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!

TEACHING HELPS TO DEVELOP …

Galileo said, “You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.” I think language is the most powerful tool we have for reaching out to others. We can use it to express our feelings, spread our ideas and even to establish peace.

My dream is to make teaching the source of enjoyment and pleasure for my pupils, their parents and the teachers I work with. I’m sure English must be taught with pleasure, because it opens the door into another world: the one of travelling, learning and working. It makes our life less difficult in any country. It’s easier to listen to songs, watch films or surf the Net. English can help us everywhere. Pupils shouldn’t treat English as a foreign language. It’s an international language, so it can be ours as well.

Much attention is paid to relationship between the teacher and pupils. Relaxed atmosphere of co-operation, understanding and respect is very important in making pupils interested in learning the language. The teacher has to create all necessary conditions for learning and keep pupils motivated all the time. We have to pay more attention to learning which is based on situations or problems concerning pupils’ lives, values and interests. School parties devoted to national holidays of English – speaking countries, dramatisation of extracts from well-known books, writing poems in English help to arouse pupils’ motivation, too. Pupils should be encouraged to work together, be responsible for their studying.

Our pupils shouldn’t treat English as a boring duty. I believe they are greatly interested in learning a foreign language, but as soon as some of them face difficulties and fail to catch up with the rest of the class, they gradually lose their interest in the subject. To prevent demotivation, everything should be effectively and sufficiently practised through different activities. A great variety of interesting activities in each lesson prevents boredom and arouses pupils’ intentions and desires to master the target language. One of the roles of the teacher is to organise a classroom in such a way that s/he could achieve better results in language teaching. Learning English is like learning to swim or learning to play ball. We learn to swim by swimming, to play ball by playing ball, and to speak English by speaking English. Pupils must understand that as nobody can learn to swim for them the same about English: nobody can learn English for them. They have to learn for themselves, and they will learn if they really want to and are willing to practise. Aristotle believed that “the roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet”. As for me, the first task of a modern teacher is to work out and use new effective methods which will help him/her to achieve good results.

From my point of view, a real teacher is a teacher who can become a member of any society. I think teaching and learning any language help to develop ourselves. Our world needs teachers who are ready to introduce new ideas. Teachers like all learners need opportunities and time to exchange and reflect on their experience. One of the aims of the teacher is their professional development and change. It’s impossible to teach the same way they have done it before. One of the biggest achievements of modern school is that teachers have a right to choose means of teaching. Some years ago teachers couldn’t even dream about it. We work in the branch where we have a possibility to explore, to create some new modern ideas and not to be old-fashioned.

I think that the teacher who brings happiness and knowledge is worth being respected.

A TEACHER IS A CO – WORKER OF GOD

There is a good proverb: “Like teacher, like pupil”. When I was a girl of 14, I had already decided to become a teacher of English like my favourite teacher, Liudmyla Mykolayivna Cherepanova.

She was very good teacher. I saw how much attention she paid to each student in the class, how upset she was if one of us did not understand anything and could not answer well. I always wanted to belike Liudmyla Mykolayivna, and now that I am older, I think that the great love she had for her student, for all of us, was really beautiful and noble. That is why I finished school and graduated from the Language Faculty of Dnipropetrovs’k State University.

My first lesson was in 1991 in school # 22 specialising in foreign languages. When I entered the classroom and saw people of about my age, I nearly fainted: I did not have the slightest advantage over the students in anything except for my knowledge of English. I started my lesson with a well-known English song, “Yesterday”.

Nowadays, to create a good atmosphere in class I prefer to start my lessons with songs. Usually they are grammar songs.

I think that every teacher is a unique person and it is not necessary to follow well-known procedures when a teacher is not sure that it is useful to the student. And I dare to be different. Very often I need to be “an artist” and to be very lively in the way I demonstrate the language, so my students can work out the meanings and usage of new words themselves. And I can say that my students are actively involved in meeting cognitive challenges, they are lively and interested, participating in activities which focus on situations relevant to their own lives.

I am aware of different motives for learning language, learning styles of my students, their expectations, sources of language exposure they may experience outside the classroom. I try to organise my lessons so that my student speak almost all the time. I am sure that the more students speak in the lesson, the better the lesson is organised. I have a resource box where all students can contribute not only old toys, but also their own ideas, stories, poems etc.

I do not forget to encourage my students. Encouraged by their success, they will try again and gain more practice.

I think that Goethe was right when he said, “A teacher who can arouse a feeling for a single good action, for one single poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows of natural objects, classified with name and form”. I first went to school at the age of seven and still have not left it. I love school. I think that school is my life. I always remember Joseph Joubert’s words “To teach is to learn twice”.

I love children and I think it is so good to help them to learn what they did not know before. And besides, bringing up good children is a very important task. Galileo once said, “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself”.

Liudmyla Mykolayivna helped me to choose my profession, and now I am sure my decision was correct. When I come into the classroom and see my students’ eyes, I realise that I am a part of a creative event. I forget all the problems of everyday life and try to teach them effectively. My task is to create in pupils a motivation to study, to orient them to world educational standards. As you know, a teacher is an investor in the future development and prosperity of you country. And I think it is interesting to be a participant in the process of forming pupils’ personalities, in widening their outlook and in helping them to find their own way in this multicoloured life.

My priority is to develop my unique potential as a teacher, to keep alive a sense of challenge and satisfaction in my job. A good teacher is the one who is constantly working at their self-education. Knowledge is like money: the more one gets, the more one craves. This is my approach to teaching. If you once think, “I am very experienced, I can stop now” – you will degrade. I have a constant desire to learn, to improve my methods of teaching and to use new ones. With passing years, I realise that what I most enjoy in my life is learning. That is why I like to travel, to learn more about countries and peoples, to discover something new in myself. Education takes you to great places. Education is travelling and travelling is education. In 2003, I became a National winner of “The United States – Eurasia Awards of Excellence in Teaching” programme. I travelled to the United States for a seven-week professional development seminar and participated in the cross-cultural symposium “Celebrating Teaching Excellence Across Cultures”. Every year I encourage my students to participate in the “Freedom Support Act” programme. I felt proud when my student Vlad Burhay won this contest in 2004 and had a great opportunity to study in the USA for a year. President Kennedy once said: ”Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education”. Realising it I try to have my students to achieve success in studying English.

“I TOUCH THE FUTURE. I TEACH.”

“Come to the edge.”

“We can’t. We are afraid.”

“Come to the edge.”

“We can’t. We will fall.”

“Come to the edge.”

And they came.

And he pushed them.

And they flew.