Ten months ago I began a journey of practicing mindfulness every day and we've reached day 306. Yesterday, I talked about how making one change in your life creates a domino effect in all aspects of our lives. Today is a new day.
One of my challenges as a teacher is being able to break the habit of study routines with my students. I notice them taking a lot of notes and we tend to practice a lot of example dialogues, but when it comes to actually putting their notes to use in our speaking exercises they tend to either overthink things and try to use the structures from the practice exercises in the correct order or they end up shutting down and giving simple answers. They tend to not push themselves and explore their limits on their own. The personality isn't there.
In a lot of ways, I consider my role as a teacher more as a motivator than an actual instructor of English. The Japanese are amazing at memorization. To me, it's the application part that they tend to struggle with, so my job is to get them into the habit of applying their knowledge in a way that's practical and not just for some test.
So I've started to do mental exercises with them like getting them to make up stories on the spot using a few vocabulary words as guidelines. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's really hard for them, but I've noticed that it gets them in the habit of using their imagination and expressing things their own way. To me, that's the whole point of communication: to express yourself and share your ideas.
This doesn't just apply to language, either. Everything, in its own way, is a form of expression. Art isn't limited to music, paintings, poetry, or dance. To me, art is anything that represents the expression of the self, our ideas, and our intentions. They each have their own significance and so in the right perspective anything can be art. That's the beauty of it all. As Bob Ross would say, "we don't make mistakes, just have happy little accidents". Getting past the idea of "messing up" is the hard part, but that comes with practice. Getting my students to see this is my goal as a teacher.
This idea I think is the best way to truly master something. Like the swordsman considering the blade a natural extension of the arm in order to gracefully slay their opponents. Or the musician diving into the abyss of emotions and sound in order to give the performance of their life. When we pour ourselves into our work and make it our own that's the true mark of mastery.
Peace
"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." - Albert EinsteinJapan gets a lot of flack for having a terrible system for its English education. Schools mainly focus on learning grammar and like they do with kanji (one of their writing systems), they prioritize on memorization of vocabulary but lack a comprehensive understanding of how to use any of it. In Japan, they focus on cramming information in and testing, which from a practical standpoint is terrible. While they are surprisingly good at understanding, they end up not being able to actually speak so conversations end up pretty one-sided.
One of my challenges as a teacher is being able to break the habit of study routines with my students. I notice them taking a lot of notes and we tend to practice a lot of example dialogues, but when it comes to actually putting their notes to use in our speaking exercises they tend to either overthink things and try to use the structures from the practice exercises in the correct order or they end up shutting down and giving simple answers. They tend to not push themselves and explore their limits on their own. The personality isn't there.
In a lot of ways, I consider my role as a teacher more as a motivator than an actual instructor of English. The Japanese are amazing at memorization. To me, it's the application part that they tend to struggle with, so my job is to get them into the habit of applying their knowledge in a way that's practical and not just for some test.
So I've started to do mental exercises with them like getting them to make up stories on the spot using a few vocabulary words as guidelines. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's really hard for them, but I've noticed that it gets them in the habit of using their imagination and expressing things their own way. To me, that's the whole point of communication: to express yourself and share your ideas.
This doesn't just apply to language, either. Everything, in its own way, is a form of expression. Art isn't limited to music, paintings, poetry, or dance. To me, art is anything that represents the expression of the self, our ideas, and our intentions. They each have their own significance and so in the right perspective anything can be art. That's the beauty of it all. As Bob Ross would say, "we don't make mistakes, just have happy little accidents". Getting past the idea of "messing up" is the hard part, but that comes with practice. Getting my students to see this is my goal as a teacher.
This idea I think is the best way to truly master something. Like the swordsman considering the blade a natural extension of the arm in order to gracefully slay their opponents. Or the musician diving into the abyss of emotions and sound in order to give the performance of their life. When we pour ourselves into our work and make it our own that's the true mark of mastery.
Peace
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| When it comes to mastery, there is no best way, only YOUR way. Do you. |
How are you expressing yourself?
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