Teaching ESL has been many things to me. It started as a job and quickly developed into a passion and profession. It has opened many doors for me and led me on some of my greatest adventures. Because I taught English, I had the opportunity to live and work in another country and experience all of the amazing things that go with that. Teaching English has also allowed me to work at home and earn a fairly decent living. But the best thing about teaching English is that I have had the opportunity to meet some of the most courageous, gifted, intelligent, crazy, and interesting people in the world and I’m sure that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been teaching English.
I teach a TESL training course which certifies people to teach English abroad. To every class I always say my favourite thing about this job is the relationships that develop. Often my TESL students look for insight and perspective by asking me about my feelings regarding teaching. Here is my attempt to shed a little light on that subject.
A teacher has a unique status in the class when you teach adults. The status you have changes from class to class. What happens inside the classroom is so dynamic. It’s the people, not solely the material that make the lesson successful or not. Whether you are teaching TESL or ESL the principles are the same; it’s about the people.
You need to view the student from the perspective of a whole. This person is there to receive what you have to give from a language perspective, but there is also another dimension. You give the student much more than language knowledge. You also give them opportunity and a platform to express themselves in ways that you may never know. It’s usually about more than just language to the student. Where their language skills take them, probably will surpass your ability to imagine how language skills can benefit a person.
How do you address the element that occurs in additon to language skills? First of all, understand that you are there to serve the students. Be confident that you have something valuable to offer. (You don’t need to be able to recite every single grammar rule.) Honour that every student has a different motivation and allow them to use their motivation to the best of their ability. Remember language learning can be very stressful for a person especially if they have a lot riding on their good results, so don’t take all negativity personally. Respect worthiness. You are worthy of teaching them and they are worthy of learning from you.
