy greedy and uses huge amounts of computing power compared to a search engine; using AI is bad for the planet. AI is biased, it can only work from the information it is provided and that comes from mainly a small sector of society, it can be seen as the very opposite of diverse and inclusive. Never give AI sensitive information you wouldn't be comfortable sharing openly, AI uses all the information it can get. AI often gets it wrong, it sometimes invents things too, AI can't be trusted 100%. We need to approach AI with caution, yes, it can be incredibly helpful, but we need to keep our critical faculties very much switched on. There are currently the big three; ChatGPT, Co-Pilot (Microsoft) and Gemini (Google), they all work in similar ways, some people like Gemini as it gives easy links to sources, and we know we should always try to check our sources. We should use AI but we should also use it sparingly and with awareness and a critical perspective.
A problem solving methodology
- Gather information and ask questions.
What do you know and what do you want to find out?
- Ask the experts (the students and their families) and your colleagues and other people who can help both near and far.
- Ask AI.
- Think critically about all the information you have.
- Create an action plan.
We have the tools available to help solve some of our classroom challenges, let's do it. Sometimes we need more, we need a guiding hand through the process, perhaps someone external, someone who knows language teaching and the challenges teachers face, someone who understands inclusivity and someone who wants to help.
Inclusivity Direct
At Active Language Teacher Training we want to help, we’re ready, willing and able to help on all matters around inclusivity in language teaching. If you have a challenge with your Juan, with your classes or in your schools and you'd like some extra support, please do contact us at training@activelanguage.net We’ll do our best to get back to you within 24 hours (from Monday to Friday). Sadly magic wands aren't available but we hope we'll be able to help. We're looking forward to hearing from you.
We all have Juan or two of three challenging students in our classes, we all need help, let's find the help we need.
As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas, feel free to like, comment and share this edition or alternatively email us at training@activelanguage.net
And remember The TEFLer is brought to you by Active Language Teacher Training providers of Trinity Dip, CertTESOL and Teaching Younger Learners courses, see our website www.activelanguage.net or contact us directly or by email.
Happy TEFLing!