The TEFLer - Back to life, back to reality?

Welcome to The TEFLer - an English teacher’s companion encouraging reflection and action.

by Simon Pearlman 

For many of us our thoughts are beginning to turn back to the classroom, back to life, back to reality. Hopefully you’re feeling excited and recharged, ready for the challenges ahead, but not always. There maybe some sadness letting go of the summer, some trepidation thinking about going back, a tightening of our stomach muscles or a tension across our shoulders... that’s ok too. It's time to get back to it, it's time for some deep breaths, it's time to re-engage with the wonderful, messy, joyous, frustrating, complex spaces that are our classrooms.

Deep breaths and get it together.

Maybe now is the time to take some deep breaths. Three or four really deep breaths won’t make anything really change but it almost certainly will help something shift. Classrooms are so often both challenging and awe-inspiring, places of progress and frustration, places of difficulty and places of joy. As teachers we live in these paradoxes and we accept them as normal, it all is.

Maybe now it’s time to begin to get it together. One way to do it is to have clear in your mind what kind of classroom you want to have. In this idealised classroom (which doesn’t exist, of course!) how are the students behaving? How are they interacting with each other, and with you? Where’s the ideal balance between control and freedom? And in terms of language,is it ideally an “English only” environment, or perhaps an English only environment except when it’s not? How do you want it to be? If we know how we want it to be, we have a chance of getting there.

Here's some ideas about deep breaths in the classroom. https://www.hmhco.com/blog/classroom-breathing-exercises-for-students 

Perfect is the enemy of good

If we know what we want, the next thing is to think about how we’re going to get there. Great learning environments don’t just happen, they are created and, arguably, that’s our most important job at the beginning of the year. Nothing is ever perfect, perfection is impossible, by aiming for perfect we’re only ever setting ourselves up for failure. The teacher next door might seem to have the perfect class but they don’t, nobody does, it doesn't exist. So let’s not aim for perfect, let’s aim for good or great or maybe even incredible, or maybe just good enough is okay. Remember perfect is the enemy of good and measuring yourself against perfection will only ever be disappointing.

Would you like more on this idea? https://www.betterup.com/blog/perfect-is-the-enemy-of-good 

Engaging with the mess

Teaching English is often a messy business and we need to control the mess. It’s quite often literally messy with our youngest students as we might struggle with arts and crafts but all the way through primary, secondary and adult students there’s mess and complication. If we can establish order and student expectations we can create the class that we want to have and a class that can include all of our students and give access to learning to everyone. How do you do that?

Routines can certainly play a major part in our classes, especially with the youngest but secondary students too benefit from the security of a sense of familiarity and knowing what to expect and indeed what's expected of them. So many students can benefit from routines, they are an important way to be inclusive as it not only gives all students to chance to review language (often from weeks, months or even years ago) but it can also help our neurodiverse students feel comfortable.

Talking of setting expectations, do you use class contracts? What age do they work well with? Class contracts can be great; they give everyone clarity in a language class space where the rules of the game might not always be clear. Clarity, security and expectation setting, maybe that's our key job, oh and try to help everyone learn all their names too! 

Here's a couple of articles from for more ideas.

https://www.edutopia.org/article/evidence-backed-ways-to-connect-with-students-first-week

https://www.edutopia.org/article/first-5-days-key-success 

Good luck getting yourself together, wishing you a great start to the year and happy TEFLing!

P.S. If you'd like more training in working with younger learners; a sound methodological background and huge number of games and activities, check out our course Teaching Younger Learners It's a 3 week course, about 9 hours a week with self-access work, live group seminars and a 1:1 tutorial. The next course starts on September 3, apply now!

P.P.S. Here’s “Back to life” by Soul to Soul, a late eighties classic, if you’re of a certain vintage, enjoy the memories,if you’re a bit younger, well, it’s classic, vintage, I guess!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB54dZkzZOY