Experiences of a teacher of English

Love makes all new.  The person who loves invents love every single day.  Love makes the teacher to feel as young over time and in spite he’s getting old: he keeps having a young spirit and attitude!  Love makes the teacher see things as new all the time. He gets interested on all the other person’s things, as if they were of his own!  He sees every student as unique, and the student’s things are seen as of his own. He gets interested on anything of the other person. Because of that the teacher treats each and every student as unique.  When addressing a class of students, each one reckons and feels as if he was the one the teacher is addressing! I’ve seen this, actually.  Okay, someone could say, but all that is very difficult to attain… I would tell you the main point is to love. The good teacher is the one that loves his students, his colleagues, his students’ families, his job, his labor, his everyday teaching.  So...

I guess it’s right to address our students like they were grown-up’s.  In some way. I mean, you know, the point is to trust them and load them with their responsibility at learning and acquiring English. Explicitly and in plain English we could explain all this to them.  Moreover because they shall be adults or young men in a few years! In Granada I’ve encountered old students I had had in an English language course like the one I’m assisting now.  And they keep either a positive or a negative vision of us as teachers and monitors! But the main point is to think of them with a generous hear from us. The chief point is to really try to help them now and for their entire lives.  We have, I guess, to demand a lot and big from them, but in a nice way, trying to get the best stuff from them. They can give a lot. The point too is guessing how to extract the best from them, and we shall make it if we hit the target upon the right point, if we learn ho...

Today I copy from an email I just sent to some people I love. I think it is relevant and meaningful. And it sheds some light about discipline and class management. At the summer camp I’m spending here at Spanish Costa del Sol.  I’ve included something new, which I did not write to those people I love.  The picture just shows the impressive ancient temple of the Jews at Jerusalem.  I have to carry on with our students' discipline and class management implementing. Aquí en general estamos teniendo no demasiado calor. Hoy he tenido que leerle la cartilla a una de las dos clases. He apelado a su responsabilidad, y a su buen hacer, y a su afecto hacia mí, y han reaccionado bien. Hay que enseñar a cada uno, y no a todos en masa. Son buenos chicos y están en un curso de inglés en plenas vacaciones, tiene mérito por su parte. Mañana quizá les diga algo positivo. Y apelando a su buen hacer y responsabilidad: la mejor disciplina es la autodisciplina. ...

At the English language camp I’m working at these days I think something that helps our students learn English and receive education is that we share many things: we monitors share the line at the cafeteria self-service at lunch with the boys, for example.  In that way we can reach to help them more than if we were apart.  Also we can get a nice rapport with them, and be able to help them at some more aspects of their lives. As well we can share their learning process, at English and in general concerning other aspects of their lives.  I’ve got to say something else: we do learn from the students, or at least I can say that! I learn from their effort at learning and acquiring English, and their learning to talk in public, work in a work-group, and other daily professional competences we also implement here.  Alike the kids learn from us monitors. Whatever we do or whatever we don’t helps either educate them or get them ill-mannered and what is ...

Today Saturday, at the English language summer course, we didn’t have the two English teachers, and one of the camp monitors has had to teach two classes.  The students could choose between a spiritual retreat or recollection, or classes. Five have chosen English language classes, and the rest – some thirty-five students chose the recollection.  The monitor has told me the classes were fine, and the students were eager to participate.  That monitor told them the reason of his living was them, the students, and has told them about the vocation the teacher should have: the teacher must have passion and commitment about his teaching; thus, as he gives all his person to his students, these ones do learn and participate in those classes and he can really educate them.  The monitor or teacher has to love those boys with love of benevolence, plus with affection.  Moreover the teacher started the first class by making them align the classroom de...

These days of the English summer course I’m finding out once again that if you treat your students with politesse and fineness and delicateness, while at the same time you exact and demand from them, you’ll need less effort to achieve whatever you wish regarding their behavior and level of working.  The point is extremely treating our students with a fine respect, so we create and make up a nice atmosphere of delicateness – with nothing odd or strange, we aren’t at 18 th century Versailles!, and all this I’m writing about implies manliness – and hence we get more from our dear students: an atmosphere where it’s simpler to demand from them a fine working and learning.  Thus if you shout at someone, amid this nice atmosphere, the result is much more than if we always are shouting at them. For them then a shout is something so serious...  Otherwise if we’re all the time shouting at them, one more shout does little in order to push them up to work, and event...

In my career as a teacher I have met marvelous parents, and families, from whom I could learn a lot, okay.  But also I’ve encountered some many parents who are kind of too naive and think their children can never do bad things, serious bad things I mean. And they say or think “My son that? Never!”.  And I’ve always thought those parents have to be called to school to have a tutoring session with their children’s teachers – assuming those teachers do know kids can do serious bad things too.  What I mean, you know, is those parents should also be educated, in order to fulfill their role as parents or whatever family relations they are.  However in no way do I intend to draw disastrous and pessimistic panoramas, just trying to draw something closer to reality. My style isn’t negative, and thank God I could say I’m rather optimistic, counting on human resources and on God’s grace and help – He loves us with a limitless dad’s and mom’s love! / Photo f...