Experiences of a teacher of English

  I know that you want to become a good teacher. One who makes his or her students think, right?  This latter thing may seem obvious, but do our dear students really think? Do they invest all their cleverness capabilities upon learning in the best possible way?  In order to achieve our dear students would think, and more if they are kids, we have to teach them how to think. If they settle down to study their books, we may be heading in the right direction.  We as teachers may think in a loud voice, say, to teach them to think, in class.  I was remembering that when I taught kids at the first school where I began to teach, we had, in accordance to their parents, there in the nineties of last century, a plan for educating them. It was not one more school subject, like math or literature or biology, but they were weekly sessions about topics where we made them think: ethics, how to solve problems, virtues and values, situations they might face as teens, etcetera. I...

  We teachers may be spending some nice vacation, or otherwise we may be still working, or even we may be dreaming nice about next school year.  It may be a good moment anyway to put our profession in front of our eyes and try to improve our teaching job.  For example we may think that we don’t just teach but also educate those people for a happy future and a happy present now.  As well we have to educate people who will try hard to make happy to those other people our students will treat.  We definitely have to educate those people, but in accordance with their parents and in much way in accordance with human dignity.  For example we have to teach those students how to contemplate beauty.  Not only will we try to form people for the so demanding job market today, but we teachers are right there in the classroom to carry out something else, and that something else definitely is educating them.  I teach English to adults. And we deal with texts in ...

  On my last post I said that in a foreign or second language classroom our dear students should participate by speaking for quite long periods. It’s not the same to say one sentence than speaking for 5 or 10 minutes. And if we want for them to learn and acquire that language, well then they should give long oral presentations. And lose their natural fear to speak for those allotted minutes.  Expert teacher trainer Mary Jane Amaya taught me how our students can prepare that very oral presentation.  Basically and trying to remember I can describe the preparation process as follows.  First the student has got to choose his or her topic. They can do it by brainstorming possible topics and then choose their favorite one. Of course you can teach all that nice process by carrying it out in the classroom with the class of students as a whole.  So after that brainstorm they can vote or anyway select one topic.  Then they can again brainstorm possible points about t...

It’s their parents who have to educate their kids, okay. And their teacher has also to set an example. Okay too. An example like taking care of our planet. We teachers are instructing those students, in math, the second language, history, biology, minerology, other sciences, literature… And when we are teaching, while that is happening, also we are educating those young people. In accordance to their parents.  We should call up those parents to come to the school to have a meeting about their children.  Okay, well, any teaching action in the classroom, whatever the subject is, should set an example. We teachers are public persons, and thus we have to set that good example. Any teaching action should be educative. Any action in the classroom should provide teaching, promote an aptitude, promote some upright human value.  And it’s so because of the relationship between the teacher and the students in the classroom… or at any other place within the school area. ...

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...

The teacher you said? The teacher is many things together.  The teacher is an expert in his or her field. The teacher is an educator,  a tutor,  a clown sometimes,  a consultor,  an advisor,  an animator,  a showman,  an actor,  a psychologist,  a friend,  a family expert,  an entrepreneur,  an artist,  a counselor,  a painter,  a story-teller,  a computer expert,  a communicator,  an assistant,  a declamatory person,  a writer,  a magician,  a humanity herald,  an expert on human kind,  an apostle,  a judge,  a health helper,  like a sollicitor,  an astute person,  a sportsman,  a detective,  a talkative person,  a museum usher,  an excursion expert,  a leader,  a hot news expert,  a corrector,  a peacemaker,  ...

  I rarely write about environmental friendship, and it’s quite important. Well I’ve written something before. And we have to achieve our young students would gain some respect and a nice attitude toward our beautiful planet. We’re educating future citizens, even present citizens! When we take our students to an excursion we teachers have to set an example and teach those kids to litter garbage into garbage containers. As well we can teach our students to admire a beautiful landscape. By educating our students in beauty we’re helping them become more human and more honorable. And we’ll see this improvement even at classroom behavior. For sure. We can also teach them how to recycle plastic, glass, paper, oil, etc. I remember quite many years ago we had an English reader-book about recycling, in English, which is the school subject I teach. It was pretty interesting, and we had nice discussions about recycling. This subject matter can be an interdisciplinary nature to...

