Being a teacher is a great challenge

Undoubtedly just being a teacher is already a great challenge. But being an English teacher is twice a challenge. It means keeping an extra way of life, parallel to the life-schedule of our colleagues, bearing the “same brains’ but thinking and speaking two absolutely different languages.

I can’t imagine my daily routine without reading at least 10 pages in English before going to bed (just imagine Physics or Math teacher falling asleep with his textbook or so), advertising fiction books I have read and exchanging them among my students, encouraging them to write something to our school “Meganews” newspaper.

After coming back from the USA (2 really unforgettable fantastic months as a TEA Alumni!), I became an alive witness and a presents of American culture answering a bunch of really puzzling and unexpected questions concerning all aspects of life there. Not a single day has passed without breaking sometimes funny or even stupid stereotypes.

Being an English teacher also means conducting lessons outdoors, in the sidewalks by our school, dramatising street dialogues and shocking the passers-by with sounds of foreign speech in the streets of our tiny peaceful Carpathian town.

Concerning evaluation moments, unlike our colleagues for whom looking for mistakes is an inseparable process, I usually focus mainly on the positive aspects, supporting all the students’ efforts and trying to create a warm atmosphere in the classroom. I strongly object correcting every mistake in their speech, I want my students to feel free to make mistakes in order to learn and improve their fluency. When I see a passive and shy student keeping up the conversation, I am very satisfied, because it’s his or her tiny result, but my huge success!!! Let their life put them marks!

Being an English teacher means persistently take part in different contests and programmes. In fact, my seldom but joyful winnings in some of them persuade my students to follow me, to believe that they also have a lot of chances to get success. TEA, PIE, FLEX … all this stuff is one of the highways leading to a new life full of new perspectives and opportunities. Parents of one of my former pupils still can’t believe that their daughter is studying at an American school without a kopek of bride as it is used to being here in Ukraine. It is true that God helps those who try to do it themselves!

Nowadays people’s minds, beliefs and lifestyles differ everywhere and teenagers are often so sharp and extreme in their judgments. Sometimes their words are followed by more serious and risky actions. I teach my pupils how to accept others and their opinions. I persuade them not to make negative comments about others’ ethnic background, religious trend etc. and to be tolerant to them. It is often said that prejudice and discrimination are born of ignorance. I always encourage my students to learn more, to appreciate and even enjoy the company of people who are different from them, to look for the commons but not differences. They have to learn to understand an unusual point of view and respect it anyway.

I offer my pupils to discuss or sometimes to write essays about the experience when they were treated differently. How did it make them feel? Have they ever treated anyone else the same way? Sometimes I ask them to find a newspaper or magazine article about tolerance or lack of it.

In the lesson I use to pair them up with someone in the classroom whom they don’t know very well, for example, with newcomers, and identify three things that they have in common, and three differences, but only interesting or funny. These activities help them to develop self-consciousness and patience.

Learning a foreign language needs more pupils’ and teachers’ efforts comparing with any other school subject as actually it combines at least two or even more subjects together. Therefore we, teachers, should have (and I believe that we have) something extra than our colleagues living in two parallel cultures.

I am convinced that learning English plays a significant role in the development of cross-cultural understanding. Getting to know another group of people through the study of their language and culture is a good way to help them to understand and accept differences which exist in our beautiful but pretty anxious world.

No doubt, I do like being a teacher of English!