They Just Need Proper Motivation

“Sometimes it just takes a few dollars.”

Well, we are now in the 2nd month of the new semester. Most of my classes are fantastic. The kids are smart, clever, and hard-working (especially the ones I usually post about). However, I have this one class that is just out of control. They have all been in the school for more than a year, they should know the rules by now, but instead they just act out of control, lazy, and without any respect. For a long time, you could give them a piece of candy and they would turn into angels (for at least 5 minutes), but at some point they started hitting puberty and turned into little monsters. Last week, I warned them that there would be consequences if they didn’t start behaving. It was the first time I yelled at students, “If you are not coming here to learn, then you will not be able to stay in class. I want to treat you like adults, but you are acting like 4-yr-olds, because guess what? I don’t teach 4-yr-olds!” At the time, they all apologized and said they would try harder, but on Monday I ended up throwing half of the students out of class.  So, now I’m trying to think of new ways to motivate them properly. One of my previous teachers had a great story about an old man in Hawaii:

There was an old white man who was living in Hawaii. A group of young kids would come to his house everyday, throw rocks, and yell, “Hey Hoale! Get out here!” (Hoale is a term for white people or foreigners, and sometimes even worse as a racial hate term). The old man became tired of the children, and after a few weeks he walked out onto the lawn to talk to them, “Look kids, if you keep coming here everyday and calling me a “hoale,” then I’m gonna give you each a dollar.” The kids were really confused, but took the dollar and ran away. Then, the next few days they came back, called the old man a “hoale,” got their dollar, and ran away. After a week, the old man came out and said, “Look, I’m running out of money, but here is 50 cents each.” The kids took the money and ran off. After a few more days, the kids returned and yelled at the old man, “Hey Hoale, get out here and give us our money.” The old man came out of the house, but this time he only had 25 cents for each of the kids. This continued over the next few days until the man came out and told the kids, “Look, I’m really sorry once again, but all I have for you today is a 5 cents.” The kids looked at each other, they were disgruntled and angry. They began walking away, and as they were leaving, one of them turned to yell once more, “Hey Hoale, if you can’t give us more than 5 cents, there is no way we are coming back tomorrow!”

I’m not sure that trick will work on that class, but perhaps I’ll need to figure out a different clever trick to get the kids to behave. Either that…or I’m starting up my own version of “The Hunger Games” here in Korea.

-Jordan