Inspiration – Exciting English

Yes, but what if it all works out?
— Omdenken.

But I have to…

First and foremost, we want our students to learn. But how that is done is often not determined by a teacher’s or student’s needs. There are governmental regulations, curriculum demands, schoolboard requirements, coursebooks, standardized tests, colleagues that have decided that their way of teaching is THE way of teaching and parents who need their children to score particularly well on your subject and know exactly how that should be done.

These conditions are all real. We as teachers have to manage these demands and requirements every lesson. It is easy to forget that learning is about student growth rather than following a curriculum. Yes, the curriculum is designed to instigate that growth, but let’s not forget there are many ways to get there. There is the coursebook’s way, the standardized test’s way, the way your colleague has been doing it for years and there is your way. A way that suits you and your students.

But often we forget there is a ‘your way’. We whip out the coursebook and assign a task which teaches the students to fill in the right form of this or that grammar item. We let them read a text and ask them to answer some questions on it, checking their understanding of what they have read. We check the work, assign some homework and move on to the next lot of students to repeat this once more.

Pretty boring if you ask me. But like many other teachers, I felt there was little room for ‘my way’. There was a planning to adhere to. Parallel classes to keep up with. A standardized test to prepare them for and a school board to convince that I am a ‘proper’ teacher.

My epiphany (and hopefully yours as well)

With a boring lesson, I did convince my superior that I was a ‘proper’ teacher. I was lucky enough that he tasted some of my unhappiness about the lesson that I had just let him observe. When I grieved my concerns about trying to not fall out of line, he reminded me of the simple fact that there are many ways to achieving the same result. A fact that I had totally and completely forgotten.

I was so concerned with all of the requirements that I had forgotten to have fun with it. And it showed. I felt uninspired and my students dreaded going to my classes. Something needed to change.

I am going to teach English my way. With fun, exciting assignments that make students want to come to my classes and make me excited to teach them. Yes, there are standardized tests, a curriculum and a final exam to work towards. But there are also many ways to get there. Let’s have some fun while we’re at it, shall we?

Have fun teaching! ^_^

Love,

Astrid

Hi! We are Astrid and Erik from The Netherlands and we are excited about teaching teenagers English as a Second Language (ESL) and having fun while doing it. Because life is too short to have a boring day in the classroom.

Learning and teaching any second language is easiest when lessons are enjoyable and students want to come to your classroom and actively participate. However, we often find ourselves working with what we have, rather than what we would like to be doing.

Why?

There are many good reasons to trudge through your teaching days uninspired. We as teachers are overwhelmed as it is. We are scared to let go of our feeling of control in the classroom (there is probably a curtain climber or two in every class, even if you have no curtains to climb within a two-mile radius). You might have no idea how to make this bog standard grammar activity fun. And besides, we have to follow a fixed plan and do what our colleagues are doing because there is a standardised test at the end of this unit of study and we really must all do the same thing. Right?!

Whatever your reasons might be for feeling stuck in a rut and not having fun with your students, spending your days doing something you do not love is exhausting for anyone.

Let’s have some fun!

We believe that teaching can be fun and students can have a blast while also learning a thing or two about English, or French, or German, or Spanish or any other second language they are learning. With this blog we would like to inspire you and invite you to go off the beaten track and introduce a little playfulness into your classroom. Get students working on creative assignments which gets them excited while also learning a new language.

We would like to show you how you can make minor changes to your lesson plans to get students excited about reading, writing, listening, speaking and revising grammar and vocabulary. We would also like to show you how you can incorporate these skills into a larger piece of study which involves a task based approach. Some activities will be very easy to incorporate into your everyday lessons while others take a little more work to organize. It’s up to you to decide what you are comfortable with.

Start small

Whether you are new to teaching a language or you are the been-there-done-that type, we hope to give you some teaching inspiration and invite you to try out some of our ideas. Start small. Try it with your nicest kids first. Get their feedback and reflect on what went well and what needs work. Try another activity and see how that works out. Slowly, you will see your confidence growing and your students will walk into your classroom excited to find out what is next.

Have fun teaching! ^_^

Love,

Astrid and Erik

Astrid has an MA in teaching English and Bilingual and International education from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. Her passion for English was sparked when she became a bilingal student at a Dutch secondary school, attending most of her classes in English. As a student, she thoroughly enjoyed the IB English A: Language and Literature programme and set out to become a teacher in that same programme. She has been teaching the IB programme and the non-bilingual programme since 2012. Currently, she teaches ESL to Dutch students between the ages of 15 and 18 years old at a secondary school in Gorinchem, The Netherlands.

Erik has a BA in English Language & Culture from the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. His passion for English and eventually getting a knack for the language came from video games and comics. The idea for teaching the language he loves came later, at university. He has been teaching ESL to Dutch students between the ages of 11 and 16 years old at a secondary school in Spijkenisse, the Netherlands.

Tag: Inspiration

This one is for the doubters