Experiences of a teacher of English

  I also know that most of you are or may be busy and committed teachers. I was wondering if write about this topic or not, but in the end I’ve decided to write about it, yes, let’s go with it.  As I said, you may be hectic teachers, yet I presume that you devote some time of your valuable and precious time to just thinking about what you do in class, so you can improve your teaching work, also precious as it is, indeed. Because you wish your dear students learn effectively.  I mean, the happy teacher – busy he or she may be though – knows how to extract some time for thinking about their dear students and how they can learn better and more effectively.  I knew a teacher who used to dedicate some time for example at the end of the school year to think and write down some points about his lessons: how they had proceeded, you know, how they’d improved that past year, how could they improve next year, what points are paramount for bettering those lessons, what points I ...

  Okay, let’s start the new school year, 2022-’23. With some enormous “ilusión”, we say in Spanish, with great excitement and eagerness.  On the very first class day, hopefully I will introduce the syllabus or program or curriculum to my dear students, thus at that moment I am involving them up to the core of what we are about to do along that school year.  I will do it in a mild tone, but with great enthusiasm.  It’s up to the teacher: he or she is the main resource of activities and knowledge. I am getting my students into the marvelous task of learning English. And I hope they will do it by sharing my enthusiasm, I will speak in a mild tone, though.  In class each individual, each student is unique. And their teacher has to view the thing that way. Each person is suitable of being original, and most of them may provide some originality to the class.  I will not address a mass of people on that first class, I should address individuals, though.  I ca...

  Working as a teacher? Wonderful it may be.  Today I wanted to tell you that a teacher needs resources for his or her teaching, for example a coursebook. And perhaps some others.  Yet we must bear in mind that the main resource, say, is the teacher him or herself. And we must take care of them. For they, as I said, constitute and make up the main source for lessons.  And it’s him or herself who have to invest their best in class. Which is something quite common amongst teachers, although they have to fight against many negative factors, like bad classroom behavior from their students, or some parents who seem to be against those teachers. On another post we could say something about that latter point – now I will simply say that quite many other parents are totally in favor of the teachers.  You know, being a teacher is kind of a hard profession and anyone of us can see how they strive to do their best.  If we have happy and committed teachers, likely less...

  A new school year is beginning, and we teachers wish our dear students would learn a lot, don’t we? As you know I teach English to adults. And I want for my students to learn how to taste reading books. For reading is a language-learning booster indeed.  They will have to get graded readers, or full version books in some of the students’ cases. I can affirm for sure that by reading you learn English. Not only reading, of course. Yet reading gives you vocab and grammar and ways of saying things in English, and at the same time you enjoy even can relish learning that language.  You have to read many readers or full versions to grasp the language, yet each page read is a firm step forward.  As well my students will also have to read from websites whose link I will provide to them. Formerly I handed them out worksheets, but last school year with the online lessons I had them work on pages from websites, for example from the British Council – those guys are aces at teac...

Many of us wish to learn a language, and we do need this one.  Well, we can read from H. D. Brown (1989) A Practical Guide to Language Learning. A Fifteen-Week Program of Strategies for Success . New York: McGraw-Hill.  I mean, we can turn to colleagues like him, and then learn a lot from them. I said “colleagues” but actually he is a master.  And if you read from that book you will learn that each learner has to find his or her own pathway to success, for each learner has his or her unique way to learn, one in which they come to feel well.  On this post I pick up some ideas from that book, about which I wrote a paper for a college journal some fourteen years ago.  The learner thus has to invest his best. Because learning and acquiring a second or foreign language demands the best from you. If you agree to put all the best, you for sure will attain and achieve to succeed.  Otherwise if the learner sits down in the classroom, in the language classroom, and t...

As I said on last post, on this blog I have written a lot on behavior classroom management. Also you may have noticed that I have shown I have had a lot of affection to my students. It is love of benevolence: Seek what is good for those persons. It is not my merit – I have learned that from others.  Okay then. We teachers, when we have to reprimand a student’s disrespectful attitude in the classroom, should speak with that individual aside, apart the class, in a private situation.  My dad used to say that we would get more with an affectionate word than with a lot of quarrel. And it’s really so!  On last post I included a link to an interview between Angela Watson and Robyn Jackson. It’s a great article and you may learn a lot.  As well I have met some great teachers who precisely were pretty normal, regular and ordinary. And they had that great affection toward their students. With prudence, but affection anyway.  There were behavior problems in their classroom...

