Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Dear students,

I would like things to run as smoothly as possible in our classes this year while you learn a lot of English so let me share some thoughts with you.

We, teachers, do get nervous shortly before classes start thinking about the moment when we, finally, get to meet the students we´ll be working with for the whole school year. First impressions are important but, with the passing of time, as I get more experienced in teaching (what a nice way to put it!), I know I shouldn´t judge students too quickly; it should work both ways but I know that, when you are a teenage student, feeling you don´t like your teacher on the first day of school can make your whole world fall apart and certainly prevent you from having sweet dreams at night dreading the next lesson. Let´s try and not judge each other too quickly lest we get things wrong, as it happens in these -hilarious- videos (they have nothing to do with teaching but they certainly prove the point):



I do not know what sort of a teacher I am but I love my job and I try to do my best. I know that is not enough; no matter how enthusiastic you are about your job, you may still be a bad teacher but I firmly believe I am far better at teaching English than this teacher here, which, looking at things from the bright side of life - and that´s something you should ALWAYS do- means you´ve been really lucky to have me as a teacher (ha, ha!)...:



Mind you, English is not an easy subject, you´ll have to work hard, i.e. you will read (a lot), write (a lot), speak (in English, of course!)- and no matter how pathetic you think you are, you MUST try and improve. Believe me, quite a few people have a difficult time when trying to speak English, but most of you will need it in the future so you´d better do your best to try and make yourself understood in my classes, besides, you don´t want to be in your 50s and still not know how to ask for a hamburger in English, do you?:



Some people say 'When you've got interest, you have education', which really means, the ball is in your court; in other words, if you do not want to learn, you won´t learn, no matter how good I am at teaching. Since you are now in "Bachillerato", I presume you want to have an education, you want to learn but how much you learn depends on you. If you want to check to what extent this is so, watch this video of a talk given by education scientist Sugata Mitra. It is the longest video in this post (about 18 minutes long) but you can add the subtitles in English so it is an excellent chance to practise your reading and listening comprehension.

To conclude, since we´ll be seeing each other quite often for the next months, I want you to know that you´ll be in my thoughts more than you can imagine, so...(and I know this will sound a little corny) "Welcome to my world"(I love singing but Elvis will sing it for me)

2 comments:

  1. Such a beautiful and sensitive podcast (as always)!
    And changing the subject, I think you are more cheerful than you appear in your photo, don´t you think so?

    (Please tell me if I make some mistakes writing English)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for your comments, Belén!
    As for the photo, it is so difficult to choose one when you know many people will get to know you through it...

    ReplyDelete

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