Respecting my students' problems AND teaching a lesson

​A few weeks ago, I posted a description of a normal day in class.  I promised a follow-up. After a few family emergencies that pushed my personal deadline way out of wack, I’m back to tell you how I pull a crazy class back together.
 
A little flashback to my previous post: 
Working with international kids means that a lot of my time is spent fielding questions about day-to-day life issues.  A Q.& A. session with students can quickly eat up all my instruction time.  I feel burdened to help these kids navigate their lives here in America.  I want to answer their random questions, but I also want to teach content.  So, how do I address the needs and questions of the students while also maintaining my educational goals?  Here are a few methods I use:

1.  I use a timer in two different ways.  I can set a timer and tell the kids we have 5 (or 3 or 10, whatever…) minutes to answer random life questions.  Once the timer rings, class will start.  OR I can set the timer for myself.  I tell the students I am going to teach for 20 minutes and then we will take a 5-minute question break.  After the questions, we are back to learning.
2. I write down questions.  I make sure they know they will not be ignored or forgotten.  I will let them call out their random questions, I write them down and then I reserve time at the end of class (or the start of the following class) to answer the questions on the list.  This method helps them relax and focus on the lesson because they don’t have to try to remember what they want to ask.
3. I add a Q.&A. session to our day’s plan.  In an earlier post, I talked about the boards I have around my room.  One of them is a list of our educational goals for that day (1.  Bell work, 2.  Practice vocabulary 3.  Learn about complex sentence, blah, blah, blah.)  Sometimes I will rearrange the plan a little, and plug a Q.& A. session in as number 2.5, for example.

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These methods show the students that I am not ignoring their concerns, but I am still in control of my own classroom.  Students know they will be heard and their questions will be answered, but I have a purpose and I have a job to love them through education and to prepare them for their future.

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