Making my life easier

I've talked about this before, in that there needs to be some sort of motivation in classes in order for the students to perform. While there are some highly motivated students around, I've found it to be the exception rather than the rule in Korea.

For the rest of them: rewards are key. In my uni classes, it's all about the final grade at the end of the semester.

Everyone else: candy and prizes. If I'm doing a single class with students that I won't see regularly, I'll buy a few cheap candies and such and hand them out liberally for games and activities. If I'm doing a camp with students over a week or two, I'll make a chart with their names and give them stickers for the winners of games or good behavior or whatever. I'll let them know at the beginning of our time that there will be small prizes for the top 4 or 5 students. I'm currently doing a camp and I picked up the following: a hula hoop, colored pencils, jump rope, pen and pencil. This system made my life considerably easier every day and it was all for under 10 000 Won. Well worth it, in my opinion.

The things I like about doing this:

1. It make a little excitement in the classroom, about things that are often not so exciting.

2. People like candy and prizes.

3. And most importantly of all, it rewards good behavior and I can ignore the bad after the first day or two. If someone is misbehaving I'll just generally give them no acknowledgment and it usually stops pretty quickly. Instead, I can focus on the well-behaved and give a lot more attention to them (as it should be!)