Experiences of a teacher of English

Every teacher, if he or she wants to be a pretty good one, has to learn how to delegate upon their students. Clear enough, let me tell you.  Well, we must know that they can do quite much on their own. For example they have to learn how to read and understand an activity or exercise they are addressed to resolve. We teachers could tell them how to make it… but that way they will not learn and progress.  That is not against often telling them and molding them how to solve those problems or activities, and quite often we’ll have to intervene, but if we do know they already have to make it on their own… let them do it themselves.  Also in that way we’re educating them and moreover they will feel we are willing to educate them: they expect we’re letting them learn and do their business.  At those times we’re spectators of their learning process.  We could help them but… no: let them work on their own, although they might do things rather wrong: ...

Quite many years ago, one day while talking with a school subdirector he told me something like it was my students’ business to keep silent and attentive in the classroom.  I was surprised because I thought it was my business to get them quiet and listening. And he was right. It was my students the ones that had to wish to learn.  We have to educate our students in freedom and at the same time in responsibility. They are human beings and consequently free and responsible.  The teacher has to be loyal, sincere and honest with his students, and these latter ones loyal, sincere and honest toward their teacher.  Something practical and pragmatic? Both at tutoring sessions and in the classroom the teacher can try and make his students responsible by transmitting and passing on to them the like for a well outfitted work.  He can explain how to work on some activities nice. He will be direct at explaining to them about freedom and responsibilit...

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...

If you realize about that, teachers’ and students’ everyday work entails taking care of little things.  In the classroom and out of there both the teacher and his students must take care of little things: tidiness, keeping the class schedule, arriving on time and being punctual at every class and other dates, tidy classrooms with maybe students’ small jobs to take care of those school places, loyalty, joy, industriousness, etc.  It is kind of a constellation of little things that are necessary for everyday conducting at the school.  Even more, the only way for the students to learn is a peaceful atmosphere in the classroom. Anyway sometimes music for example can help our students learn, but my own experience tells that only when that nice quiet atmosphere is created in the classroom and along the school can the students learn and grow up nice and with no strident notes at their personalities.  Students need peace. Teachers need peace.  A...

  Taking care of little things is important for a teacher. It is, indeed. Everyday teaching is composed of little things: cleaning the board after my class, for the next teacher to find it clean and neat; having my students arrange their desks at the end of the work day or after a class if they got disordered; teaching my students to use the bathroom well and thinking it will be cleaned by the cleaning staff or personnel, mostly ladies; not dropping bags and wrapping paper at the playground; having my students have small jobs for them to also learn to take care of little things; dealing with the school material in a nice way for it to last for long, quite long; having their tablets screens rather clean, from time to time; using their books in a neat way… All that said is very educative. Maybe we will not find the fruit of our work now, but our students will be so grateful for our work when they become more mature or adults. Our job as teachers simpl...

  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...

  Psychologist Leonard Sax states that it might be dangerous and hurting to treat young people or kids as if they were grown-ups, and I wrote something about this on post #3212. You know, I think that in some way we could treat our young students as they are, in accordance with their age, okay, but a bit older than they really are. In that way we foster their freedom and responsibility. Even we could treat them a bit better that they really are – otherwise they will become even worse... We can assign them small jobs in the classroom, of course. My experience says that we can treat kids by counting on them and trusting them somewhat even quite a lot. We can also talk to and with them by recognizing they’re intelligent persons, persons with some discernment, some growing discernment. They can’t direct the syllabus, the program and the rhythm of teaching but we can demand from them to get nice grades. We teachers must appeal their responsibility and we’ll gain quite mu...

We want to educate our young people and we’re after it, okay. We want young people to be free and responsible, and that’s okay too. We put them in charge of small jobs in the classroom and in the whole school, and that seems nice too. But we grown-ups have to remember that they still need our guidelines and clear prescriptions, they need some clear vision of life from us adults. We may want to educate them inside the flipped-classroom model but they need our criteria to research and orientations to find the right material as well – well, a correct flipped-classroom model anyway presupposes and assumes our adult help and supervision. And all that because they don’t have firm criteria yet: they’re making them. If they have clear vision of the “game”, we can allow them conduct on their own, but up to some extent: as I said they still need our adults’ firm and clear criteria, and they expect a lot from us: orientation, in a word. They should not decide yet what the subject syllabu...

  Most of us may be convinced that having small jobs in the classroom is beneficial to our students, is this so? I’m persuaded yes. With those tasks our dear students gain responsibility, and you may agree that all of us desire students be responsible. With those small jobs our students grow inner. Our students may think, Okay this is my business and I have to carry it out. In some way or other they may think so. We also get a classroom that is neater and tidier if we implement those jobs. They feel the classroom and the school as something of their own. This is something so educative, and besides our students may love those tasks. This is my experience. We teachers have to learn how to delegate our exhaustive work in our students’ hands: we cannot do everything. As well in that way we construct the classroom with material which is essential for our teaching them. Anyone can think of a nice list of small jobs. Some examples: getting chalk for our still-existing chalkboa...

  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...

  I believe in freedom and liberty as a way of educating our students. I try it be not naïve anyway. There’re times and occasions when you can trust what your students are telling you, and then you believe in them, and this makes them more confident and responsible and honest too. They grow as themselves when you treat them that way. They might lie to you but you give them chances to be honest. I was treated that way when I was a teen, and I can assure you that helped me be honest and I think I was living an adventure: I admired my teachers who treated me that way. One example of giving a chance to trust our students? There could be some mess among them in the classroom while we are absent for a moment, and before that mess I can ask a passing-by student from that classroom what’s going on. And I would trust him. I would trust in what he wants to tell me. You know, the point is offering our students a chance to be themselves. And this is quite educative, for it make...

