Looking back on my English Classes

 What I have learned from my students in EFL/ ESL classes

by Jean Lee

 

I still remember the first day of my ESL teaching. I was full of passion, anticipation, and dreams of helping my students reach their common goal of improving English. I was a firm believer or a naïve educator who expected each and every student (waiting for me to show up in the classroom) to welcome the moment of being singled out to speak up about their thoughts and feelings of the day and the reason to learn English with an innocent smile on their faces. As I stepped inside the classroom, the noise among the students stopped right away. There was no such thing as willingness to greet in high note or eagerness to become vocal about anything in store for them in class. JUST SO QUIET. I mean TOO QUIET for me to imagine if I’d be able to make them open up their mouths or even their minds in that class. Throughout my teaching years, I’d come to learn how to approach my students on day one and lead them to become more self-empowered students in the end.

 

First off, I should not have overwhelmed them by talking too much too soon. I needed to give them some time to process words coming out of my mouth, even if it might have felt “forever” to wait for their responses. Looking back, it was not my students that felt nervous on the first day of my class. I was the one who was like a racehorse wearing a blinder to stay focused all the time, spraying all the vocab and grammar points to be crammed into their heads.

 

Secondly, I should have known that most students would not be thrilled but rather feel quite uncomfortable by being handpicked to answer personal questions, especially when they are all strangers to one another on day one. I should have asked them first to interview one another at their own pace without worrying about the possible embarrassing moments of making mistakes in front of the whole class. Most of my students preferred such pair works or a group activities before the dreadful time of individual presentations.

 

Another important lesson that I’d learned was that I had to strike a good balance between a friendly chimer and a patient listener. Quite oftentimes, I was feeling awkward with somewhat lengthy silence between my questions and students’ the responses. It was hard to resist the urge to fill the unexpected tranquility by saying something instead of waiting for students to organize their thoughts before saying them out loud. However, I don’t mean that teachers are supposed to keep their mouths shut all the time while waiting for students’ responses. Finding the right moment and frequency to chime in with them was a challenging task for me.

 

Last, but not least at all, I should have been more cautious about lowering students’ affective filter when we brought up culturally sensitive or personal issues in class. Even if reading random news articles or tales from textbook might be a boring part of a communicative language class, teachers need to know that quite a lot of students feel more comfortable talking about the world outside rather than showing or describing their personal backgrounds or stories. I looked back if there happened to be some moments that offended my students for some reason or other. If so, shame on me.

 

As an English language educator, I always feel grateful for all my students who taught me how to become a better guiding light for them.

 

 

Here’s a little piece of 5-7-5 Haiku by me.

 

I am a teacher.

But I am a learner, too.

So happy as both.