Experiences of a teacher of English

  What does an English language teacher wish, really wish? That his or her students would learn English! One point for you, for you got it!  Like a couple of days ago I wrote down some notes, in Spanish, whose translation would be, “In order for his students to actually learn English they need to read a lot, and write a lot, and speak a lot.” And that’s it. The article is over.  Yet let me tell you more about that point, just in case it may help you out, if you’re a second or foreign language teacher, or otherwise a learner of that language.  You know, it’s my experience, and a lot of people’s one. Since I’m a teacher, I’ve had to speak a lot in class, for my students to input a lot of English, plus from the CDs, plus from their class peers, plus from our assistant teacher. And by practicing a lot, I’ve learned a lot, I mean, to speak -- and much more I’ve still got to learn!  And I’ve read massively and intensively, and I’ve written a lot of articles on this ve...

  We well may be finishing one more school year – if you are for example a committed teacher, like most of you are. And we want our dear students would learn a lot, as well as they would be happy.  I was wondering what an ideal teacher should be like. One of the main premises is he or she must be an authority in class. Are you one? Am I one? I guess an authority teacher is the one who achieves their students would actually learn.  I don’t mean those teachers ought to be like a sheer guard in front of a gang of convicts. So let me show you what I’ve seen in some classrooms, and which accounts for being a real authority.  You know, that teacher must treat his or her students in an exquisite way. I mean, they should respect those students in class – I’ve seen it and I’m now thinking of a teacher I had at high school who was an authentic authority – he treated his students – us! – in a tactful way – he never humiliated a kid at all in class. And when he met us out of the...

  Ok, bullying may constitute a problem at our school, among the kids, but ultimately it is not a new problem at all.  And we teachers cannot ignore it or stop looking aside.  However, I guess we oughtn’t to super protect our kids. It’s them who ultimately need to learn how to face the violent classmate. Obviously I don’t mean they have to learn how to hit each other, but, you know, the timid kid should learn how to behave with all his classmates.  This is something Alfonso Aguiló points out as well. And he has educated so many kids this far, and made up and founded many new schools.  So ok, we have to be attentive, and kids also should take care of one another, yet they must learn how to coexist with everyone else.  It also depends on the specific school we are dealing with.  And they must learn also to make friends among other kids. And overcome their possible inherent shyness.  Also we can consider whether our kids are learning how to suffer in...

  Believe me, it’s something great to teach English to both kids and adults, and to help them learn and acquire it. It’s great, tiresome though. Well, which job is not something tiring?  We cannot, however, as teachers confine our work to just teach English, or any other language. We need to be aware that we are facilitating some people would talk to some others. There is the core point of the issue. We are connecting people with one another.  We have to bear in mind that our job is that great: one person communicates with another one. We teach English for practical purposes, communication in a word. And communication is something so human! And in class there must be that communication, between the teacher and the students, and among them all.  We do not confine to teaching language facts, although we have to also teach them. We are making up bridges among people. And that’s simply great. Isn’t it?  Thus let’s have in mind that we are treating human people, huma...

  We teachers have to manage classroom behavior, okay. But more important is to have our dear students to work and learn and study and read and … okay too. We have to keep an eye on our students to avoid they would be disruptive.  However, as well we have to trust and confide in them. It’s a balance, you know. Unless we trust them, we cannot educate them well, or maybe at all.  If we trust those young people, well, you know, they will grow into better persons. We need to be accomplices to them. They play in our team, so as to say.  In principle we will believe what they tell us: everyone deserves the right to be believed. It seems better we could be sometime deceived than not to trust them. Well, we must not be naïve. But let’s accept what they tell us. If one student lies to me, I will have to teach him how to say the truth, and why lies are no good. Remember we are educating them, and their parents have entrusted them to us to be raised in an honorable way.  W...

