Experiences of a teacher of English

  The teacher. The teacher has to wish to make up a classroom atmosphere where the students – most of them may wish to learn and work – can find and encounter the ambience where they can actually learn and work.  That atmosphere is one where delicacy, culture, respect, civilization, working minds, can be encountered. The students thus are serene and peaceful to learn and work. They are thus treated with those delicacy and respect.  The teacher in the meanwhile manages to motivate his or her students. And these ones also want to get plunged into the topic they are dealing with in the classroom.  But if the teacher is harsh and covetous and he just tries to get a jail-like behavior-management, and he just shouts at his students… well, he will not make up that culture atmosphere where his students can learn and work peacefully .  These students are assisted to make up and take up virtues. That word comes from a Latin word,  vir, which means strength and fo...

  For teachers it is important to assess and evaluate their students’ learning, right? Also his or her own teaching, right?  In the first case, how can we assist students who have to retake an exam and catch up on the materials they missed?  Well, let me see. They are students in need of extra work, extra learning, extra studying. We could split the class up into two groups: special objectives – during the regular classes – for those who passed the exam but still can learn new things or deepen into what learned. And also objectives for those students who failed.  Even the students who passed could help out their classmates by monitoring them.  This is it: they could sit with their peers and teach them.  And thus we have that some students are assisting their peers, and that counts as something very educative and formative: helping others.  As well in that case we teachers might assign some extra grading to those students who have been helping their cla...

  The teacher, if he or she wants to be a competent and committed one, has to assess and evaluate their students’ work, learning, knowledge, attitudes, skills.  He or she will utilize different assessing ways and not only tests or exams.  He or she will be willing to educate those kids or those adults. In accordance to their parents in the first case.  He or she will watch out for those dear people. That teacher will achieve to combine seriousness and affability. That teacher is able to manage classroom behavior. At the same time that teacher treats those people tactfully and with energy at the same time.  It is so because that professional treats those people with affection, benevolence love, and energy, oh, and with respect too.  That teacher gives himself up to those people. He forgets about being tired and pulls up to keep assisting those learners. Although he may be tired, as I said.  He treats those people with delicacy, and can deal with treatin...

  Let us see something else about assessing and evaluating our students’ progress, work and learning.  When I taught kids in another city, the school deputy principal or assistant headmaster at least once told me in a nice and collaborative way that I ought to deliver some extra work for those students who were capable of further aims and objectives.  I taught and still teach English. And the classes I taught were multi-levels: English may be the school subject where you can face more diverse levels: some students may have some upper-intermediate level or close to B2, while others may have some basic levels, namely A1 or A2.  And unless I did something else with those more advanced students, they might feel bored and disappointed. So I had to have extra material – exercises, texts, challenging resources – for those who could do more.  So I would recommend you to think of the following possibility, in case it may help you as a teacher.  You could have aims a...

  Assessing and evaluating our students is something of a paramount importance. Is it not?  When I began my career as a teacher I one day set my first exam to my kids. It was a class of some 25 students. You know what? I can recall it as if it was today. Some 60% of them failed! And it was a regular class, not bad, not that bad.  One colleague of ours told me something like, “Even NN failed that exam!? It’s so weird, he’s a clever student! You may expect what his parents will say about that…!”  NN actually was a smart and clever student, and he could hardly fail an exam… I had set a test which could be paralleled to the ones someone could expect at college, but not at early high school! It was me who had “failed”.  Generally if at high school many, many students fail… from a regular class of kids… something about the teacher may be failing.  When a teacher sets a test, an exam, the first point he or she is going to test and examine is himself, herself....