How to Breathe New Life into Your Teaching
And Ultimately, into Your Students
Teaching begins with Seeing things in your students that nobody has ever recognized in them before —
and letting them know, in no uncertain terms, that these qualities are special and worthy.
Over the course of my English teaching career, I have had the pleasure to watch many of my students go from 5 to 500 miles per hour in a very short time.
This is the kind of mileage that cannot be attained solely through drilling, repetition, or even willpower.
There is a chasm of difference between a classroom that is perfunctorily listening with their minds, and students who are uninhibitedly listening to you with their hearts.
When students understand that there is more to language and literature than the literal, they are almost always driven to surmount the technicalities to unlock what is spoken and written between the lines:
METAPHORS
hold the power to speak to the subconscious, and convey some of the world’s greatest mysteries.
When students can see reflections of themselves and their own memories and experiences in every new word presented, in every story we study, in each novel we analyze, in all concepts we consume, doors get flung wide open. Every facet of their learning experience starts to flow with greater momentum.
Where words fail, there are other vehicles: The highest form of communication is not language, but
PRESENCE.
A keystone for effectively teaching English is embracing its massive global importance with simultaneous appreciation for where it’s not important at all.
Recognize the beauty of your students’ mistakes, the sincerity of their efforts, the value of their inquiries, the potency of their opinions, the grace in their conclusions, the dexterity in their discoveries.
Use humor and play to spotlight the common threads that connect us all. Ask yourself, what is true for every human being on earth?
For example there’s a small part of all of us that longs to stay in bed on a cold winter morning, or completely lose our minds when subjected to excessive triggers.
They know that you know that they know that you know.
Deep empathy, delivered with a lightness of touch, is the timeless foundation for unrelenting growth, the universal pursuit of knowledge and consummate self-actualization.
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More spice for the inspirational educator’s soul:
When the Critical Thinking in Your 5th Grade Classroom is S L A Y I N G
Words are Foam Bullets: How to Make Vocab Lessons More Fun with a Roast
Thanks for reading Writers Guild — A Smedian publication
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