  In my opinion the teacher should have more knowledge about more areas, not only about the school subject he teaches. In that way he will be able to teach with more ample lenses, and with more perspective: we're educating kids to be wise, if possible. I wrote something about the necessary interdisciplinary nature teaching in the classroom should have, on post # 3181. For example in English as a foreign language I try to also include texts about history, short biographies, technology… texts with some human interest about them. Modestly I can tell you that I have more knowledge than just English. Also in some way we should give our teaching a humanistic touch. Our students have more subjects than the one we may be teaching. And all knowledges should be interwoven. This is rather a complex thing but we can just ask our students what they’re learning at other subjects, in English, and so they can tell us something that will so be connected with our subject of English. As...

  We teachers have to teach our students how to think. How to learn to think on their own. We will provide them with texts that will make them think, and we’ll do so in the school subject of English as a foreign language too. Texts that matter are convenient. I mean we’ll use those texts from which we can draw a nice discussion as a follow-up activity to simple reading. We teachers will help them join what read with their own lives. My experience at teaching English is that we can provide our students with texts that have an interdisciplinary nature: English plus history, English plus short biographies, English plus human-interest texts, etc. In some way yesterday I wrote about a transcendent view of human beings, something like: If you love you’ll be loved. I don’t mean we should love to seek being loved in a selfish way: love is generosity, love is giving yourself to the loved person, love is benevolence love – wishing what’s good, and is there anything better than ...

On post #3147 I wrote about beauty as something educative, and that’s okay. We have to teach our students to appreciate and esteem beauty, and also have to educate their sensitivity. That’s quite important. And we can achieve that goal by showing them beautiful sceneries, and taking them to excursions to the countryside, the mountain, the forest, a river… In that way we’ll be educating them with values that make us all more human and humane. As well little by little, for instance in the subject of history, or as a topic within the English-language subject, we can try to teach them how to value and understand some nude, other sculptures and paintings. In that case – nudes – we will explain to our students how well ancient Grecians esteemed beauty, and about the beauty canon they had and why they had it. Alike those people educated their boys and young men to follow what’s beautiful, and subsequently were able to distinguish between what’s good and what’s wicked to do. Girls ...

If you’re not integrating social media into your class, you’re ignoring one of the most powerful forms of literacy in the world today. I copied that quote a couple days ago. I’ve got to admit I’m not a digital native, first premise. For I was born in 1969 (!). I was born when computers were being made smaller for the trips to the Moon (!). Up to then a computer might take up a whole room (!). Anyway I should listen to that quote and I want to. A second premise should be that we’ve got to boost our students into the social media in the classroom too. Also by taking into account that in some way we teachers should filter the social media contents our students are about to watch in the Web. Because they should focus on the topics to search about. I was going to write about the consequences of that quote of the beginning of this article, but you may be (for sure!) younger than me and may be integrating your students into the social media. Up to today what I do with my adult...

  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...

  Phew! I’m back at the blog. Here you are. I was thinking of writing something about the care toward our planet we should educate our students at. Something I used to do when we ran an excursion was to throw all the garbage and litter to garbage containers. Thus our students plastically learned how to take care of our environment. Sometimes I explained to them that for example plastic couldn’t get destroyed easily if they threw plastic disposable bags to the ground – not to mention drink cans... Even sometimes we were able to see squirrels, something that got our students more immersed in nature. We used to go to the town outskirt forests and countryside. As I said on a previous post, running school excursions was great and generally all of us came back to school joyful, after a day in close contact with nature, our surrounding nature. We teachers must educate our students in taking care of the environment and even beyond that point: all the world! / Photo from: fish...

