Experiences of a teacher of English

  We are starting a new school year and we teachers want everything goes okay. And also want our dear students learn a lot and the families as well be happy.  I teach English. To adults. And last night I heard a friend of mine tell about another common friend, who has achieved to learn English marvelously. He has learned English – well he IS learning that language – and he has done so as a hobby or the like: he worked as a businessman of another issue different from English, and lately he has set up an English academy where he lives, namely in Málaga, in Costa del Sol in southern Spain.  What I want to emphasize is that he has achieved the goal many learners wish: to learn English.  Now he states that with his method you can learn English in a reasonably rather short period of time.  I think one of the ingredients for achieving that goal, according to what I know from him, is that le takes up that learning with a big enthusiasm and as well he creates an environm...

  At least in the north hemisphere of our wonderful blue planet we are before a new school year. What will it be like? Face to face classes or remote teaching or both?  All in all the first lesson is paramount. Anyway, be relaxed on that first lesson, if you are the teacher. Well, with a bit of benign tension, otherwise that first lesson will be colorless.  At K-12 schools our dear students may have new textbooks or new iPad programs that replace old textbooks. I personally prefer printed textbooks.  Some days ago I worked on a video about single-sex or single-gender classrooms. It was so interesting.  You know, at 4 th grade in a school in North Branch, Minnesota, parents have something optional, which works. They can choose single-gender classrooms for those kids at 4 th grade within elementary school.  They have a young male teacher for the boys and a female teacher for the girls. And it works, as I said. You know, the girls’ class teaching is more emo...

  I like to be a teacher. I do. I’ve been one for a number of years. And I guess a teacher should train himself or herself for ever. You never get a perfect teacher. The teacher’s training and learning and education never ends. And we have a new school year ahead of us.  I would tell you that a teacher should always have a book to read. A book on teaching, education, the character’s forge, or the like. Always in accordance to human dignity. For the teacher has to educate his or her students, and if these ones are kids, well, the teacher has to educate in accordance to their parents. Also that teacher could prefer to learn from the Web, from other teachers who post on the Internet: there are so many websites that have a treasure about teaching!  At present I’m reading Jeremy Harmer’s The Practice of English Language Teaching . The third edition, namely.  Well, you know, I’m re-reading it, because I consider I can still learn tons from him.  If the teacher keeps s...