At the onset of a new school year, collaboration between teachers, parents, and students is essential to ensure a productive academic journey in foreign language learning. As an educator, I firmly believe that meticulous planning, organization, and fostering a positive learning environment lay the groundwork for a fruitful and successful academic year.
To begin with, effective communication between teachers and parents/guardians holds significant importance. This fosters an atmosphere of intimacy and trust, enabling parents to understand what to expect from teachers in terms of learning plans, organization, and teaching methodologies. Consequently, parents experience reduced stress regarding their children’s performance, while also facilitating the teacher’s role and the child’s learning process.
Teaching is an ongoing voyage, and teachers can provide valuable information and advice to parents by continually educating themselves. This aspect holds particular relevance for students preparing for exams, but it equally applies to young learners taking their initial steps in the learning process. Hence, it is wise to conduct meetings or seminars with parents at the beginning and throughout the year to keep them informed and involved.
Text by: Dora Sopasoudaki
Undoubtedly, reflecting and setting goals form the foundation of successful teaching and learning. By considering the learners’ age, level, and needs, teachers can organize their syllabus in a more effective manner. This involves selecting, prioritizing, and categorizing methods, plans, and activities that best align with the students’ requirements.
Maintaining a daily diary or journal can be immensely helpful, as it allows teachers to observe, reflect, make lesson plans, and document what works or doesn’t work in the classroom. Additionally, assessment questionnaires aid in gathering feedback, which proves beneficial for both teachers and learners. Such systematic reflection empowers teachers to become more flexible, motivated, and innovative in their teaching approaches.
Incorporating authentic materials such as articles, texts from books, newspapers, magazines, songs, etc., can ignite learners’ imagination, foster critical thinking, and enhance their overall language skills. While implementing these materials requires time, discipline, practice, patience, and persistence, if systematically applied from an early age, they can have long-term positive effects on both language learning and life skills.
By embodying a methodical and systematic approach, teachers set a commendable example for their students. Consequently, students learn to organize and plan not only their learning but also their lives in general, developing traits of responsibility, insightfulness, and autonomy.
English lessons can be transformed into multidimensional and multicultural experiences by incorporating a diverse range of challenging activities and project-based lessons. These can include online resources, audio and visual materials such as colorful pictures, flashcards, reading and listening materials, whiteboard activities, games, objects, and other supplementary materials. For instance, students can create their own songs or poems, participate in school plays, become journalists and publish their own online magazine where they share interesting discoveries about the language, such as proverbs, quizzes, recipes, and information about famous people.
They can even explore photography, capturing intriguing subjects and describing them in English. Real-life situations can also be simulated, allowing students to assume different roles, find solutions, and engage actively. Integrating art and real-life activities into the classroom transforms learning into an enjoyable adventure, motivating students to continue their educational journey. Most importantly, students discover their inner selves, identify their strengths, weaknesses, and talents, and develop a sense of human sensitivity, responsibility towards the environment, and awareness of human rights and values. In this way, teachers contribute to shaping students who can become future educators, managers, authors, artists, psychologists, and even politicians.
Experimentation and implementation of new procedures in the classroom serve as gateways to knowledge. In this context, the teacher's role is to guide students, open their minds, and touch their hearts. Education should not be confined solely to the classroom but should extend to everyday life -whether on the street corner, in the kitchen, during walks, or through listening and play. The activities chosen by teachers should be carefully planned and organized to ensure every student’s active involvement in a creative and enjoyable manner. Teachers can find ways to support students with learning disorders or concentration issues by adapting their teaching methods to align with the students’ preferred learning styles. Techniques that enhance memory retention and language assimilation, as well as concentration exercises to improve focus, can also be incorporated.
In the classroom, teachers may need to reconsider, replan, reject, or modify their approaches. Being open and flexible in teaching is equally important as encouraging learners to be open and flexible in their learning. The prefix ‘re’ holds immense power, as repetition is integral to understanding, awareness, and development for both teachers and learners. Repetition is a vital aspect of life itself.
Regardless of the methods, approaches, or goals pursued, I believe that love, passion, communication, and dedication are words that significantly contribute to language acquisition efforts. I would like to introduce a term that characterizes my teaching approach, namely CCC, which stands for Composition, Connection, Communication. Learners represent the composition of the class, connecting them together and fostering communication among peers. The classroom mirrors real life, where everything in the universe is composed and connected in unity. Through psychological interactions among students, sharing experiences, ideas, and addressing not only learning but also personal challenges, empathy and compassion are nurtured, thereby improving and advancing the learning and memorization process.
I strongly believe that the role of a teacher is akin to that of a coach, fostering an environment of intimacy, trust, and communication among learners. It is essential to instill in students a sense of respect and self-esteem while providing praise and support. By doing so, students recognize the value of teamwork and cooperation, actively engaging in activities or projects that enhance not only their language skills but also their understanding of English culture and literature. Above all, they become active learners and leaders in their own lives and educational journeys. They gain awareness of their needs, desires, and goals, discovering strategies that best suit their learning styles and equip them to navigate through life.
Ultimately, we all thrive in a collaborative environment, and as Margaret Mead famously stated, “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” This sentiment applies equally to teaching and learning
