Experiences of a teacher of English

  Every job on earth seems to have a relational nature: we do things that may help and serve others. A teacher’s work is relational as well. Obviously.  And what can we say about working as a team, as a teacher team?  Some weeks ago I read somewhere that creative work is primarily something of a single spirit, so we are creative when working alone, yet here I’m going to say something about working as a team of teachers. Also when we work as a group we may be creative.  First premise is that that teacher who is going to work together with other teachers has to be open to the others: open-minded, open to respect others, open to love others with benevolence love, which is seeking what is good for those others.  All this is brought together with smiling at those others plus being nice and kind and cooperative. If I work in a team, I have to listen to them so I try to see from their viewpoints as well. And I will try to provide my best to that working team.  Eve...

Now I could tell you some more things - interesting ones - from our great author and scholar H. D. Brown. Remember he's an expert at learning and teaching languages.  First I would like to say that the person who achieves to learn a foreign or second tongue is... the learner who REALLY wants to learn.  I myself know some examples of people who have improved their learned language... because they did really wish to learn. A person like that is a powerful engine that takes initiatives and makes firm resolutions and tries to fulfill them.  That person is not passive at all in the classroom and he or she cooperates with their teacher and with their classmates at the beautiful learning process of a second or foreign language.  That person tries to know himself and gets perfectly conscious of HOW he learns, HOW he studies, HOW he improves, HOW he discards what doesn't work and takes up what works fine.  Each class is a step forward, each hour dedicated to learning the...

Some teachers do not feel well in the classroom, because they feel somewhat anxious, they say. But, if you let me tell you, don’t you attend the class in order to seek what is good and convenient for your dear students? I would like for you to be somewhat relaxed in the classroom. I apply that principle to me myself. Better said, some sane and nice tension is desirable in order to attain your jobs as teachers of your class-groups. Teaching ensues some easy tension, let’s say: You cannot teach or work anywhere else without some tranquil tension, so as to say.  Those class-groups together with you make up working-teams, where everyone can contribute to the learning processes.  Education is precisely to extract from your students the best from themselves. Education also is leading our dear students toward becoming better persons and ones that can afford their own lives.  As well we have to educate our students in accordance with what their parents wish for t...

Teachers are important. We teachers are important for our students’ learning. We are important, if we help our students learn. Also our students need to hear us if we prepared ourselves great in order to teach well. They need a model.  Anyway, we teachers have to help our students learn. According to Professor Ken Bain our college students should have more opportunities. We teachers may tend to punish or the sort when our students do not know the answer at an exam and they fail. They heretofore fail.  Those students should have more chances to learn and try anew. Come on, you tried but should work and learn more, we could say to our pupils. And then you will try again, after some time of working hard.  Our students should learn by a creative process.  They could try and study humanities if they are studying engineering for example. They can benefit from those humanities. And the other way around: They should study science if they are graduating at hu...

I have met several teachers along my career as a teacher and have seen that an enthused teacher gets his students enthused over the school subject.  Those teachers plan and program their lessons. And if they’re second language teachers they achieve their students would use and utilize that language. Those teachers’ method may be communicative: the second language is employed as a vehicle for communication in the classroom.  Furthermore the classroom becomes a piece of a country where that tongue is spoken. I have seen it along my career as a teacher.  And if that teacher is not native of the second tongue, he strives to also learn and acquire it.  I knew a teacher with not much time left and he used to just learn one word or a few ones every day, every single day, with perseverance.  How to achieve the students would use the language? For example by means of jigsaw activities or puzzles where some students have an information gap to be fille...

A good and committed teacher is the one who teaches individually. He may have a class of forty students, but he teaches somehow individually and personally.  He may address the whole class but he’s referring to each one of his learners. He does so because he has love of benevolence toward each of his dear students. He seeks what is good for those students. And so in accordance to their dignity as singular human persons.  And he tries to be an honest and honorable person himself.  Also when he has set some work in groups he circulates among the groups while they’re working and gets to know how to monitor their work. He does not confine to fulfill his schedule but does more than he’s asked to. Also that in accordance to what their parents wish for their kids.  And when his students ask him questions, he answers as if that student who’s asking was the only one in the classroom, although as well he says something that can benefit each and every one of hi...

