Humanising Language Teaching
Year 2; Issue 6; November 2000

My Passion for my Students

By Maria Eugenia Marinas Guimerans, Galicia, Spain
( Secondary )

You asked me to tell you more about my passion for my students and how I deal with them. This passion began from the very first moment I found myself in a "classroom" with all those " people" and "me". What I always want is to make them feel that I am the one who is going to help them to learn a second language. Learning , though, is not just a question of grammar, making mistakes etc…, it's a question of working together. I tell the students at the start of the course:

I'm going to learn a lot this year with you.

Every year I have the same feeling that I teach them what I am able to, that I do my best but that they always teach me a lot of things which help us. It really is a virtuous ( as opposed to vicious) circle which gives me the energy and strength to go on , which is why I love my job. As you know I teach in a rural area in Galicia, North West Spain, where most of students either don't like English, hate it, or feel indifferent to it. My response is to try and touch them in fields they are interested in such as songs, videos.films, actors, soap operas etc…offering the most personal ways of working I can come up with.

In a class of thirty let's say, I have students of all sorts, hard-working, lazy, shy, fast learners, slow learners etc… So clearly, I can't treat them all in the same way. So I offer higher level students tasks which are a bit more difficult, taking them on as my personal helpers, getting them to explain something that some one does not understand, even using mother tongue or using slang words because for me the most important thing is that most of my students will be able to learn no matter who is teaching them

Sometimes I ask them to sum up ( briefly) the previous class, reminding the others of the grammar and the exercises done. Mostly they seem comfortable in this situation because I don't allow them to be rude to the others or to show lack of respect for the rest of the class.

My real problem is with students who don't want to do anything at all who also tend to have behaviour problems. At first I try to ignore the bad behaviour and treat them with all the patience, respect and love I can muster, so they know I don't have any prejudice against them. This is in the teeth of some of my colleagues telling me:

That student is rude, arrogant and so on

The second thing I do with these kids is try and get them to understand that they can learn if they want to. Whenever I make a mistake I usually say:

You see, I make mistakes too, so don't panic. The main thing is to realise you can do it better next time and then just do it!

My third tactic with the trouble-makers , if they don't change their attitude, is to talk to them informally at breaktime , and ask them why they are studying, why they dislike English, and what they want to do in the future. And then I tell them:

I understand your point of view- don't be afraid of telling me you hate English because I am not going to hate you because of it. We've got a problem but I'd like to find a solution to it. You see, I'm here to help you and unfortunately you have to pass all your exams if you want to become a wonderful….( whatever they want to take up later)

If I'm lucky I make a deal with them. I give them extra exercises, explanations and tutorials at breaktime to help them with their difficulties and to obtain " our pass".
Some of them, not as many as I would like, actually change and get a pass in English at the end of the course.

In dealing with shy but hard-working students I do what I can to raise their self-esteem. I ask them about things I know they have done well. I check their exercises regularly and write encouraging notes. I give them the leader role in pairwork.
On occasions when I ask them to read aloud or to write on the board, if they try to get out of doing it, I don't let them. I tell them to imagine that they are reading or writing to their best friend. Sometimes I tell them to think of the task as a sort of rehearsal for tough situations later in life.

The most difficult part of my teaching life is when it comes to testing and evaluating the students. If I see that the results are bad, I have a talk with them and get them to think where the problem lies. Are the results bad because of lack of study, lack of interest, lack of time, lack of preparation, because of insufficient teacher explanation, because of over-strictness on my part etc…? I try to get them realise where the problem is and how to solve it.

Then I make them sign a sort of contract with me * :

I , Jorge Lopez, contractually agree with Eugenia that I will study more, pay more attention in class …… They write down what they think they need to do and they give it to me, signed, so that the following term I can see if they have stayed within the terms of the contract.

So, you see, you now have a pretty full technical description of how my passion for my students works out in practice.

Maria Eugenia

• Two years ago I proposed the "contract work" to them as something voluntary. Nowadays I make it compulsory though I introduce it very gently, which often leads to them getting really involved.