  The order and tidiness of our classrooms will educate our students, and that’s for sure! Even we could say to one of our students to tidy up a classroom which is in a mess, when we both pass by one that way. We can arrange it together, and so we teachers set an example. When the classroom is neat and clean and ordered we can feel a bit of satisfaction. Besides order and tidiness help discipline and class management. Even more if we have our students sitting nice, at classes. Desks should be set in straight rows and columns so we get a rectangle of desks. Before the bell sounds, we can have our students tidy up the classroom. As well the classroom noticeboard should show up clean and from time to time posters and students’ projects will be removed and replaced by other notices and other posters. Remember we can deliver small jobs or chores to our students and some shall be in charge of the order of the classroom, or the students themselves could suggest their c...

  We teachers cannot reach all we would like to, at our classroom! Because of that, also for looking after the classroom and the school, and for making our dear students become more responsible about their environment, we could assign them with small jobs. For example: turning off lights after the class day, erasing the chalkboard, aligning desks neat, picking up pieces of paper from the floor, going to other school places to fetch something or announce another teacher about some point, taking care of the noticeboard, watering the plants, tidying the classroom, getting enough chalk for the chalkboard, etc. Experience tells me our students like those small jobs, and they feel like important. In that way we look after the classroom and make our students responsible, like I said. Even we could tell them in that way they think of others in order to help and serve them, we’re helping them become matured, and even they can offer those small jobs to God. All that with ...

Inside a family we’ve got to combine working out by the two parents mostly plus home care.  The point may be every member of the family should invest time at home, at chores and at baby care, for example.  Now fathers cook, take care of the family baby or babies, also changing the diapers (or nappies, in UK) for instance.  Every family member must provide something, if we want that house turns out good and pleasant to live in.  Besides we’ll be preventing our kids from playing video-games too much. What they’ve got to do is studying and doing homework and doing some housework as well. / Photo from: o-FATHER-SON-COOKING-facebook www smoothteddy com 

Students’ desks if ordered in neat rows helps authority and class management and discipline.  So at the end of the class or/and the beginning you can have your students reordering the desks into a tidy way.  There shouldn’t be extra school furniture in classrooms: they tend to provoke chaos and helps… misbehavior.  As well try to make your students do not scribble on the desks. You can have a student in charge of calling the attention if there’s scribbling. This could be as a small job. This conducting will help that student (and the others) mature.  Finally get electric fans for spring, fall and summer! Also it helps a lot at their learning! / Photo from: classroom_blind2 claireamato wordpress com

Let’s think of a kid that likes to feel useful in the classroom or at home.  He feels good because he is trying to fulfill his small job in the classroom or his chore at home.  Make him think he’s serving big his classmates or the other family members.  Those tasks train him to become responsible. The ideas on this post are inspired by the reading of Juan José Javaloyes. / Photo from: www hometipsforwomen com

Parents ought to talk with their children a lot, listening at what it is important to them.  Even dad or mom can talk with the family at dinner for example, about some things which could be approved by the members of the family: proposing a place to spend short summer vacations, schedule (or timetable) for playing videogames, small jobs like walking the dog or mowing the lawn or putting out garbage.  We will not talk about everything, like even economic dire straits and problems – that topic will be discussed by parents and maybe an elder brother or sister.  The point is there should be common times to meet together and talk. If possible dad and mom should be at home at dinner time, together with their children. / Photo from: familydinner blog gotbeer com

Pre-adolescents, above all boys of 10, 11, 12… tend to be generous by themselves.  We parents and grandparents and teachers should make good use of this period to help them grow with generosity: they’re prone to help, to give, to give themselves to others.  We could give and assign our sons and daughters small jobs at home or at the school, as a practical clue or tip I give you. They’re prone to cooperate.  Small jobs at home? Mowing the lawn, getting out the garbage at night, walking the dog, setting the table for dinner, making the bed in the morning, washing the dishes, etc.  At school? Turning off the lamps at the end of the class-day, erasing the chalkboard, picking up balls of paper on the floor, airing the classroom, looking after the bulletin board of the classroom, watering the plants , etc. / Photo from: danubio www catai es

Students in our classrooms must feel nice. All the school must be nice.  The first premise is teaching the students to drop for instance wrapping paper into trash cans (or litter boxes).  In girls’ schools the classroom might be even cozy.  Take into account that we the teachers and the students spend long for a single day. And this is day after day, I mean, a lot of time.  The school is kind of a second home.  There should be central heating, and, if possible, air conditioning, or fans.  Something that has proved to be sound is to make a small job list.  You can have students who erase the chalkboard and clean the eraser, rearrange desks into rows,  turn off lights at the end of the day,  be in charge of selecting useful posters and projects to set on the notice boards,  open the window to air the stuffy classroom,  remind their classmates of rearranging desks into rows,  a team to ...

Our teen sons and daughters, or our students should feel we trust them by delegating some tasks to them.  In this way they will see and feel we trust them and we love them – love of benevolence in teachers’ case. And so they’ll feel important enough because they receive a small job in the classroom.  This will contribute to make them grow up fine, just because of that: we delegate to them, and they feel loved. Also they’ll be educated as responsible people: I must carry out my job, they could say. / Photo from: Male-student-studies. news rutgers edu