I knew a teacher, a modest one but prone to improve his work day-after-day, who used to think before a regular work day, “Okay I’m going to school to work on English as a second language, together with my students.”  Instead of choking himself before a hard teaching day, he used to think he was going to work side by side with his students.  He was going to do his best at work, day after day. He thought not only that he was going to teach (of course!), but also to work with his students at English, with a content-based instruction (CBI), not talking about just trifles.  He liked teaching, yes he did, but preferred to think that he was going to pass on and transmit his like for that language to his students. He did so because he felt some straining and strength-draining effort at teaching.  He liked teaching but in some way that effort was superior to him and somehow overwhelmed him. He preferred to think that side by side he would work with his stude...

  When students are capable of a thorough insight, they improve a lot as students. And as persons. They become aware of their way of learning and studying, and they better a lot. My students now are adults, as you may know. They’re clever. They can learn and even modify their way of learning to adapt it to new circumstances. Two of my class-groups have begun recently, and I can see how they try their best, both at basic and more advanced levels. In the classroom they’re machine thinkers, let’s say. They may adapt their way of understanding me in English in order to understand me better. And also I’m trying to adapt my teaching to their way of learning and acquiring. When these two principles meet, the learning may be great. They’re making out their way of learning at my lessons, and also I’m making out their ways of learning. As well I’m making out their levels of English, because the classes are mixed-ability, and there’re high-achievers and low-achievers as well...

  We teachers have to educate our dear students for life, right? For life now and for their future lives, as citizens, parents… adults. And something they must learn now is to work as a team. The next activity can be carried out by small teams in the classroom – three members I’d say – or the class as a whole, if this one is not too large. They have to choose four objects they would take to survive in Terranova in winter for six weeks. They give from the best they have when working in teams. This is an activity we carried out in the summer course I’ve been with boys from Eastern Andalusia, south of Spain, at Costa del Sol. / Photo from: Earth Times

  I usually write about what we teachers can do in the classroom, and that seems okay, right? But we should also consider we are not alone before our nice hard-though work. We can count on other colleagues and companions. I do know there can be teachers who hinder and trip up other colleagues, but as well I know we can count on others for fulfilling our nice work. Also we often can count on the department head. I could tell you about when I was starting my career as a teacher: I could count on the teacher head, the principal, one foreign language coordinator we had, some colleagues with more experience: had I listened to them more carefully, I would have improved much better. Alike we always can count on the Other, on God himself. I could also tell you about this point, only if my experience were not so personal and interior. With our companions and with God we can reach farther. Remember we are not alone at school. We can count on our comrades. Hopefully! We together...

  We teachers have to take advantage of our students’ best chances for learning creativity, this is, to learn in a creative way. We could facilitate our students enough time for creativity, and so foster and boost their creativity whenever it’s simpler to provoke. Sometimes our students are about to show their creativity, and we teachers should take advantage of those times for our students to learn in that creative way. For instance we can set and assign project-works by teams, I would advise of three people, as I’ve said on other posts. Specifically our students might have got to search information and stuff about specific points within the school subjects: math, science, literature, history, chemistry, physics, sports, catechism classes, mother language classes… Well namely it’s like flipped classrooms: the students have to research about a specific point, topic or issue, and after that studying process, they will present their results and those topics themselves t...

  We teachers can make grammar presentations, and our students will appreciate it, okay. However we second or foreign language teachers can ask our students to make those presentations, by working in groups. We’d mark them a deadline and they’ve got to prepare a grammar point presentation. It’s sound to have our kids work in groups, for they’ll have to work as a team in their future lives, right? And they could obtain that grammar information in the Internet, their iPads or textbooks. But we’ve got to teach them how to work as a group – by the way remember that grammar is like the language skeleton: it serves the purpose of helping in our students’ gaining communicative competences. I would recommend groups of three people: I consider that four is too much and their work could result as blurred or lost among themselves – when three they may be more responsible. I’ve written on this blog about group working. They could choose with whom they’d like to stay as a gro...