  One issue every teacher thinks of from time to time, or perhaps often because that teacher may have that kind of problem, above all if he or she is beginning their career as a teacher, is how to manage classroom behavior.  Today I’m trying to say something, apart from what I’ve written so far on quite many posts. You may find more under the tag or label management of the class .  The main point I think is important is to have the clear idea that both the teacher and his or her students are in the classroom to work, as said in plain English. They come to the schoolroom to work. The students to learn, to learn by working, and their dear teacher to teach them and help them become full and honorable persons.  So the main concern of their teacher ought not to be classroom management, but how to have those dear people to work and learn.  Nevertheless if some problem comes up in class, some behavior problem I mean, that teacher might say or show something, depending ...

  Is motivation in the classroom important for our students? Yep, it is indeed, but there are other crucial factors, as you may know.  For sure the lesson cannot be boring and our students would get drowsy like sheep, but also we have to consider other points so as to have efficient lessons.  I say it because when a student – either a kid or an adult – gets so involved and plunged into learning about some issue, well then that student may become an expert at that topic, and for him or her it may be that interesting.  I think we have to help our dear students create and make up working habits. Then, it’s more likely they will like the school subject we teach.  Schools are not amusement parks, as Spanish teacher, philosopher and pedagogue Gregorio Luri puts.  Our subject and its presentation in class must be interesting, competent, and professional, yet we ought not to seek motivation as the most important point in class.  I have met teachers that with t...

  Let’s see. Do we really want teaching quality? We do, I guess. It depends mostly on the teacher’s quality. If we wish to improve our classroom teaching, well, we have to better ourselves as teachers. And I do know many of you are trying and working on it.  If we wish our schools improve, then let us improve as teachers ourselves. And that is fulfilled on regular and ordinary days, like today!  Now I’m reading a book on Spanish teacher and teachers’ teacher Tomás Alvira (1906-1992). And he stated that quality on education (and we as teachers are also educators) is accomplished through quality on the teacher.  A teacher needs to gain virtues, or values, like a strong will, imagination, dedication, a thorough personality, a strong vocation, attention, motivation to also motivate the kids or adults …  That teacher ought to have a nice and strong will, otherwise how is he or she going to get their students interested in the school subject?  Something else. A t...

  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 may be teachers, okay? We may also be educators. But do we know what to educate is? Well, maybe we already know it, or know something about it.  Where I want to aim? Educating is getting the best from my students, yet also it is getting the best to them.  Some people say kind of, Well, we have to get the best from those learners. Yep, but also we have to take knowledge and other things to them.  Otherwise we will not obtain the best from them.  This seems clear in children’s case: we can try and get the best from them, but alike we have to provide knowledge and others to them, because they were born with no knowledge at all.  Spanish philosopher and pedagogue Gregorio Luri puts it in that way: the teacher has to provide knowledge to their students.  It doesn’t seem sound to get some children into a classroom and naively try and get the best from them, like they already were wise people.  Let’s give them knowledge and other things. For that w...

  On my previous post I told you that we teachers have to also educate our students for their future… and for the present alike. And we have to have them contemplate beauty. For example through texts.  And always in accordance with their parents and with human dignity.  Well, you know, if possible, we can have them read the classics, where we can find and encounter beauty. Plus other human values such as good, evil, love, virtues, generosity, sincerity and honesty, doing good to others, friendship, honorability, etcetera.  You know what? In principle I was going to have all my students read graded readers and other full version books, for instance classics, but for two of my groups I’m going to introduce an English coursebook, so what can I do to offer good reads?  Well, I have to check whether the coursebook contents are okay and in accordance to human dignity – otherwise I would have to offer other texts and not that coursebook. Anyway, I foresee that the text...

  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 ...

  Today I've learned the actual meaning of 'scolding'. And it means to correct and blame somebody angrily and noisily. And I have used that word to mean 'correct' on previous posts. We teachers can correct our students for their good, but I think that in no way should we scold them, for they have a great dignity as human beings. I have already written about this latter idea on previous posts. Have a nice day.   

