Experiences of a teacher of English

Lately and for my job as a teacher I’m reading a book by Spanish teacher, philosopher and pedagogue Gregorio Luri (born in 1955).  Before I continue writing, I would like also to say that young kids – complementing what I said on my previous post – can have some abstract ideas; for example they can think of love and other values and virtues.  Said that, I keep on writing about this post #3571. I’m learning a lot of things about teaching and learning from that educator.  Thus I’ve learned that we teachers would have to be watchful: we could be insisting too much on our kids should gain skills, yet they have also to learn contents: from their teachers and from their books.  By the way, they may learn from tablets and other technologic devices but paper books may help facilitate focusing on what they’re reading: paper books facilitate attention, above all if they have long texts, more than one page.  So skills are okay but students have to learn contents, both from...

We teachers wish all our students would learn and be happy in the classroom and at remote teaching. Yes, we do.  Sometimes I have written that they have to learn how to learn. However, they will learn how to learn if they learn before.  I mean, they need to learn and set up a lot of knowledge and ideas and concepts in order to have something in mind upon which they can think about.  They can think about learning if they have previously learned a lot of things.  They can have abstract ideas when they are some, say, eleven years or so, maybe ten. Well, it is up to each kid to establish when they are capable to think abstractly.  As well I have said that good students know they are good students, and they can use different learning strategies and think about them, so they can keep the ones that work, and discard the ones that don’t work; yet this demands some maturity and having learned a lot of things before, when they’re children and thus before puberty and adole...

I have some nice remembrances and memories about when I was a kid and carried out my high school period. I can recall the so many hours I used to spend at the study hall of the youth center I attended.  It had a nice library. And that center monitors aroused and waked up my thirst for knowledge. Also its teachers did.  Also I have some nice memories about my school teachers. Most of them, maybe all, were good teachers, both male teachers and female ones. They gave us knowledge and contents, and as well aroused our thirst for learning.  That’s the teachers’ mission: both give contents and wake up the students’ hunger for learning. Thank you my dear teachers. Most of them may be retired or they have departed.  And libraries are in no way obsolete.  Okay, we have Internet browsers, yet libraries are necessary still, and hopefully they will keep being so.  Think of the good that libraries can make to students, more if the books are in accordance to human dignit...

We as teachers wish all our students would learn, right?  Have you noticed what good students or learners are like?  We as teachers want every student would learn. And we want to help and assist and attend all our students. We want all our students would be good ones. It's so because we as teachers should love our students with benevolence love, which means we want to seek what is good for them. However, we are prone to accept the students the way they are.  Good students usually know they are good students.  Any average student can become a good one.  They, good students, are conscious and aware they are good students. They utilize learning strategies and are aware they usually learn.  What are those learning strategies? Well, it is up to what school subject those students are learning: math, linguistics, religion, English as a second language, science, biology, history, literature, fine arts...  Some examples? Reading a text for the gist,  readi...