Experiences of a teacher of English

You may be confined at home because of the Covid-19. So what? Our minds may be free, anyway.  You may be struggling to remotely teach your kids. And you may be wondering about how to become a better teacher. Or a better professional altogether, whatever your profession is.  And sometimes you have felt some brilliant ideas came up about how becoming a better professional. But now, right now you don’t feel you were that good professional nor have brilliant ideas.  Something which may work and even more concerning intellectual jobs, though it may be worth for any job at all, is what I’m telling you next.  At present I’m reading Jean Guitton (1951) Le travail intellectuel . Paris: Editions Montaigne, but in the Spanish edition: El trabajo intelectual (1999) Madrid: Rialp.  That author, believe me, is an ace at intellectual working. He puts that we can write down some brief notes when brilliant ideas come up because for example we’re reading a b...

They should not!  I’m a teacher, you know, and I understand that we teachers have to foster, trigger and boost our students’ creativity. We have to.  Education is getting the best from our students, isn’t it?  We teachers cannot confine our stupendous labor to have our students carry out some automatic exercises after we have presented some topic, and when those kids finish those exercises, okay, now, let’s pack up and go home!  Our students have a great potential of creativity, most of the cases, even nearly all of them.  But education also is leading our students’ potential of creativity. Yes, because they may be young persons, and do need and want and expect we their teachers should guide and lead them toward maturity and happiness. Respecting their liberty. They may have a potential of creativity, but we have to channel that potentially huge creativity. They may be inventive but they are in need of our advice and guidance toward a hap...

Learning English or any other language can be great. You can communicate with many other people.  You can learn that language and also you can acquire it. This is, you can learn it formally and by means of instruction at a school, and also you can acquire it by being not aware you are acquiring it, by means of reading and listening to it, at a level you can understand.  Infants acquire their mother tongue in an unaware way. Well, adults can also achieve it, according to Stephen Krashen and Henry Douglas Brown.  Okay then, this latter way of interiorizing the language seems better than formal learning, isn’t it?  Both, learning and acquiring, can be absolutely compatible. Furthermore, both ways can be complementary.  Actually, formal learning at a school can trigger and boost acquiring that tongue. They are not antagonist. They are not so at all. Also, because it’s my experience concerning learning English.  Something else I wanted t...

You – we – teachers in a Covid-19 situation, when working and teaching remotely, wish our students would work with serenity, right?  I do know some of you, many of you, are doing this way. You have my admiration. Many an example are to be found in the USA, from what I learn from the Internet, and alike at Attendis, this latter teaching company, a large one, in southern Spain. Etcetera. All throughout our planet. Many other teachers are doing the same way, perhaps you my reader.  Today I wanted to say that positive motivation is a very positive way of reduplicating our dear students’ efforts.  I mean, we have to correct our students’ behavior and mistakes, and that is necessary, but let us not forget to reckon and recognize what our students do well. Their efforts, I mean.  I often – not always – say to my adult learners at the end of the lessons, when these ones are over, something like “Okay, thank you for your cooperation”. And it works. And my stu...