1. First few years will be extremely stressful and you will feel like giving it up a million times. Just keep on working hard and believing in yourself!
Good routine and establishing a great structured class are abilities you won’t obtain overnight.
2. Unsuccessful classes are inevitable. Even when you’re experienced and skilled.
We’re human beings, prone to making mistakes, being emotional and having doubts. Don’t beat yourself up over it,
learn from your failures and move on.
3. Save all the materials, activities, ideas, books, worksheets: use clouds, drives, USBs, your laptop
or anything else, but do not waste your effort and time spent on researching and creating new stuff.
It might seem useless to you now, but, trust me, you will highly appreciate it in the future.
4. While we’re on the topic, categorize your materials and create folders. A lot of them.
Grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, speaking, listening, reading, functional language and what not. It saves an incredible amount of time when preparing for your classes.
5. Talk to your students’ parents. Don’t be intimidated by them. Make them your allies.
Don’t underestimate the role they play in the learning process. Show them that you actually care and are willing to go out of your way to help your students succeed.
6. Every day come to your classes with a clean slate.
Let go of all anger or frustration that were tagging along from the previous lesson. Forgive and forget.
Your students might behave differently every single class. Most likely they’ve already forgotten whatever happened last week, so there’s absolutely no point in carrying your negative emotions into the next class and punishing them for that once again.
It’s a new day, it’s a new life.
7. Kids are extremely intuitive and will pick up your mood in a split of a second. This equation works in the 90% of cases:
if you feel like you are about to have a bad class, that’s exactly what you’ll end up having and, on the contrary,
if you are easy-going, relaxed and optimistic about your students, your positive predisposition will be caught by your students as well.
8. Always have something extra to do in case you run out of all the planned activities and games and are faced with 10-15 minutes
of not knowing how to entertain your students. However, never freak out about this. Keep calm and just take a few minutes to figure it out. Play it cool and your students
will believe that’s what you are.
9. Keep in touch with other teachers, discuss your class issues, ask for an advice, offer a helping hand and just share your emotions,
stories and even complaints with each other. It helps not to feel like you are a total failure in case of
a misfortune and makes you feel like a part of a friendly community of passionate professionals.
10. Never give up working on your English. There’s always room for improvement. No matter what your background is.
No matter how talented you are. No matter where you live. I guess I don’t have to explain this one.
Your students deserve having a teacher with a great command of the language they strive to learn.
11. Sometimes improv can be even more successful than a well-prepped class, as long as you do not allow your feelings to take over.
In no way do I recommend you to stop getting ready for classes, but sometimes it's necessary to roll with the punches. If you see that the activity you've planned does not click with them, cut it short and distract them with a joke or a new topic for discussion.
12. Warming and wrapping up activities are essential and cannot be disregarded as a waste of time. Your students most likely remember only these parts of your classes very well and everything in-between is rather blurry.
Start your classes with something that could make them enthusiastic right away, not necessarily connected to the lesson topic. Help them dive into the English language almost
on the threshold of your classroom. Round it off with something that will help your students leave this place with positive emotions.
13. You do not need to follow textbooks rigidly. It's alright to deviate from the topic once in a while and supplementing certain activities is actually a great way of being creative and enabling your students to wind down.
You can also take those textbooks ideas and tweak them according to your own preferences.
14. Observations are beneficial. People who watch your classes are there not to judge or criticise you (and if they are, then f*ck them, they do NOT matter), but to assist and support you.
You might learn a lot as there are certain things we just overlook while analysing our own classes. Observing other teachers is also useful as you can pick up lots of tricks and ideas, as well as notice things that you should probably avoid doing.
15. There is something that is even more important than simply teaching your students English. And it's not even a single thing. Inspiring them to explore other cultures, building a strong bond with them AND among them, supporting them through thick and thin,
being a role model for them, teaching them to love learning languages, helping them to find themselves, boosting their self-esteem, pointing out those amazing qualities they posses but are not aware of, showing them the real purpose of learning English,
eliminating their fear of foreigners and so so many other ways you can influence your students rather than just making sure they drill irregular verbs.
16. The fact that you immensely enjoy your profession choice, get reenergised with each class, relish every moment spent with you talented students, vigorously dedicate every single minute to prepping and coming up with creative activities and feel fulfilled and rewarded at the end of each day
DOES NOT mean this all can substitute rest for you. Oh how mistaken I used to be, thinking that since I love my job so dearly,
I don't really need my own spare time free from all the creative thinking process. This delusional behaviour has led me to having professional burnouts that could easily be avoided.
Please, do not disregard your opportunity to forget about your students and classes and have some me-time.
17. Pinning the blame on your students will NEVER help you evolve into a better teacher. We all have to own up to our own mistakes and bad choices and there's nothing wrong with having occasional failures at your workplace EVEN if it's a classroom.
However, thinking that your students are simply rowdy and out of hand, that they do not give a d*mn about anything in their life and that there is no approach that can sway them is not the right way to go about it. YOU have to be accountable for all unsuccessful classes and lack of progress. I've seen so many teachers complaining about their groups and giving up only to be substituted by another more patient or enthusiastic teacher
and see how that same class transforms into the most diligent and zesty students ever.
18. Teaching allows you to travel the world. While I was studying it never even crossed my mind that this job is so diverse and flexible.
I always knew that speaking foreign languages would bring me a whole array of opportunities to explore our beautiful planet, but I could never even imagine that I would be living in various countries teaching English, that I'd be able to teach foreigners without speaking their own language, that I'd eventually be able to work online and make my freelance dreams come true.
Fast-forward to this moment: here I am, extremely grateful for the last 4,5 years that I spent juggling two main passions of mine: teaching English and traveling. AND if I could do it, anybody can!
