Experiences of a teacher of English

The main source and resource for the classes is the teacher himself. He can be like a volcano in eruption, or otherwise a peaceful continuous stream down a hill flowing along the prairie ;-) He is the main tank of activities, and even if he utilizes books, apps and programs, he is like a cinema director that directs the filming and all its details within. Any of you or nearly so can be that teacher, not a super-teacher anyway. But he must have interior life. He must cultivate his thoughts, ideas and imaginations. And so he should have time available for thinking. Otherwise also his mental skills will make him make good use of the scarce time available.  He will for example join one thought over here to another one, one more over there to this one, a luminous idea that occurs right in the middle of teaching a lesson, perhaps when one student is contributing to the class…  Such great teachers have done so along the teaching history. Any of you can be that teache...

Pheeeww! We already are at the end of the school year in the north hemisphere. And so we’re tired and it’s getting perhaps too warm, and soon it’ll be hot here in Granada, south of Spain.  Officially the present school year finishes in May but I might offer extra classes in June, even though fewer and fewer students are attending the classes.  Now I teach adults, and they’re learning English as a second language and have no official exams to pass. They wish to learn and acquire that language for their travels abroad and as well to maintain their minds agile and lively.  So I mean that the teacher has to feel that their students may be tired and in need of some rest – even I am tired, however, I can offer those lessons also in June.  Next week still within May it will be crucial to decide whether we have classes in June.  At one of the schools where I teach adults we’ll definitely have lessons until mid-June.  So if we cut off lesson...

What teacher does not want discipline in his classroom? Well, then we have that the best discipline in the classroom is self-discipline.  That happens when the students do want to work, or when the students are starting to want to work. In this latter case the teacher more likely can try and set that discipline: the time is right to try to set some nice discipline.  Also there can be discipline when the students appreciate and love their teacher, mostly when this latter person has sought to also love his students. Thus we have discipline as a consequence of love of benevolence: both the teacher and the students seek what is good for the other persons.  And that is the essence of love of benevolence: seeking what is good for the loved person.  However, discipline or, better said, self-discipline, is also the result of a habit, after some repetition of actions of discipline – of self-discipline I mean.  Then the student thinks kind of “I stay ...

One teacher used to be so involved and committed within the lesson that he transmitted and passed on his interest to his dear students.  I wrote that sentence some days ago, still in April. And it could be something real in the lives of many teachers. Maybe in yours too, for some of my readers are good teachers.  We may have behavior problems in the classroom, but bear in mind that if you get so committed in the lessons you will likely win the “game” ultimately and your students will better as students and thoroughly as persons and citizens. Also because you may be seeking to get to know your students more and more.  Our students may be kids or adults, but if we teach and work from our very interior being, we will likely transmit and pass on our interest in our school subject to our dear students.  Remember what I told you on the previous post: We attend each class as a work session about that subject together with our students. We therefore try to i...

I knew a teacher, a modest one but prone to improve his work day-after-day, who used to think before a regular work day, “Okay I’m going to school to work on English as a second language, together with my students.”  Instead of choking himself before a hard teaching day, he used to think he was going to work side by side with his students.  He was going to do his best at work, day after day. He thought not only that he was going to teach (of course!), but also to work with his students at English, with a content-based instruction (CBI), not talking about just trifles.  He liked teaching, yes he did, but preferred to think that he was going to pass on and transmit his like for that language to his students. He did so because he felt some straining and strength-draining effort at teaching.  He liked teaching but in some way that effort was superior to him and somehow overwhelmed him. He preferred to think that side by side he would work with his stude...