Last week, a colleague of mine came to me for some advice. (It's not that I'm experienced, it's just that a large proportion of the teachers in my school are young and inexperienced, so my 3 years of experience is considered not bad. Heh) She's a young contract teacher, currently waiting to go NIE for training. She was given a form class for the first time. A sec 1 class. Very cute and lively. Some of them at least. She was having one problem with a handful of them apparently. She showed me a handwritten letter from one of the boys in her class. It was basically a letter of complaint, stating the names of perpetrators of name-calling and loud quarrelling in class during lessons. It seemed this had been going on for some time and other than to scold or talk to these monkeys, this teacher was at her wits' end as to what else to do with them. She tried changing their seats such that some were at the back of the class, while the rest were in front, thinking that separating them might reduce the frequency of the name-calling which almost always resulted in loud shouting matches. However, this only served to increase the volume of the shouting matches since now that they were further from one another, they proceeded to shout even LOUDER. Gee...this was a toughie. Apparently no amount of scolding, pep-talking or threats made any lasting difference. And so, she asked me what to do.

I realised it wasn't easy giving advice on how to deal with students because in this case, I didn't KNOW her students personally. It's kinda like a doctor having to give a diagnosis based on a verbal recount of symptoms experienced by a patient he didn't get to examine for himself. I need to have some contact with the student so I can roughly gauge what sort of 'treatment' might work. Different approaches work better with different people. You kinda find that out along the way. So, this was a toughie.

Off the top of my head, I gave her 2 options. One, give these monkeys a specific consequence to a certain action. Scoldings alone rarely work for long. I always feel the more hardcore students don't really LEARN their lesson that way. They learn their lesson better when you attach a punishment they hate to the action you want them to stop. The example I gave her was to send an email out to all the subject teachers of the class, bringing their attention to this problem and to request them to note down these culprits' names in the Class Diary if they start their nonsense during lessons. Every time their names are down in the Diary, they have to do an hour of detention. And this can be accumulated over the week. So 5 times means 5 hours of detention. Two, let them do what they want. Since they like to shout and quarrel so much, let them do it all they want, but the teacher sets the limit on the duration. I told her to book a room after school hours, say 2 or 3 hours, get the monkeys there and FORCE them to do their name-calling and shouting non-stop for that 2-3 hours. Since they like to shout and quarrel so much, let them.But they can't stop until the time is up, if not, they can't leave till even later in the afternoon. AND, they had to quarrel in front of the teacher. (Can't leave them alone, baaaaaad things might happen)

I left her to think things through and try whatever she wanted.

Today, she told me what she did. Apparently she carried out BOTH my suggestions. Ha. She left them in the classroom to quarrel and shout. All 8 of them. At first they didn't dare to shout in front of the teacher, but then when they warmed up, they really got heated. The noise they made was deafening. They shouted for one and a half hours non-stop, yelling at the top of their voices, at the end of which they lost their voices. Haha... After the shouting match, the other suggestion was implemented. Detention upon shouting.

Conclusion of the matter? I asked her if it worked. She said now whenever she mentions that incident to the boys, they tell her not to talk about it. Talking about it reminds them of how painful their throats got and how they lost their voices. Hahaa... I guess it worked somewhat. Hahahaaa....but for how long i'm not sure.

Nevertheless, I'm pleased =)