Purple chalk.

I finally found a (temporary) method of keeping my students' attention on ME... PURPLE CHALK.
Yes my friends, purple- not white/yellow- chalk. During my last girls class of the day, which just so happens to be the most noisy and whiny of the bunch, I started writing the date and idiom of the day in purple chalk, and they all suddenly became silent and "ooooed" and "ahhhhhed" at the chalkboard. Little did I know, the teachers in my school write with colored chalk other than white and yellow as a treat for the students. My lesson for the day was about expressing emotions and feelings. I wrote on the board with purple chalk "How do you feel today?" and instead of responding in the robotic "I feel fine thank you, and you?" they expressed to me they they felt "happy!" and "great!" Ok, maybe it was the sight of me bopping up and down in front of them that made them chipper.

Emotions are a tricky thing to teach middle school boys and girls. I teach in a co-ed middle school, however, the term "co-ed" is deceiving. My classes are separated by gender, which is very normal here in Korea. I either teach an all-boys class or all-girls class. I plan lessons for 24 classes...each class has an average of 35-40 students. You do the math. At the end of the day I either have a headache from listening to the constant shrieking girls and boys, or a raspy voice from the combination of speaking loudly and chalk dust. I also have to mention a few peculiar traits among my classes...
1) The best English teachers in my school have the most attentive and disciplined classes. They also display higher level English skills. These classes (both boys and girls) are the easiest to teach because I can speak at a not-so-painfully-slow pace and still cover all the material in a short 45 minute class.
2) The opposite is also true. The English teachers who struggle with the language themselves have the noisiest and lower level English students in the school. I'm usually not the one to generalize after only teaching a few short weeks, but since I cover most of their classes, the students have trouble with even understanding simple commands such as "Please keep quiet," or "Please open you notebooks." The noise levels in many of these classes, both boys and girls, have sometimes reached to a point where I have to give the almighty death stare until they "shush" their neighbors and stop the talking. However, I often find myself conflicted with whether to tell them to keep quiet or keep talking, because the students may be asking their neighbors in Korean about my lesson without asking me first. Hmph.

Going back to my topic of emotions. The girls loved learning about how to express their emotions and feelings..naturally. I taught them how to express if they are "in love," "exhausted," and "anxious!" I selected students to act in front of the class to express feeling and emotion... even though I had to pry a few shy ones out of their seats, they were able to speak after a few encouraging nudges.

This all would not have been successful without the help of my purple chalk.

I have yet to experiment writing on the board with purple chalk in the boys class. I'm not sure if the boys will be as enthusiastic to learn about their feelings.

Let's see how this goes tomorrow...