Experiences of a teacher of English

Teaching? Teaching is great, so much! Among other reasons because when we teach we are taught also.  Look, we learn from our own teaching, hence in some way we are taught by ourselves.  Also because we learn from our dear students. Who can say he has never learned from the classes he’s taught? We should also have enough humbleness so as to affirm that we have learned from a lesson we’ve just taught.  Teaching is service to the community.  Also as far as we teach one lesson after another we become better teachers, provided we want to improve our teaching.  Practical things? Let’s plan next lesson, or next school year, with our students in mind. We may not know our coming students: thus let’s plan with the average student we think we may have. And we’ll adapt our teaching to real students in the classroom.  We are going to be given students that we will have in our hands to educate: what a big and nice responsibility! / Photo from...

We teachers want to help our students learn how to learn, right? Also how to study a lesson, right?  Well then, if I were a student, how would I study myself? We may think of it and thus we could help our students learn how to study.  If I were a student I would study in a mode and way I could not accomplish when I was a kid.  In that way we can help our students greatly and enrich their studying.  For if I was a student I would study: with some benign sense of humor, by relating and associating new things with already learned material, with big effort, with nice concentration and focusing, by associating new things together, by making nice diagrams, with nice curiosity at learning new things…  All those points can help and enrich my students, in their inner struggle at learning how to study. / Photo from: Sixt rent a car Iceland. Did you know that in Iceland they speak a language which has the same origin as English? They are Germanic ...

Non-native teachers that teach English for example – or another language – have to maintain that tongue alive and fresh. How? By reading books or e-books in that language plus listening to a radio station on the Internet.  As well a learner of a second or foreign language can learn and acquire it by reading and studying grammar books and the linguistics of that tongue. I have a nice experience about that point. And it has helped me a lot.  Also the learner can play with the language, read in it, stop to think about it, more reading and studying, reading carefully, being curious about points about English – or another language, etc.  Yet in the classroom I advise you to teach with a communicative approach and methodology. English is learned and acquired by communicating in that language. I also have a nice experience about that point: my students can communicate in English because they have spoken a lot in it. / Photo from: YouTube

A teacher has to know how to listen. Because his first role is listening to others, and assisting them.  I know a nice number of teachers who know how to listen to their students, their families, other colleagues, admins, and everybody else.  The teacher will listen to the kids for example, in an attentive way, realizing and learning what’s going on with their lives at the school – with prudence anyway.  At the beginning of the school year he learns their names quite nicely, because he gets interested in the persons he has in charge.  He doesn’t confine his job to teaching and disappearing through the door when his “block” has been delivered to his students.  He’s prone to take in charge his students’ issues, problems and joys alike. He teaches with high standards of professionalism and with affection, with a clever and insightful affection – with prudence anyway. / Photo from: Reddit. I posted that picture because pilots also have to fl...

It's great we teachers get in touch through forums on the Internet to help those who truly want to learn!  Yet from time to time, even often, we can find students with serious shortcomings or deficiencies, right?  Those kids that cannot implement even the simplest activities I mean.  I’m thinking of some example I’ve faced. I think now I would approach that case in a different way and mode. That happened many years ago.  Those kids may need psychological help. Those kids may suffer from their own failures.  The first approach must be given from affection and professionalism. Even those kids may reach far when adults. Now - and always! - they deserve all our affection and dedication, although we may have many more students.  At tutoring sessions also we can help them great. Just smiling and with small laughing with them at those meetings may help them great too. We have to find their strong points, because they may have hidden re...

When teaching adults we can allow us teachers some sense of humor in the classroom.  Also with kids, of course.  At the beginning of last school year I started to teach grown-ups at another school.  I started firm, cordial though. I started in English all the time of the lesson or closely, but I tried to be cordial anyway. Anyway… I noted they were so tense, so much that I realized I must break the ice.  Speaking all the time in English – the target language – may be so tense and demanding for the students. So one day I told them in Spanish – our mother tongue – that we were not going to pass public examinations – “oposiciones” in Spanish – and they had a small laugh, also me...  Well then, it meant a transition or turning point. Since then our relationships have been much closer or cordial, and we both students and I make up a working team.  Sense of humor is necessary, plus some smiling. Also with kids, but only when the class...

Our students make errors and mistakes. Every learner makes them. Also we teachers do.  We have to be positive toward those errors and mistakes. They may be some evidence that they are learning. And they may take advantage of them… to keep on learning.  When returning tests to our students after correction we may correct them in the classroom, among all students and us teachers. On the board or chalkboard while they are checking on their test papers.  And remember that we teachers might fall in being too perfectionist, and that’s not good. Because we might be educating too perfectionist learners. And that’s not good, as you may guess.  Once a subdirector of the school I taught even told me that I might try to attract my students’ attention and try for them to focus on their work, of course, but those kids ultimately were free to do it.  We of course have to make our students focus on the work but trying they might focus because they will ...