What Kind of Student Are YOU?

This lesson is for English learners AND teachers. Students, you’ll learn fun, natural English for describing people’s personalities. Teachers, you’ll get ideas for working with every kind of student in your class. You’ll also learn useful everyday expressions: ants in your pants, antsy, rein someone in, come out of your shell, goof off, and more. This lesson comes from my book, The Magic of Teaching English — advice for ESL teachers that anyone can read and laugh with. Get it here: https://englishwithronnie.com/shop/ol... In this lesson: 0:00 What type of student are you? 1:54 Leader of the Pack 3:39 Class Entertainer 4:58 Keener 6:02 Party Poopers 7:03 Conclusion Transcript: Hey, guys. I wrote a book. Isn't that crazy? This book is for you if you are an ESL teacher, or if you're a person, yeah, you'd still like to read this book because it's funny. So, my book's called The Magic of Teaching English, and I'm going to share with you something from the book. This book is advice for English as a Second Language teachers, but students and learners of English, I guarantee it's funny. You're going to have a laugh, and it's not exclusively for teachers. Anyone can read it. And this lesson is both for students and teachers, so let's get started, shall we? So, in your classroom, you have many students, or a couple, and everyone has a different personality, and the challenge as a student and as a teacher is being able to get all of these crazy personalities or boring people to learn, not kill each other, and generally just have a good time. There's been times in my classes where I want to kill people, but I can't because that's illegal. So, you have to adapt, you have to identify, recognize, and work with who you have. This is a fun little exercise. Student, I want you to identify which kind of student you are, and teachers, I want you to think about your classroom. Which ones of these do you have in your classroom, and how can you deal with them? What can you do to make your classroom more dynamic, more amicable, and just a better environment for you and the students? So, the first one is the leader of the pack, vroom, vroom, it's a motorcycle. So, the leader of the pack obviously is going to be a natural leader. This can be amazing. So, when you have to organize things, hey, guess what, they'll do it for you. They'll be like, "Everyone... Oh, you're... You... You go ahead, Josh. You organize... Yeah, okay, good." So, you can step back and you can let the natural leader lead. I love doing this. I'm not really good at, I don't know, tasks and organization as a human, so if someone else wants to do that for me, go ahead. If you've got to organize something, if you need people to do something, get the natural leader to help you out. They're a godsend. But at the same time, oh, some of them are very egotistical because they think, or you think you're the leader, you're the best, a lot of the time that interferes with your learning. So, you think that you're right, you think everything's great, and then you realize that this kid who's leading the students, pretty wrong, kind of like, no, stop. This is where you use your teacher power, and you intervene, and you take power and take control of the classroom without hurting anyone's feelings. That's a challenge these days, isn't it? Watch out for the egos in these guys, and make sure that what they're doing is correct, and everything's really cool because you can run into some problems if you just let chaos run the classroom. Next one, class entertainer. These guys are my favourite. You're going to get some kids in your class, or adults, who are hilarious. They're making jokes, they're bringing in stuff, they just bring a magical vibe to your classroom. Whoa. So fun, amazing, but when it actually comes time for you to teach them something, or for them to, like, settle down and learn, they can't. You've got ants in your pants. You're like, whoa, you're antsy. Next one, ADHD. A lot of people love to throw around the term ADHD, Attention Deficit Disorder. I'm not going to tell you my opinion on that, but I will tell you that, hey, this person who's the life of the party, again, they have to be reined in, like, you're like, dude, you're funny, but right now it's time for you to sit your arse down and learn some things. You have to take control. People in the classroom can have control, but you've got to be able to take it back, and that's the hard part. Class entertainer, you're my favourite. Oh, but maybe you're my favourite. Oh, everyone's my favourite. So, identify and make sure you know how to control people. Keeners, yeah, some people call keeners nerds or geeks. These people really, really want to learn. What a blessing. […]