The worst mistake I ever made
For almost 10 years I owned and operated a small English school in Spain. It was hard work. In total I taught thousands of hours and hundreds of students, from infants to pensioners. But it gave me my most valuable asset as a teacher: experience.
I think any teacher has moments in the classroom that they will never forget, both good and bad, and I want to tell you about one of my worst moments that taught me a big lesson.
Every weekday I taught groups of primary-school children. Anyone who has taught children knows that the best and worst thing about them is that they are unpredictable. Their emotions and mood are affected by things happening at school, at home, or even the weather. This makes teaching them both a wonderful and frustrating job.
One day I had a class during carnaval, and the group was excited. They were wearing costumes. They wanted to dance, and shout, and sing. They wanted to play. They didn’t want to be in class.
In this group I had a star student. I had been teaching her for more than 5 years, and it was amazing to watch her language skills develop. She was always well-behaved. She always sat in the front row. She always paid attention. Except for that day.
I lost control of the class and it descended into chaos, and my star student was there in the middle of it all. After an hour I was tired and frustrated. And that’s when I made a huge mistake.
When class finished I asked her to stay behind. I told her that I was surprised to see her behave so badly. I told her not to be influenced by others. I told her that her English was too good to waste. In my mind it was a motivational talk.
In her mind it was betrayal. And she never came back to class.
And she was right. The behaviour of the class was 100% my fault. In one short conversation I had destroyed her trust, and her English learning. That day I learned a huge lesson about being a teacher, and a student.
As a teacher, I treated her with authority, when I should have treated her as an equal. After that day I became much more strict with my philosophy and behaviour of being an equal with my students. There are many things that I don’t know about the English language, and teaching, so in every class I am also a student.
A student should trust the people they are learning with to be honest, and fair, and not to judge, and to care about them as an individual. Unfortunately, I see that trust being broken every day.
A very effective marketing strategy is to make people feel bad about themselves, and then sell them the solution. For example:
“You don’t have the right accent.” = “Buy my pronunciation course!”
“You are not learning correctly.” = “Get fluent in 12 weeks with my system!”
“Your English is unprofessional.” = “Buy my business English course!”
“I don’t believe you can communicate.” = “Buy my exam certificate!”
These concepts violate the trust of students. The English language has no authority over you, and there is no teacher or organisation who represents the English language. Like all languages, English only exists for one reason: communication.
A trusting relationship looks like this:
“Teacher, I need help with my work presentations in English.”
“OK. What’s the problem?”
“My accent is too strong. People can’t understand me.”
“Can you give me some examples?”
“Umm…well, not really.”
“Do they behave like they don’t understand you?”
“No.”
“Do people tell you they don’t understand you?”
“No. But, they’re probably just being nice.”
“Maybe. Have any of your colleagues or clients complained?”
“No.”
“Is it causing problems for the business?”
“No.”
“OK! So there is no problem with your accent then! Native speakers do not want to change their accent for no reason, and neither should you.”
Make it your objective this year to find people you trust to learn with, but more importantly to trust yourself.