You – we – teachers in a Covid-19 situation, when working and teaching remotely, wish our students would work with serenity, right?  I do know some of you, many of you, are doing this way. You have my admiration. Many an example are to be found in the USA, from what I learn from the Internet, and alike at Attendis, this latter teaching company, a large one, in southern Spain. Etcetera. All throughout our planet. Many other teachers are doing the same way, perhaps you my reader.  Today I wanted to say that positive motivation is a very positive way of reduplicating our dear students’ efforts.  I mean, we have to correct our students’ behavior and mistakes, and that is necessary, but let us not forget to reckon and recognize what our students do well. Their efforts, I mean.  I often – not always – say to my adult learners at the end of the lessons, when these ones are over, something like “Okay, thank you for your cooperation”. And it works. And my stu...

Teaching is… great, once again. And watching and observing how our students are progressing or not very much… - so far - is also great.  We have to plan our lessons with our students in mind. But I can also see and perceive that I have to keep on improving my teaching. Once and over again and again. No problem. If you've been teaching for some quite many years, you can discover and find out what your students are in need of.   Well, my students try to do their best. I teach English as a second language. This morning my students were saying what some words meant, from a worksheet with sentences and one longer text. That was one of the activities we were carrying out.  That was good practice and I intended for them to notice and reckon that: that was good practice.  For next class I will also say what those words mean, and thus I can mold the exercise for my students to have some more examples to imitate or to build up their definitions upon, ...

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...

Most of us teachers in earth north hemisphere may be on vacations. And we know that this break may be somewhat short. So we have to make good use of time.  Do we know how to rest? Do we know how to make good use of this resting and relaxing time?  I do know that we teachers on holidays may have other things to do at this time. But we must learn how to rest. I would say that this recess is for gathering forces and strength for the coming school year 2019-2020.  It’s the time for rejuvenation and recovering our lost forces and strength. It’s a time to perhaps strolling around the countryside or along a solitary beach and think of things that can boost our ordinary work and laboring.  It’s a time to think of our students in a new and fresh way: we’re educating the people that are our society’s near future.  We deal with persons and do not dedicate our nice time to manufacture screws: we work with persons, human beings. And those our dear studen...

I appreciate committed teachers. They’re the protagonists of schools. Together with their dear students.  They promote those students and boost them as learners and as persons themselves. They’re boosting their nation as well.  However, some of those teachers look worried and uneasy. I would tell them, Enjoy teaching! It’s what you’ve got to do in the classroom. Not as a selfish seeking of some insane pride, but for the school community, and the families as well, of course. Come on, enjoy teaching!, I would tell them. When we try and do our best for other people, we likely become happy. Although we'll be happy with God our Father's help. Something else for today. It seems sound and sensible to daily think of the classes we teach – the classes of students I mean. Maybe when planning lessons, we may think of a single thing we have to try those students should better and improve.  Let’s think of those classes, every day, from the air, looking over, thinking ...

The teacher is a person who faces up to different issues. And he or she does with great love. They may have – likely – problems with some students or some parents, and all that may make them suffer, but ultimately they positively – as I said – face up to those troubles with some positive spirit and morale.  As well they can notice that perhaps something weird may be happening in the classroom lately and their students may be suffering from some other trouble, and those teachers I’m talking about face up to that situation, with no procrastination.  And they, those teachers I mean, do not let time elapse any longer and try hard to solve the problems, better if they can count on their colleagues or the school department head.  Serenity is necessary for those teachers: they may be suffering from some trouble but they’ve learned how to deal with problems and they have fortitude and courage.  Their students seek support upon them as their fortitude when dire...

Some days ago I told you that before and at the beginning of the new school year we teachers could have in mind some few and exciting and necessary goals for our students.  Okay then, let’s come back to those few nice goals on the following days, also so as to internalize them deep in mind and heart.  I do know your school also demands more goals from you, but inside our heart we should have those objectives we have thought of.  I mean it: we tentatively know our students and so we know what they need. Perhaps we do not know some new students but we reckon what an average student may need, because we can have taught some or many lessons already.  For starting the new school year it is enough we have those aims by heart. And we try to apply them. Then we will try to define some other objectives our school asks from us. Have a nice week, fellow teachers and everybody else! / Photo from: ABC de Sevilla

We teachers cannot treat our students in the classroom as a mass, as a mass of people, but we have to treat them as individuals. As persons. As persons with intelligence. Persons who think, who receive the messages we give them.  And they’re free, free and responsible.  As well we will trust them. Otherwise if we treat them as people we don’t trust, and from whom we only receive nuisance, from whom we only expect they’re against us teachers, we’ll get little from them.  In some way we’ll treat them as adults, or as persons who have, as I said, intelligence, plus feelings and will. They like this way of treating: we respect them as persons.  We will trust them I said. For example we will give them some message in the classroom or individually at the school halls, and we should trust and have confidence that they will accomplish what said in that message.  More likely than not, in that way, they will follow those instructions or whatever w...