  The teacher. The teacher has to wish to make up a classroom atmosphere where the students – most of them may wish to learn and work – can find and encounter the ambience where they can actually learn and work.  That atmosphere is one where delicacy, culture, respect, civilization, working minds, can be encountered. The students thus are serene and peaceful to learn and work. They are thus treated with those delicacy and respect.  The teacher in the meanwhile manages to motivate his or her students. And these ones also want to get plunged into the topic they are dealing with in the classroom.  But if the teacher is harsh and covetous and he just tries to get a jail-like behavior-management, and he just shouts at his students… well, he will not make up that culture atmosphere where his students can learn and work peacefully .  These students are assisted to make up and take up virtues. That word comes from a Latin word,  vir, which means strength and fo...

  I am finishing the current school year. Or I should say, WE are finishing our school year, my dear students plus me. They’ve been great also this school year, and I’ve noticed their progress in the target language. They’ve paid off. Yes, they have.  They are adults.  Recently I have again understood that successful learners are the ones who really wish to learn and those really in need of learning that target language, like migrants that have to earn their lives in a foreign country.  In an English classroom there must be a real immersion in that tongue: communication is sustained and held in English, like the classroom were a piece of a foreign country.  I teach English as a foreign language, or perhaps I should say as a second language, for English is permeating people’s learning and studies, above all amongst young people. Indeed.  This finishing school year I have offered my dear students unabridged articles from the Web plus emails in English to info...

We teachers should wish our students would learn, both contents and skills. Well, and values as well: ecology, honesty, working capacity, generosity, discernment, sincerity, friendliness and friend-making skills, charity, piety, being good citizens, joy, etcetera.  And we’re finishing the school year – in the northern hemisphere. We teachers will achieve all those nice things if we love our students with benevolence love, which is to seek what is good for them.  That benevolence love is a continuation of the love their parents have to them. And the school should be also a continuation of home.  We educate those kids – or those adults – on behalf of their parents, but in their own name if they are grownups.  Alike we teachers will be happy and carry out a plenitude life if we love our students. On this context our labor as teachers is, well, teaching. In other words, presenting those people new contents, plus helping them acquire those skills and values they may expec...

We may be starting a new school year or otherwise soon we will start one. And we want to be good and competent teachers, right?  In order to be that good teacher we have to devote some time to train ourselves, although we may be hectic. It is a matter to dedicate ten minutes every day, perhaps between two activities. It is a matter to create that habit.  And that habit I would say is reading. Reading about the discipline we teach and how to teach it, perhaps in the new normality we live in because of the Covid-19 pandemics.  Among those reads I think we could read literature classics: They were written by some of the best minds across history and they provide with human values every teacher should have.  Also we could read from other teachers who post and contribute to websites on the Internet.  As well we need some philosophy: That discipline exists to aid each human being how to live wisely. Always in accordance to human dignity.  Why should we teachers r...

There is a remarkable difference, if you’re a teacher, like me, or a boss, between auctoritas and potestas .  Let’s go with the second one. I mean, the teacher for example can be like a cop or a sergeant or so and exert some kind of power on the basis of shouting at his students. I have nothing against the police and the army – all my admiration goes to those professions.  But what I mean is that a teacher can try to master his students on the basis of shouting and avoiding any disruption among his students.  However, can that teacher really educate his students?  Much better is whether that teacher has some authority.  The difference is pretty big. Authority is on the basis of really educating those kids or those adults the teacher teaches. Authority is moral. It is built upon some nice mastering of the subject he teaches plus the respect his students devote to that teacher because he loves them and also behaves honorably.  He has gained that authority am...

If possible – and often it may be possible – we teachers should enjoy teaching. It depends also on the teacher’s interior richness, on the values he has cultivated.  He should value and weigh up each moment of the lesson, in terms of didactics.  For example he will say to his students that right then they’re achieving such or such teaching goal. In my case sometimes I tell my students that right then we’re communicating in English in the classroom! We may have been speaking in English for how long, for instance a quarter of an hour. And we can proceed in English. In that way they get motivated and also then they may enjoy the lesson. We transmit and pass on the like for teaching/ learning to our students.  As well in that way we connect with our students, and we show the teacher also is human. Thus the teacher can get the best from him or herself, and alike from each student. The point is letting our students know that things are turning out well....

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...