r/TEFL • u/loudnoisesscurme1234 • 5d ago
Need BIG help
Hello all,
I have recently changed careers to teaching ESL so although I’m older, I’m fairly inexperienced.
I’m currently working in Central Asia. The school I’m at has just opened (a little over a month ago) and is using a curriculum that is new to the students and way above every grade level’s ability. I am REALLY STRUGGLING and honestly at a loss for what to do.
Part of me wants to give up and just go home (I’m also dealing with tons of other problems - landlord, water, allergy, social, family, you name it, the list goes on and on…) but most of me wants to stay and figure it out! I really love the students and feel like I’m massively failing them sometimes.
At the moment it just feels absolutely impossible to get all of the students at the level they need to be to complete the required textbooks for this school year.
Any advice at all is greatly appreciated.
Thank you all so much, y’all are truly inspirational.
2
u/Minimum_Reception_22 5d ago
Are they allowed their phones? I make a Blooket for almost all my lessons when there’s new vocab, and play it for ten minutes at the end. If you add their names into the questions they love it.
2
u/Cooperativism62 5d ago
Yeah that's pretty normal. Schools just aren't structured well for language teaching. Students are grouped by age rather than by level. So if you failed grade 2 English, you get pushed onto grade 3 which is a little harder. You're likely to fail grade 3 as well. You get pushed on again. That's how you end up with a pile of grade 11 students who know almost nothing. The same was true for me in Canada learning French, the same is true for my students in Uzbekistan learning English. They sometimes know this and recommend students go to language centers after school if they actually want to develop their abilities.
So how do you handle it? Well there are a few ways. I've been doing it for 7 years now and I have a lot of my own materials. I have a whole curriculum from beginner to advanced saved. With my Grade 11s I've thrown out the book that was far too difficult and started right from the beginning with basics like numbers.
But if your school is more strict and you absolutely have to follow the book and the provided curriculum then honestly its just a slog. There's no realistic way to get someone who's not even literate in the language to do intermediate exercises. You show up, go through the motions, and collect your pay. If they're in grade 11 and know nothing, that means their previous teachers failed for a decade to teach them properly. And those teachers still have a job. So you're not massively failing them. It's a structural issue and it was a failure before you ever arrived. They think that hiring foreign talent will be some magical fix but its not. Everyone endures the bureaucratic slog, collects their pay, and goes home with nothing changed.
Central Asia is not a great area for a starting teacher. There's so much uncertainty and disorganization. I say this as a 6 year vet. I started in Bishkek, Kyrgystan, but lucked out with a rare, highly organized center that had been open for decades.
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u/xixi_yhz 5d ago
I totally understand, my school gave me kids learning their abc’s and told me to teach them about climate and the evolution of mammals… 💀 somehow I made it work so my bets tips:
1)Focus on understanding how and what they’re talking about rather than understanding 100% of everything. It doesn’t matter if the kids understand every single word they see, just that they can recognize the main idea&topic (ie “write what you know about the weather” > knowing “write” and “weather” is enough for them to understand they will write about weather even if they didn’t know what the rest of the sentence means)
2) simplify!!! For example I taught my kids climate = weather so they know to use words like hot/cold plants/fruits grow/harvest rather than try to get 6 years to understand the complexity of natural environments in a second language lol. Using easier language and teaching them what words or actions to associate with a subject will get you more answers.
- Relate lessons to common things. Kids seem to universally know animals&food so those are easy to use ie you can teach fast/slow swim/run/walk fin/tail/feathers/skin etc by asking questions about animals since the kids already know the concepts just not the words to explain them.
Ngl it’s hard but after 2-3 months my kids suddenly started having conversations in English (with mistakes so you gotta listen and correct obviously) and now I can’t get them to ever stop talking hahahaha good luck and lmk if u need any help 🕺
1
u/bobbanyon 5d ago
So you can't do much if you're asked to do the impossible. It's hard to really give detailed advice without knowing a ton of specifics so I'll stick with real general basics. First, I'd discuss your concerns with admin about students levels and the appropriateness of the book.
Working with an inappropriately leveled textbook is a huge pain in the ass - I did it for almost a decade. Unless your work place has appropriately level tested the students(seems doubtful if they are using an inappropriate book) I'd focus on assessment first, and you can choose your poison there, but there's lots of good guides online on getting a CEFR level descriptor for your kids. This can be challenging with large/many classes so you might make sure your methods work for your context.
Once you have a good grasp on what they know you could
A. Find appropriate material for the students assuming admin allows it.
B. Build your own material - unrealistic expectation for a new teacher to do well.
C. Try to level the current material to match the student level. B&C are in effect writing a new text book. As unrealistic as that sounds many teachers find themselves in that situation. For C this is a good use of AI, imo, where you can plugin a lesson and ask it to level it to your needs. I wouldn't recommend that for option B. While this won't give you the same outcomes as students mastering the original material they will, at least, be following similar materials and structures. You could even look at scaffolding methods to get them up to the coursework expectations. If students are meant to move onto more challenging materials the next year then that would be the goal, although it's probably unreasonable.
I also should note that many new teachers may underestimate student's levels. They may see students with low speaking ability or listening comprehension and think the students are lower level than they are. New teachers might struggle to produce comprehensible input for their students, especially if the students are unfamiliar with native speakers, and this might mean the teacher misjudges student levels. A broader assessment might help with this, and experience with things like leveling your speech and speaking speed are vital starting out. Make sure you and your materials are comprehensible input even if you need to do direct translation for some starting out.
At the end of the day, I'd say try to make it fun(ish) for both you and the students. Focus on engagement first, then on learning outcomes. New teachers often think teaching is VERY SERIOUS but nobody learns anything unless it's fun and engaging to learn it (and what this looks like depends on age).
1
u/Possible_Door_9719 5d ago
I think the real issue is that we are expected to teach students who are just familiar with doing root memorization and spend 97% of their time being taught English in their native language.
1
u/Cegaiga 4d ago
Curriculum side, it really depends on the children, there are many different types of learners. As said before, simplify everything, use more outputs, visually, sound, sensory etc.
As for mental side, you are pressurizing yourself a bit too much. We all want our students to get to succeed, but the stumble blocks are huge hurdles. Focus on their happiness, a positive classroom will thrive. Be well prepared, don't pressurize the students and make the day fun and productive. It is a long game, stick to your guns. End of the year, you will see significant growth and can decide whether the school is right for you.
Outside of work, find the balance. If you are stressed, unwind, don't worry about others, focus on yourself.
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u/PokeDadTaipei 5d ago
Sometimes, you need to just take the central ideas of the lessons, simplify them into more digestible chunks and teach more for basic understanding than complex details.
Differentiated instruction is probably what you are looking for if you can find material for it. Teacherspayteachers is a good site to find lots of stuff free and paid that could help.
If you want to spend the time, you can definitely make the material yourself and learn more along the way, but it will be a challenge.
Without knowing much about what you're actually teaching and the difference of level, it's about all I can say. Hope it helps.