faux teacher faux teaching

After a good 7 months in the classroom, I’m not sure if proclaiming that I’ve found my life’s work is a bit premature. But holy crap, I love teaching. I’ve taught English for about five years on and off now, but up until this passed year, I was volunteering and the classes were small and private. But from the first second I stood in front of the students this year, at a real live school, in a real live classroom, I felt so at home that the only things missing were a lamp and a pillow!

In hope that I will use this experience in a future teaching position, I kept a log of all the important lessons I learned throughout my first semi-formal year. Following is a list of things I want to remember, it’s not meant to be a teaching guide, I’m not a professional after all, so don’t trust me!

Smile.
Be warm. Say hello. Ask them how they are, then let them respond. Make them feel welcome and loved, then at the end of class, thank them for their time. The respect and love you give will be returned if it is genuine.

Be prepared.
Have an activity, theme or formal lesson ready. Be prepared for all eyes to be on you. If you don’t have something to stimulate them, you will lose control, get flustered and feel shitty, you might even cry! Do you need to make copies for your students? Do you need to bring chalk? White board markers? Technology? Unsalted peanuts? Think ahead!

If you aren’t prepared…
If for some reason you have to wing it, stay calm, keep collected, act confident and treat them like the little adults that they are. Give them respect and treat them with maturity and professionalism and they will likely respond with the same. Act like you planned to have no plan, you know, no big deal, spontaneous lesson plan! Talk to them about things that any person could find interesting, ask them questions, get creative.

Why are you even here?
What do you want to teach them? Do you want to focus on spoken slang, on a cultural motif like holidays, on history, art, food, grammar? What do you want them to learn from you? As an ESL/ELL teacher you have an lot of freedom in choosing a method of your choice to teach them English. What do you find interesting in life? What subject can you passionately teach them English through? Because it’s not just a language, there’s a whole culture inside of each word. Consider this at the beginning of the year and then try to be consistent.

Where are we and how did we get here?
It is helpful to keep track of what you teach, to review it often and to keep it for reference. I found that teaching them less of the “new” lessons and instead focusing on reviewing and repeating information until it stuck was more rewarding. Kids seem to love showing that they know things, so let them get to that point on each subject, then yank out the rug from under them and teach them something fresh!

Can I interest you in a little… WAR!
Like all humans, kids are stimulated by competition. If you are playing Jeopardy or Trivia with a room full of hormone-hyped teenagers, it doesn’t matter what part of puberty they are experiencing, they will shut up and concentrate on the question if it means they will have a better chance of understanding, answering correctly and therefore beating the pants off the opposition.

Let them be themselves.
I’m not sure what professionals would say about this one, I’ve been criticized for it, but I allow the kids to be as inappropriate and vulgar as they want to be as long as it is not disrespectful or distracting to anyone. I’ve had kids tell me that their Christmas tradition was to wait for 4:20 on Christmas day to smoke a “fat blunt” and watch Harold and Kumar’s Christmas Special. I thanked them for sharing, informed them that foreign chemicals could have negative effects on their senses of perception and then I taught the class the slang word “stoner.” (This may come up in life, legalization is spreading after all!) I’ve corrected a student’s misspelling of “masturbation” and I don’t treat curse words differently than formal English unless it is derogatory to a person or group of people.

I never had a student disrespect another in class that I am aware of, and I felt that I gained a lot of respect by letting them be who they are and speak how they wanted. I also don’t feel comfortable disciplining young people for things I do and I’m plenty vulgar and inappropriate. My job is not to turn them in to polite worker bees. In my view, my job is to share with them my (and their) experience in life and guide them through my language and culture. Though I am a painfully laid back teacher, I never let them get too comfortable with me. But I accepted them as they came and felt great at the end with each one of my classes. I had expectations that were consistent (be respectful, work together, speak English) and they met them consistently.

Behavior problems…
I worked with great kids and didn’t have a lot of these, lucky me! But when I had any attitude issues (they are moody high schoolers after all..) I would say something stern to show them that their attitudes were not welcome, then I would ignore the student until the end of class and have them stay after. Once every other person left, I would have a heart to heart with them, ask them why they were acting out. I was never accusatory or angry, I asked them like I would ask a good friend, with love and curiosity. I always had good results and never had to discipline the same student twice.

For talkers, I gave them “the look,” a raised eyebrow and a little tilt of the head or I would clap and talk loudly saying “please, can I be so lucky as to have your attention”. This usually worked, unless they were trying to impress their friends by being “too cool to listen” in which case I would separate them, make everyone watch them move, smile, thank them and move on. At this point things were typically calm if not a little awkward for some (cough cough you damn talkers!).

Yelling sucks.
I am sincerely troubled by people who yell at students. They are young people, people just the same as any other group of people and deserve respect, love and understanding even when they act out (as people, even adults, often do!). I have never yelled at a student and hope I am never pushed to use this disciplinary method because I find it disrespectful, embarrassing to all involved parties and inefficient.

They are like you!
They like to do things that all people like to do, connect with each other and express themselves. They like to sing, dance, draw, listen to music, watch films and tv shows, play games, compete, laugh and be challenged but only if they are in an environment that feels safe, loving, supporting, accepting, and you know, all that tender shit. Of course this is my style. There are teachers that try to give kids more of a tough-loving or serious environment to learn in, separate education from non-academic endeavors in life. That’s just not me. We play Jeopardy and draw in my class.

Help them grow as people.
Encourage them to be creative and think independently! I had a rule in my classes that if anyone wanted to sit out of a lesson and just watch, not participate, then they could. The catch was that they had to tell me a riddle, joke or original story in English. The riddle had to be clever, the joke had to be funny and the story had to be long enough by my judgement. Only one student ever took me up on this offer. She wrote a one page story about a girl who came in contact with aliens, she was so proud to share it, we clapped, I thanked her and as she sat I told her she was free to draw or watch the lesson quietly but she insisted that she still participate. I got emotional at this point!

Do not take this as advice! But if you want to use these ideas….
I could go into detail about the differences between the system in which I spent my first semi-formal year, the French system, and my home system in the States. But I won’t. I will say that the whole French system, from primary school through collège (Junior High School), lycée (like High School) and their higher education system is centered around national standards that are strictly uniform throughout the country and these standards are taught in an authoritative manner in which information is expected to be digested quickly and efficiently. Young people have the opportunity to leave lycée with a very solid knowledge base that is arguably much higher in general than in the States, though there is less emphasis on social development which we seem to value more. These differences are complex and backed by centuries of history that I am not going to get in to. These differences left me a little disoriented at times, but on my last day of work, I came to a conclusion after all. I was not hired to teach like a French teacher, I was hired to share my culture and language my way. So I will leave it at that…