I need to tell you something that might make your day easier. You know those gaps your students have? The ones where you’re teaching present perfect and suddenly realize half the class is shaky on simple past? Or you’re doing passive voice and someone raises their hand to ask what a past participle is? Those […]
I’ve been going through all my blog posts, fixing where images exploded into huge sizes and formatting got weird after I changed my site theme when I found this “gem” from September 2017: “3 Ideas for Inspiring Shared Gratitude in the Classroom.” I cringed while reading it. Not because it’s badly written or because the
Picture this: You wake up with your throat on fire, your head pounding, and the kind of fever that makes you question whether you’re still a functioning human being. You need a sub. You need one NOW. And you have approximately zero brain cells available to create a lesson plan that makes sense. Or maybe
Your student walks into class late again. She’s got her toddler with her because childcare fell through. Another student is checking his phone constantly because his family back home is in crisis. Someone else looks like they haven’t slept in days because they’re so stressed about passing this level. This is IEP teaching. Your students
I’ll be honest: when I first started teaching in an IEP (Intensive English Program), I had no idea how to assess my students effectively. I mean, I gave tests. I graded assignments. But was I measuring what mattered? Was I helping students understand their progress? Was I using assessment to improve my teaching? Probably not.
It’s 10 am on a Monday. Your intermediate reading class has 15 students from 9 different countries. They’ve already been at the language school since 8 am, and they’ll be here until late afternoon. Then they’ll be back tomorrow for another full day. One student is stressed because her conditional admission to the university depends
When we started working on color vocabulary, Ama’s face went dark. I didn’t know her well because she had just started in my class that day, but you’d have to be blind not to notice she was seething. She was a cross between furious and frustrated, and I’m sure that if she’d had the vocabulary
You know that moment when you assign a speaking activity and your students look at each other like “Again? With YOU?” Yeah. That moment. They’ve been paired up with the same classmates for weeks (months?), and the spark is gone. They know each other’s stories. They’ve heard each other’s opinions on everything from weekend plans
None of my professors EVER told us to stop pre-teaching all the vocabulary (they were huge fans of that method), but I’m telling you to do just that. Here’s why. While I was getting my master’s in TESL in the early 2010s, the strategy of pre-teaching vocabulary words was all the rage. Perhaps it still
I hit play on the YouTube video, turned to face my class, and said, “Take notes. You’ll need them.” Then I sat down at my desk and just… breathed. Look, I’m not proud of it. Good teachers don’t just park a screen in front of their students’ faces while they decompress, right? Except here’s the
