Classroom Dynamics

Classroom dynamics are a curious thing that change daily. What I mean is, you never really know how the students are going to interact with each other. My class today (the highest place in terms of English) take the most effort to control personality wise due to the fact that there are two distinct categories of student:

Category 1
The village girls and boys. They are quiet, shy and very repressed but with a brilliant work and study ethic which gets them high marks in the exams. Speaking skills however are weak in comparison to those from Muscat.

Category 2
The Muscat (the capital of Oman, where I work) girls and boys. Cocky, confident and giggly with an exceptionally high standard of English (most are fluent) but with a slightly relaxed attitude to work.

Mix these groups up and you get interesting results. Two weeks ago, I did just that, as I thought that each group could benefit greatly from what the other offered and would see the advantage in mixing up a little with their classmates. What actually happened though surprised me; they basically just clashed and didn't get on at all. The Muscat group were pretty unpleasant to the village group and started teasing and laughing whenever they spoke. This obviously gives rise to a feeling of insecurity and further shyness from the weaker students - not exactly the result I wanted. The stronger ones aren't really being vindictive, just a little immature, and the way to deal with this is just to keep five minutes at the end of the class to explain why it's a problem. 95% of the time, the fact the they've had a 'talking to' changes their attitude completely. In my class today, students were purposely moving into each different groups and integrating brilliantly; no more teasing and laughing at any rate.

Lovely.

One thing that is not so easy to control is the primal need for some of the students to flirt uncontrollably with each other throughout an entire lesson. Whilst understandable due to the fact that this is really the first situation where they've really been in the constant company of boys, it can sometimes prove so distracting that a lesson can't continue until they've been 'sorted out'.

My first tactic here is to stop teaching. This shuts them up pretty quickly.

If that doesn't work, then it's time for a stern look with a few choice words that show my obvious displeasure at their behaviour.

If that doesn't work, then my favourite tactic comes into play - embarrassment. It's so easy too, what with this being a Muslim culture. It goes something like this "Right, you two lovebirds, give each other your mobile phone numbers and you can talk all you like after class". The whoops and cheers from the other students are more than enough to give cue to red-faces and stony silence (from the flirters) and the overwhelming realisation that Mr David is indeed 'The Man' and despite his deceptively friendly and humourous demeanour, is not to be messed with!

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The two girls pictured here are Muneera and Hanan. They are category 2 students and need a little more 'managing' than the rest due to constant chatterboxy-ness. They are bright and sparky though, with a great sense of humour and all-in-all are excellent students to have in any class.

When these two got wind of a previous Blip entry of mine, they got a bit jealous and would not shut up about me taking one of them too! For an easy life, I did so after class today and their personalities really shine through I think.