Experiences of a teacher of English

  Phew! I’ve invested a nice great effort lately on my blog. It’d be great it would help you teachers, busy teachers, who are the ones that publish and read from TeacherLingo. I’d like today to say that kids grow up without stridencies when there’s love at home. In that way they can learn, because they can work and study. Kids need their parents’ love plus all their family’s love. Otherwise they will learn with scarcities. At school we teachers will achieve and attain to also educate them if we love them, with benevolence love, which means to wish what’s good for them (bene-volence). They’ll be able to recall us easily if we loved them with that benevolence love. Also if we were demanding toward them, if we asked from them and at the same time we gave them knowledge and gaining competences for their future. What teachers can we remember the most? So love to our students, but never overprotection, neither at home nor at school. You tell me that in large families there’...

  Today’s school is changing, as you may have noticed. Today’s school is the starting of the school of the future and of coming years. I can only name some of the new trends. Sorry for it’s a rather long list, but it’s interesting to take a look at it anyway. But please don't discard things that go well, traditional ways of teaching. Namely the trends: flipped classroom, creativity by the student and by the teacher, connection with the students’ parents and family, problem-solving activities, learning and acquiring second and foreign languages, coaching by the teacher, comprehensive and integral education, both will and feelings taking into account, group-working and furniture in order to that way of working, natural light in the classroom, working on their own, the Internet, tablets or laptops, developing apps, tutoring-sessions, class discussions at learning and acquiring other languages, discussions with grown-ups about their way of learning and also listening to the t...

  Today at the center where I teach grown-ups have had an interesting experience. We’ve been talking in English for an hour, from some worksheets a female student has provided to us, about healthcare for the old. Today there were only three students and they three were speaking in English rather fluently, I’d say. That’s great. We’ve discussed about how walking, brisk walking is so good for our health, when we start to become rather old. We also solved some small problems at talking in that language. The overall thing was great. In Spain more and more we are aware that mastering English is just essential, not only for getting a future job, but also for everyday conducting and relating with other people that live abroad or here in our country – we live in a globalized atmosphere, as you well know. Bilingual people or people with rather an advanced level of English are more agile and flexible regarding their minds and solving problems. It’s been a great thing: they three ...

  American expert Marc Prensky states that we teachers have to be like our students’ coaches. All knowledge is in the Internet, and we have to teach our students practical things and how to better the world and their own surroundings. You may agree or disagree with this scholar, but I’m telling you something about his proposals, worth to consider and think of them. We may be asking our students which school subject their favorite one is, but we should ask them what their passion is. Those students could tell you their teachers don’t know what their passions are, and they should know them... We have to extract the best from our students. Our students should embark in bettering our world and our surroundings, like for example a girl might design and construct an app to call the police in case of gender violence. Some other experts state that we teachers have to foster and accentuate creativity both from us teachers as well as from our students. And I’ve written quit...

  I’m briefly saying something about something else I’ve already said. Second or foreign language students should be autonomous learners, although they also need presentations by their teachers, presentations about what their teachers know and may be an expert on… Okay, students currently have all in their textbooks, iPads and the Web. They should investigate and research on those topics their teacher could present, and subsequently present them to their classmates. Maybe sometimes. We teachers should take more into account what our students can say about their own education and learning processes. I don’t discard presentations, you know, but sometimes students might find those topics on those resources I just mentioned. Maybe kids should be even more protagonists, with their teachers’ help and assistance of course. So let’s not “interrupt” our students when they’re learning on their own... Some of these ideas were taken from New Yorker Marc Prensky, some from other a...

  I’m afraid some of our students are rather wimpy and softie. I don’t try to be negative, because it is not my style. With such students, first at home but at school too we as teachers can do a lot in their favor: we have to make them think of their situation. They have everything one person may have, at home, at school, but they’ve got to appreciate and value what they have: their families, their teachers, who invest a nice effort in them… If we make them think they will improve. I’m thinking of a nice experience we implemented at the school where I taught for nine years in Jaén, a placid southern city in Spain. Not me but one of the teachers, maybe two, used to take the students that had everything at their disposal to visit poor people and sick ones too, in accordance with their parents – their diseases weren’t contagious. And those kids, those students had to face up to talk and maybe help those poor people… and in the end our students achieved to give conversati...

  As I’ve advised you all, you could try and learn one or two or a few new words every day, if you’re a non-native second or foreign language teacher. In that way you can be piling and “rounding up” a vast vocabulary over time. Well, now I’d tell you that you could utilize that new word and it’ll get stuck in your memory by using it. How? For example by using that word or one of those words even in the lessons you teach: you can use that word in a sentence when you’ve got to give your students an example of something you’re teaching. Alike you can tell your students that was a word you’ve learned lately, and eventually that action could motivate your students to carry on learning English, because you’ve set a nice example and they can observe you may be somewhat excited with your new words. Your students will value and appreciate that struggle of yours, tentatively. You’re on the same learning pathway as them! You’re companions of “travel”. Dedicate not a long lesson ...