  The teacher, the good teacher must learn how to work in a team of teachers. He must be open to other minds and viewpoints. It’s something essential at school. Essential to build up a common project. He must be open-minded and easily able to follow his head’s directions. He’ll be easy to hold a conversation with his workmates and colleagues. He should be easy to listen to those people, those persons. He also should translate and adapt his class conducting to his head’s directions, as I said. And at the same time be creative in order to be versatile, to adapt his labor to his students’ needs and expectations alike. And easy to build a nice rapport with his workmates all. And learn from his own failures, as well as from his colleagues’ experiences. This is the basic general scheme, I’d say. You could add other stuff from your own experience! / Photo from: chicago-skyline www greencurtainevents com. the picture is just an awesome illustration

We teachers and our students have to constitute a working group, a working team.  Both share the same aim: learn and acquire English, or another language. They are the protagonists of that learning process. And we make this process be real and factual and feasible. We all have the same thoughts and purposes and feelings, or nearly similar, right?  Of course the teacher also is the protagonist: no teacher, so likely no learning, though there are autodidacts, people that learn on their own. / Photo from: objetivocantabria eldiariomontanes es. In the north of Spain, in Cantabria I have my family roots, from my father.

I do know that there are internal problems at colleges concerning the relationships among some professors, at least in many universities in my country.  Besides the competitiveness is high but scuffing sometimes anyway on top of that.  I knew a professor that worked hard, and tried to suffocate those intrigues by means of helping, yes, helping his colleagues, and used to offer himself in case anybody could have any problem, or be in need of help.  He was a nice guy. With everyone. He was like a lubrificating for the relationships. / Photo from: Swiss Guard from the state of Vatican. ncromline org

In my opinion work-teams should be composed of three students, not more nor fewer.  When working in groups, for example in order to make a project work or a theme poster, tasks are delivered among them, and each worker carries out the tasks he does better.  In every group there arises a leader. The leader can easily boost working and can assure they all will work in something specific. When the group is that small, every element more likely works more than in groups of more than three members. I’m thinking for example in making up a theme poster in English. / Photo from: ejecutivos varios. www paxtravel com pe

Teacher A said to teacher B, “Working in small groups is plumb essential: they learn to cooperate toward a common goal.  You can practice this way of working if you teach them or, better said, you give them some prompts and clues and suggestions. In this way they learn how to work in a group: turn taking, brainstorming, delivering tasks among the members of the group.  The groups could be of 3 people: in some way you assure that tentatively all of them will do some tasks, they will carry out the project by the 3 of them cooperating.  Naturally one of them 3 will be the leader.” / Photo from:  students learning www oru edu

Teacher B said to teacher A, “We can have the best teachers in the world, unless the students work and study and apply learning and communicative strategies, we will get scarce results.  The teacher is good, tentatively if he or she makes their students struggle in order to learn and acquire English or any other modern language.” / Photo from:  www bbc co uk

Teacher A said to teacher B, “Grammar is like the skeleton the students need to learn in order to be able to communicate their thoughts.  Syntax, morphology… they are indispensable for learning and acquiring English or other languages.  The student should dedicate some time to read, understand, and learn the morphology and syntax of the target language. As a result, the teacher has got to present a grammar point in classes; or he can ask for volunteers to prepare material for a presentation to their classmates.  The procedure can be carried out individually or in groups of 2 or 3 students, maybe 4 (as you decide since you know your students).” / Photo from: harifomtheworldday wordpress com. weather forecaster    

Teacher B said to teacher A, “The classroom should be like a thinking laboratory.  For example: you have set as classroom work to make a report or a poster about such or such topic, or one their choice.  So, now we have the students working in small groups (3 or 4 students), and you can be circulating around their desks so as to suggest things and shortcuts.  It’s a nice chance to work and interact between the students and their teacher, and also to gain a nice rapport you teacher with them.” / Photo from: www usnews com. teacher and students working together