Experiences of a teacher of English

Being a teacher is so great a profession. Anyway you always encounter conflicts. Also our students have them.  We adults should have emotional self-control. And our dear students have also to learn how to have that kind of self-control. And they’ll be gaining it over time, with our help and aid as teachers. We’re educating young persons.  We’ll achieve they have that self-esteem by helping them through private tutorials with each kid. I’ve seen it well through my career as a teacher. We teachers gained a lot of confidence with our students over the school year. And those kids ultimately gave vents to their inner conflicts.  That work was carried out counting on their parents, as well through tutoring sessions with them.  Male teachers had tutorials with male students and female teachers did with girls. And it worked and turned out fine. Every kid had his or her tutor.  And we in that way got to quench some bullying, also because we talke...

On last post I told you about helping high-achiever students. Okay then, now I’m saying something about helping low-achievers. I’ve found them. For example kids that had somehow serious problems at studying, learning, paying attention… plus their self-esteem might be low, so low.  Well, all the teacher team tried to help those few students. Also through tutoring sessions plus interviewing their parents. With frequency, more or less.  Well, something I used to do was to set for them goals that tentatively they could reach. These kids needed attention and affection.  As well their future could be manual jobs, not intellectual ones. Not for that reason are those professions negative or low level ones. Those jobs also are necessary in our society: aluminum carpenters or joiners for example.  The ideal thing would have been they could do the same activities as their classmates, but, you know, in no way could they reach those goals, like the ones their...

  I know you’re committed teachers, and good ones too. We must know that work that is carried out well has a special force. Sooner or later this work and this force stand out among our students and that work is respected or will be so, sooner or later, I’d say. Even though we may have disruptive students, which is the case for many teachers in Spain. I’m referring to secondary education, mainly. Even there has been violence in some high school centers. Recently. I’m thinking of a specific school here in the province of Granada. Even there has been some case of maltreating teachers, but in the end peace has arrived. The thing happened among very few students of that center. It was something exceptional and unusual anyway. And yesterday or few days ago I read on the paper that at another school from Spain the students are performing some drama plays, in order to stop bullying. Thus the students become more roped in the center routines. That’s another example of work...

  Should students in some way decide about the class of students’ internal affairs? In a former school I taught there was something nice, kind of a student council, and I think that was okay. The members, three students, have some decision-making competences. They were chosen by their classmates, at the beginning of the school year. So they were kind of three representatives. They met with their head teacher or a class teacher every two weeks or so to deal with students’ stuff they could help out at. Since they had a vision the teacher hardly had they were useful to govern a class and help out their classmates. For example they used to talk, at those meetings, about kids they could see they had some academic problems, or about some insane atmosphere there could be among the students, from time to time. Or they collected their classmates’ distress about any school subject way of conducting by any teacher. The rest of students knew and agreed those points would be ta...

I read it in Pope Francis some time ago. He proposed not to talk bad about anybody. I liked it and think it’s okay with the school too. Somebody told me also not to talk bad about anybody at the school. Or otherwise it’d be better to correct what’s wrong personally to the person who did it wrong. We can teach our students to conduct in that way. It has to do with bullying. The point is teaching them to be honest and honorable with everybody else. It would be much better for them to correct things to their classmates, in a peaceful and not humiliating way, plus aside and apart. For example when they detect there’s a bullying thing arising they could turn to the offender and tell him not to carry on in that way. Experts say that bullying must be stopped by students themselves. And how can the teacher find out something ugly is starting to arise among students? I learned something in the school where I worked until 2002. We teachers in charge of a class had a council of th...

  We teachers can help our students in these rather hard times. They’re times of crisis, because crisis etymologically means “change”, and these times are times of changes. Anyway, I was going to write about another point. And it could help these crisis times. We teachers, as anybody else, have faults and defects. Ok, we can’t hide nor conceal them, before our students. I mean, our defects are transmitted through our conducting in the classroom and out of the classroom. We have the duty of behaving in an honest, honorable and upright way: we set an example, both we want or we don’t want it. Be tranquil: our struggle to be better also is transmitted through our conducting, both regarding the subject we teach – English in my case – and regarding our trying to be better persons. Let’s be nice at home with our families too, cooperating actively to create a lovely atmosphere. Let’s also be nice at school, prone to help and assist our students in their needs. Let’s be eas...

