I have been so busy during these days. While most of the teachers are already in vacation, I am still busy. But this time, studying. I went back to school as old times. I am studying as a requirement of the Ministery of Education in order to improve and certify my level of English with ALTE3.
Of course, it is a good chance I can improve myself. But being a student reminded me what it was being a student.
Then I can deduce some ideas:
- Students are eager to learn, just if it is something interesting, amazing, new or relevant for themselves.
- Students can concentrate if what they are doing it is not that complex neither so easy.
- Students can concentrate, but for some few minutes only.
- Students get new information, but at the same time, they are creating new information in their minds (that is why they tend to fly away with their imagination)
- Students want organized classes, with a serious work. But at the same time, they want to feel they are in a comfortable place.
- Students want organization, but they want amazing things to happen. Like, they expect to have a schedule, but then suddenly, there is something unexpected.
- Students want to learn, but they feel that they don't need to learn all. They need time to assimilate and at their own time to create their own knowledge.
- Students like new things, but it doesn't mean that every new thing will be interesting for them.
- Students enjoy just a normal conversation, not the patterned sentences used to learn a language.
I hope to continue learning more and more and sharing with you every new idea.
Hi Julian!
ReplyDeleteYou’ve made some great observations! Thanks for sharing!
It’s really useful for teachers to be in the skin of a student. First of all, you’re learning sth and teachers generally like learning, secondly, you make observations of what works and what doesn’t with students (like you did in this post), and thirdly, you can steal some great teaching ideas and methods from your tutors :p
Btw, I haven’t introduced myself! I’m Helen, an ESL teacher from Ukraine, this year I’m not teaching, so I’ve become a learner too (but an online one : )) Since I discovered Google Reader (it happened 1 month ago) I’ve been adding educators’ blogs and sites that I come across to it, but your blog caught my eye amongst the others by these beautiful green leaves and the nice text fonts :D And then I read some posts and liked the way you reflect on teaching issues :) I felt that we’re very like-minded, in our attitude to teaching. So I’ll keep commenting to your posts, if you don’t mind :p
Good luck in your studies and lots of comfortably-organized and unexpectedly structured lessons to you! lol
Thanks for your comments Helen, I think there are still more things to be said, but probably, I will share them in other posts. And of course you are invited to comment as much as you want.
ReplyDeleteHey! I like the way you say it "comfortably-organized and unexpected structured lessons". Maybe I could say it is like "unexpected structured lessons within a comfortable and guided environment" :) But I liked the idea of unexpected structured classes. And amazing class has both sides, and then it becomes interesting. But I think, that when we talk about students, there is still a lot to say, and nothing is so exact. Every student is different, and that is the beauty of the schools. Every one is a complete different universe.
Julian, do you know about 'The 30 Goals Challenge' project that has launched this week? You like writing and reflecting, so it could be interesting for you to participate. Have a look:
ReplyDeleteBlog:
http://teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org/30-goals-2012/
Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/30Goals
Goal # 1: create a Me-Manifesto
http://teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org/2012/01/16/goal-1-create-your-me-manifesto-30goals/
I am checking already, thanks so much for the post.
ReplyDelete