Our students make errors and mistakes. Every learner makes them. Also we teachers do.  We have to be positive toward those errors and mistakes. They may be some evidence that they are learning. And they may take advantage of them… to keep on learning.  When returning tests to our students after correction we may correct them in the classroom, among all students and us teachers. On the board or chalkboard while they are checking on their test papers.  And remember that we teachers might fall in being too perfectionist, and that’s not good. Because we might be educating too perfectionist learners. And that’s not good, as you may guess.  Once a subdirector of the school I taught even told me that I might try to attract my students’ attention and try for them to focus on their work, of course, but those kids ultimately were free to do it.  We of course have to make our students focus on the work but trying they might focus because they will ...

I told you on the previous post that we teachers must have fortitude. Also that we have to set an example in the classroom and in all other places where our teaching develops in the school.  We teachers must have a fortress quality. Or fortitude. We must be strong: for example when presenting our students about a new school year we should have previously thought of the goals for that school year.  Those goals should have been thought of with realism. Also with our students in mind. Also with optimism. Human persons can carry out nice learning.  We will have to stop aside our daily teaching to think and project those nice goals.  Otherwise we will not be able to push our students upward. Also we will say to our students how we expect from them to push themselves upward.  Now maybe at the summer break and before the school year or when teaching at the summer break too (!) should have to stop to think of nice goals: realistic, mature, posit...

Obviously we teachers have to educate our students’ intelligence. And we may be working on it. Okay then, also we have to educate their feelings and sentiments, their affectivity.  First premise: it is their parents who have firstly to educate those feelings of theirs. And we teachers help at that education. Our mission is subsidiary. We help their families.  Can our intelligence govern our feelings and sentiments? It can, in some way.  We can strive to have for example positive thoughts, positive resolutions to carry out our duties. And if we thus struggle to have positive and rational thoughts, in that way we can make positive and rational feelings arise inside us.  If we try to have positive and rational thoughts, our feelings can go toward a positive and optimistic side. / Photo from: chess-smarter Examined existence

  We teachers have to educate our dear students in freedom. Only then can we educate them truly, genuinely and actually. And also we have to educate them with the corresponding responsibility. Freedom and responsibility. Two siblings they are. Obviously I have to set some rules and there must be discipline, sheer ones by the way. And thorough ones too. The student has to do things because he wants to. Because he wishes to. Not because I’m going to be punished in case I don’t fulfill that rule. I want to be educated, and so I follow and even obey what I’m told by the teacher: what a responsibility we teachers have! We are going to be followed by our students – tentatively. We have to see persons in our students. Free ones. Persons who can love, because they are free. And they are free because they love. I’m referring mainly to benevolence love: I want what is good for the other person. Thus we teachers have to have ample lenses when entering the classroom: I’m ed...

  The lesson in the classroom is the teacher’s palestra or arena, in a positive way I mean. It is then when we have to fulfill our teaching goals and also educate our students. Fulfilling our teaching goals and educating our students are interwoven and bound. We want to fulfill some teaching goals but at the same time we pursue to educate our students as honorable citizens. And all that takes place as a single objective: teaching and educating. Even more, we can ultimately consider them, our students, as children of God. And we can count on God’s grace and help to achieve the nice goal of educating our students as His children. We may have planned the lesson but we have to make good use of time and of opportunities in the classroom: it’s then when we have to achieve those teaching goals plus educate our students! As well we have to win and defeat our possible laziness: it is then when we have to apply what we may have learned from great experts at teaching! And th...

  As you well know, busy teachers, we must have lesson plans. Also we may have midterm-goals. Okay then, what about letting our students know about all those goals and objectives…? So they might also cooperate to reach those goals. We can try and see. This is so if there’s rapport between them and us teachers. More often than not, our students may understand what we want to reach together with them. Even more: we can help them to learn what they can reach, what they are able to reach. Give it a try! You may be encouraging them to reach farther! / Photo from: Quora. Our students may be like airplanes which can reach so far!