  A teacher must be able to empathize with his students in the classroom. He should be able to feel the sentiments of his students and how they react to his teaching and prompts. Even he should be able to change what he had planned for that lesson if necessary! Even more he should plan his lessons with his students in mind, taking into account also that two class-groups are never the same and each one needs a special attention and assisting from him. If that teacher feels his students are not understanding what he’s saying, he should change and make a clearer discourse. As well he will rope his students in the class or lesson by having them intervene and participate, also he will let some students participate more if they’re eager to do it and it’s good, suitable and appropriate for them. I said something about anxiety on the last post. He will detect some possible anxiety in some of his students and will try to make them feel better; also I said that we teachers have...

  Let’s be careful, because some of our dear students could be suffering from solitude and loneliness, although they may be surrounded by their classmates and teachers. I knew a case, a classmate of mine when I was a schoolboy, when I was 12 or 13 years, who felt so lonely. His name was Sebastián and had a tragic end. From here I make him a homage. So both teachers and students should be on alert. Better if male teachers receive male students’ pains and sorrows, and the same for female teachers and female students. Tutoring sessions can be a nice chance to observe and learn about these problems. Let’s be watchful because those poor students could be not sharing their wounds with other people, neither with their families... We people are not made to live in a lonely way: we need other people and other people need us too! A person develops himself by counting on others. Oh, and there could also be lonely teachers as well – think of novice teachers for example. Also we...

  When I was making part of my doctoral dissertation some years ago I came across one topic which was students’ anxiety – I didn’t finish my doctoral dissertation but I wrote a book on its topic: Success at teaching English as a foreign language, and that theme in some way has been developed along this blog. Students may suffer anxiety. However during my first years at teaching young students I didn’t find any anxiety case or there was not much anxiety among them, my students: they were okay at my classes, and at other teachers’ classes too. Before I forget it I would advise you not to shout at your students: they can get so scared. Some, little very little shouting can be okay at certain moments, even it can be something educative, but very very very little shouting. What I did find among some students was a bit of bullying, but thank God at our school we had tutoring sessions with our students and they could give vents to their sorrows and pains, and joys too...

  To prevent from bullying something we teachers can do is to tell our students that they can count on us for possible bullying or for anything else, and also that we’re at their entire disposal. We teachers can give a short presentation about this conflict to our dear students, and then let them know we’re at their entire disposal. The students could feel better and even when presenting this speech to them we might detect cross sights across the classroom and notice some nuance in our students’ looking or on their faces. They can be cunning. Because of that we teachers could have eye-contact during this presentation, in case we could find some possible subtle disruption. Much better it would be also each student would have a tutor with whom they can turn in cases of bullying. The students will be assisted. Some schools have individual tutors, like in the school where I worked previously in another town south of Spain, near Granada. / Photo from: dish_free_hd pics-a...

  At the school where I taught some years ago, in another town north of Granada, Jaén, fortunately we didn’t have bullying, or at least this was detected pretty soon and so didn’t grow too much: it was cut off from its root. Fortunately too we had individual tutoring sessions with every and each student, so they could tell their tutor about any problems they could have relating their classmates. As well we teachers used to talk about each student at the assessing and evaluating sessions, every two months approximately. The students in some way were friends of their tutors, and so easily they could give vents to any problem concerning behavior. And we teachers used to love our students, with love of benevolence, this is, to wish what’s good for each student, and so we were close to each one. You can teach only if you love your students. The first premise about teaching is that love of benevolence is the source and engine of teaching and educating: to wish what’s go...

In the school where I taught before coming to Granada in 2004 we had something great: individual tutoring sessions with each kid. It was a single-sex education school. The kids could give vents to their problems: they would always find an adult prone to listen to them, and to ask them how they were getting along, all in a delicate way.  Also we teachers found cases of bullying – we fortunately knew enough of each kid, also because we had tutoring sessions with their parents. I mean, we were able to cut off bullying problems from the very root.  We were a teachers team that learned what was going on at the school. We learned about our students’ conducting and how they felt.  As well we teachers used to meet up together to talk about the students each term or even with a shorter frequency. Obviously we didn’t talk about what the kids told about themselves at tutoring sessions. If a kid was anxious and choked we could notice his problems and troubles. / Ph...

You can find more about bullying if you type that word in the Search box. It may be a common problem and trouble in our schools. I've written about it on other posts. Those posts may not have the label "bullying".

Some kids may need urgent tutoring with a tutor, better if a male teacher for boys and a female teacher for girls. Bullying is one of the points, right away. It’s one of the problems to be treated at the tutoring sessions.  These sessions can provide a chance for their giving vents to their problems.  They have and can count on an adult that asks him or her if he or she is worried about something. This adult should be close, at hand, seeing to the problems in advance. / Photo from: Family-Car-Trip blog automart co za. once again I got a nice picture as an illustration, though it may have nothing to do with the post topic