Teach English in Zeku Zhen - Weihai Shi

(Please note: This was written based on an initial set of topics I saw on the page "7.What personal qualities are important for English teachers?". When I reloaded the page, the topics had changed) There are as many kinds of people in the world as grains of sand on a beach it seems. Each person has their own strengths and weaknesses. Each strength helps in a certain type of endeavor and each weakness makes other kinds more challenging. That isn’t to say that if you have the strengths that you are sure to succeed or that if you have a weakness it is a guaranteed failure, only that that in general you’ll see successful people displaying similar strengths and unsuccessful people showing similar weaknesses. So, what attributes make for a good English teacher? Here are three that I consider to be the most important. Patience is a prime attribute that English teachers (or any teacher really) should have. The learning process for most people is an overall slow climb of accumulating skill and knowledge. During this time there will be periods to rapid advancement, usually at the beginning. However, there will also be periods where the students will struggle, usually later on after the rush of excitement of the initial stages wears off. Patience in a teacher is important for 2 reasons, first you must be able to help your students progress steadily though those periods of little progress. People usually act in accordance with the people around them, thus if you are patient and steady it will hopefully transfer onto your students as well. The second reason is that it is not just the students who may become disheartened by lack of progress, but the teacher as well. When your students aren’t progressing as well as you think they should its easy to question your worth as a teacher, or perhaps even become frustrated with the students for not “learning better”. During these times, it is important to calmly look at your methods and techniques to make sure there are no structural problems. Assuming that things are adequate, then sometimes it is just a wall that must be climbed over. In support of patience is empathy. Being able to put yourself in your students shoes is very important. When you can see things from their perspective, it helps you understand what potential struggles they may face with the language itself or even in their own mindset. As a learner of a second language myself, there have been a multitude of times where I have felt discouraged at my lack of progress, frustrated at my inability to understand or remember new things, or even angry at the language itself for being "too confusing". I feel that occasionally having these thoughts is entirely normal, but having a teacher who understands what you are going though and is there to offer support, technical or just emotional, is a major boon to a language student. In my classrooms, I've seen many young students get tripped up in similar areas that I myself struggled with when learning their language. My empathy for their situation helps me maintain a steady supportive attitude even when they may be acting out a bit. Empathy is a good quality to have when dealing with people in any situation, but it is especially important when helping people attempting something difficult and challenging. The final and likely most important attribute is passion. Passion comes in many forms. One teacher might hold a passion for languages in general or have a passion for English in particular, wanting to help as many people as possible learn it. Knowing that English is currently the “lingua franca” of the world, they want to give students large boost to whatever future endeavors they my undertake. Another form of passion might be simply the love of teaching itself, teaching anything. Seeing students understand something that they didn’t know before and realizing that you helped them to do that is a powerful feeling. While other qualities may help teachers be more effective in the classroom, support students better, or plan lessons and courses more effectively, passion is the quality that will keep the teacher a teacher. Without passion, the teacher may decide that the struggles and tribulations of teaching a language, (or any subject for that matter) are not worth the results and give up. This may take the form of quitting, depriving their potential students of whatever training and other skills and knowledge that they possess. An even worse result may be that the teacher continues to teach, but that they put minimal effort into their jobs. As I stated before, people usually act as those around them do, and when a teacher brings an lack of passion, then it will transfer to the students, killing whatever innate interest or desire for English that they originally carried. I view this is as the worst possible outcome. I’ve worked with other teachers who were quite apparently “checked out” and you could see that their classes were markedly different from other teachers who were passionate. The checked out teachers classes were unruly, noisy, unmotivated, and generally a chore to get though. The few remaining students in these classes who were putting in effort were constantly distracted by the other students who were too energetic to sleep in class but not enough to pay attention or participate. In contrast, the passionate teachers classes were attentive, engaged, and generally well behaved. Even when things became a little too boisterous, it was all in good nature and things could quickly be returned to normal. Above all other attributes, I passion the one that will affect the class and students the most. These three attributes are the ones I see most often in teachers I aspire to be like and the ones I find lacking in those I want to avoid. These are the attributes that I try most to cultivate in myself.