Humanising Language Teaching
Year 2; Issue 3; May 2000
Courtesy to Students
by Mario Rinvolucri, UK
There must be many ways in which you are courteous to your students, in which you show them that you notice them, small things that set a positive tone in your classroom.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. A secondary EFL State School teacher in Villefranche-sur-Soane, France, has the kids come into his classroom, put their clobber down on the desks, and then spend three minutes wandering round telling the others what they remember form the last English lesson. They are meant to do this in English but the colleague is Ok with it happening in French too. His courtesy is to understand that, going from one dictator to the next, the kids need a gap, a breathing space, an open place, a safety zone.
If you want to share some of your courtesies to your students, please send them to HLT for global publication. ( we have an average of 600 visitor session per week, or 30,000 drop-ins a year )
Here are some of the things I have come to consider good manners with my students ( late teenagers and adults, mainly).
- If there is writing or drawing by students on the board, and I need to use the space for something new, I try to remember to say something like:
" Ok if I destroy all this, then?
I don't expect the students to refuse me permission but by asking I concede co-ownership
of this public space with them.
- I avoid drawing on the board. If the lesson requires an image everybody can see, then one of the
students does the necessary drawing.
If I draw on the board there is 35% attention paid; if a group member does the drawing
then attention goes up to the 90%.
- If the students are doing pairwork and I feel it is time to call them back into the plenary,
I raise my hand and they know that this is the signal for them to raise theirs.
Gradually hands go up round the room, until multiple speaking gives way to silence.
I have thus called them back together again without using any hand-clapping, voice noise,
or bells.
The command is visual and so people can take their time in responding to it. It gives them
a chance to finish what they are saying to their partner.
- Whenever possible I do the activity I have asked the students to do. After giving out a reading
I focus my full attention on the text they are looking through. In writing exercises I try to
take part as a full participant, unless I feel I can be more useful as a roving dictionary
and grammar source point.
When the teacher joins in an activity she breathes synergetic life into it.
- If I find a titbit in my private reading that I would share with friends, then I copy it and
put on my students' chairs. It has nothing to do with the lesson but indicates that
I am after the easy exchange that happens between friends.
Quietly this practice fosters a good atmosphere.
- I mentally store significant information that students come out with about themselves.
Some weeks later I let them know that I remember X or Y that they told us much earlier
in the course. Some students are grateful that someone has paid attention enough
to remember. Naturally, I only remember fragments of what I am told, but even shards of
information are enough to arouse a warm reaction.
I began doing this consciously after observing the way John Morgan
does it accurately and seemingly effortlessly.
- I regularly check the projections I have on a given student. Does she remind me of some one else I already know? Does she have the same voice as Z? Does a particular behaviour of hers stir memories of someone else acting like she is acting? If I find I have a projection on to this particular student, I try to notice it and get rid of it. It is a major act of discourtesy to deform the person in front of me with stuff of my own from some other place and time.
The above are some of one teacher's courtesies?
And the ways in which you are courteous?