  An interesting activity for our second or foreign language classes? Discussions! If we can implement them in our lessons, with our students, it means and shows they have at least an intermediate language level. It means and entails our students can talk about interesting topics and can express and convey their opinions, ideas and feelings. We can easily find topics for discussion, but I will show you two: Trump as the new USA president and Syrian and Iraqi refugees’ tragedy now in winter and always. If we’re Europeans for example we can also discuss on Trump’s government because his government realization also affects us and globally as well, for better or for worse - we hope for better. Discussing capability shows our students have some intermediate or advanced levels. It means our students can enjoy their talking in the target language, namely English in my case. I insist on purpose: our students show they have an intermediate or advanced level, and can use the target...

  Our students have many different school subjects: math, science, history, sports, a foreign or second language, grammar, spelling, maybe religious doctrine, biology, chemistry… And there should be something, some thread which should unite all those knowledges, skills, paradigms, practices, lab practices. By the way, we may enjoy teaching those disciplines: I do! Something unitive can be joy, yes, a somewhat mature intelligence, a joyful one, which knows how to be over all those subjects, taking them to a common goal: personal growth. In the school subject of English, which one I teach, so I’m the master of it at the classroom, I can ask in English about what my students are learning at all those subjects: What are you learning in history? And I can help my students talk about those knowledges in English, so I will provoke, say, a conversation in English, a real and naturalistic one, for some minutes. Above I said joy can unite, join and combine all those subjects: a s...

I think we teachers of English or other languages dedicate and devote a lot of time to low-achievers and this is ok but sometimes we dedicate rather little time to promote high-achievers, and these ones can get bored in classes where they can easily learn things, too easily.  We should devote more time to these latter students.  For instance, we could provide them with material and stuff for Cambridge examinations at high levels, First Certificate, Advanced, Proficiency.  Or for example we could ask school parents to take our high-achievers to their job posts, in medicine, architecture, the army, fine arts, law. This later initiative is successfully being practiced in some school of the south of Spain.  High-achievers attend the parents profession places and learn practical-for-life activities, with their teachers’ assistance. / Photo from: terrorismo-eta-la-audiencia-nacional-vuelve-a-aplazar-al-lunes-el-juicio-al-comando-vizcaya noticias terr...

At school kids learn different school subjects, right?  Ok, this diversity, some scholar says, like expert Carlos Cardona, that this diversity isn’t good for our students, at whatever period the students are: primary, secondary or college.  The solution isn’t simple, I would dare say, but if the student talks with his tutor at individual tutoring sessions, this one could arrange all their knowledge within something unitary, with the tutor’s aid and help: we have a whole, which is school education and instruction.  Because of that, tutoring sessions are so good – always if the tutor is well formed, honest, upright, plus a male tutor for boys and female tutors for girls, for people at tutoring sessions, if these are frequent, take them two to confidence, and we’ve had many problems already in other schools, to add more problems within the relationship of tutor and student: as I said male teachers for boys and female tutors for girls. / Photo from: colegio...

We teachers can teach our students how to get the most from studying, from their personal studying.  If they have got to study a History unit in English, the target language, first they could read for the gist.  Then they can read and study and get the most important points, and turn them into a summary or an outline.  After memorizing it they should read the whole unit or text so as to revise.  If they follow this scheme, they implement various learning strategies and they mature, also as persons. / Photo from: study hall www landmarkeast org

We teachers too should educate our students – and learn ourselves! – toward an ecological conversion.  We have to educate for taking care of our big home and our descendants’, and our descendants’ descendants! These ones should receive a clean world.  We can do just little things? Alright, let’s do them. As I said two days ago, amongst our students there might be future important people, who have to take paramount decisions concerning industry, corporations, they can be politicians at various spheres, who knows? / Photo from: highparkhomedaycare blogspot com

Environmental friendship.  We teachers of diverse school subjects should educate our young students in taking care and looking after our world.  The young students we have sitting down in front of us could reach high positions which have to do with our environment. So we need to educate those students.  And we teachers should set examples.  Maybe those students will be able to take decisions that will influence in our global environment. I recommend Pope Francis’s last Encyclical entitled as Laudato Si’ . It may be inspiring. / Photo from: summer rabstol net