Humanising Language Teaching
Year 3; Issue 1; January 2001
LESSON 1 - TEACHER THINKING: WHAT IS YOUR METAPHOR?
By Ana Robles Fraga, HLT secondary consultant, Spain
This is an activity intended for teachers, although with a few changes in the questions you can use it with your students, too.
The outcome is to explore our way of thinking about our job. Paying attention to the metaphors, stories, examples we use to talk about ourselves and our professions can give us lots of information about the hidden assumptions that guide our behaviour.
The procedure is very simple, just answer the questions below and the, if possible, comment them with a colleague.
If you want to use it with your students just change the questions using the words in italics.
WHAT IS YOUR METAPHOR?
Fill in the blanks as appropriate
- My school is like
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................ - Working in my school is like
......................................................................................
...................................................................................... - My students/teachers are like
......................................................................................
...................................................................................... - Teaching/Studying with them is like
......................................................................................
................................................................................. - Talking to my students' parents/teachers is like
......................................................................................
...................................................................................... - Bearing all those metaphors in mind it is true that
......................................................................................
...................................................................................... - All those metaphors imply that
......................................................................................
......................................................................................
