February 01, 2006
Discrimination & the ESL Market: Who Are Actually Getting The Jobs?
"We are each burdened with prejudice; against the poor or the rich, the smart or the slow, the gaunt or the obese. It is natural to develop prejudices. It is noble to rise above them." ~ Author Unknown
Have you, or someone you've known, faced discrimination in the ESL marketplace? Lately there's been plenty of buzz on the internet about various types of unfair hiring practices in the ESL industry. For Instance . . .
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Posted by lhobbs at 04:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (4)
December 09, 2005
The Problem with Private ESL Classes
"They're called lessons because they lessen from day to day." ~Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
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Posted by lhobbs at 11:57 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack (2)
December 01, 2005
What Do You Do About Missed ESL Classes?
"The joys of meeting pay the pags of absence / Else who could bear it?" ~ Nicholas Rowe
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Posted by lhobbs at 08:13 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack (3)
November 29, 2005
A Dystopian Future for ESL?
"He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future." ~ George Orwell
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Posted by lhobbs at 03:49 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (3)
November 23, 2005
ESL Jailbirds and Stool-Pigeons
"I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there" ~Charles Bukowski
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Posted by lhobbs at 05:41 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack (1)
November 16, 2005
When ESL Students Evaluate their ESL Instructor
"There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it." ~ Dale Carnegie
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Posted by lhobbs at 01:13 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack (1)
November 08, 2005
Plagiarism in ESL Part II
"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, to steal ideas from many is research." ~ Anonymous (of course)
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Posted by lhobbs at 06:02 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (1)
November 07, 2005
Evaluating Student Work in ESL
"True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information." ~ Sir Winston Churchill
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Posted by lhobbs at 03:34 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (1)
November 06, 2005
ESL & PowerPoint Presentations
"Professors known as outstanding lecturers do two things; they use a simple plan and many examples." ~ W. McKeachie
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Posted by lhobbs at 02:39 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack (2)
November 05, 2005
Plagiarism and ESL
"The more laws & order are made prominent, the more thieves & robbers there will be." - Lao Tzu
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Posted by lhobbs at 01:38 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack (3)
August 22, 2005
Students At What Cost?
Hello everyone!
Tell me if this sounds familiar.
You have a young student in your class who just isn't keeping up. You've worked with him overtime to help him, but quite simply, he just needs a slower paced class. You approach the administrator to let them know that the student needs to be moved to another class, but your request is ignored. You wait weeks, and when no action is taken you ask why. The answer? The school doesn't want to risk insulting, and then losing, the student.
Sigh.
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Posted by msimmons at 07:23 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
June 28, 2005
Do You Have A Favorite?
I can remember in middle school hating the teacher's pet. Do you know what I'm talking about? There was this one kid in class who always got to be the teacher's helper, got to run notes to the principle's office, and never seemed to get into trouble. He was the teacher's pet, and I thought it was the most unfair, unjust thing on earth.
I have a confession.
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Posted by msimmons at 01:34 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
June 09, 2005
Do You Have A Plan?
Something happened to me last night that has become a frequent, yet unwelcome part of my life. It was about 3 a.m. and suddenly I shot up in bed, scared and sweating. In my dream, I had been older, still teaching for a living, but about to retire. I had already given notice at my job, and was looking forward to my golden years lazing on the beach. Then, as I opened my checkbook to look at my balance, I realized that I couldn't possibly retire. I simply hadn't saved enough over the years to quit working.
Ay!
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Posted by msimmons at 04:52 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
April 08, 2005
Debating in the ESL Classroom: Let Me Explain . . .
A few of you weighed in on the issue of debates in the ESL classroom, and boy do your opinions differ!
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Posted by msimmons at 12:03 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1)
April 02, 2005
Are You Struggling With This, Too?
Boy, do I feel like a heel! Your comments about the student who comes to visit me were nothing like I expected! It seems that everyone is light-years of me on this subject. It never even occurred to me that this guy wanted more than just to practice his English and develop a friendship--but some of you saw other motives.
Did I mention that I'm blonde?
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Posted by msimmons at 02:58 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
March 25, 2005
Can A Student Be Your Friend?
Tell me if you’ve ever had a day like this. You’ve got a million things to do, clean your house, take your car in for servicing, buy dog food…you get the picture. Anyway, as soon as you’re showered and ready to head out the door, you hear a timid knock. Before you even answer it, your heart sinks because you know who it is.
The Student Who Wants To Be Your Friend.
Now, I’m not saying that I don’t absolutely love my students—I do, but at times I would like to make the line much clearer between my teaching time and my personal time. Any ESL teacher knows that time is precious because we generally end up working a ton of hours. Because of this I’ve come to absolutely guard my free time. That is, until this one particular student came into my life.
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Posted by msimmons at 01:49 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
March 21, 2005
Can You Say The "N" Word?
Do you automatically tune out when you hear the word "networking?"
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Posted by msimmons at 11:17 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (1)
March 18, 2005
Do You Love What You Do?
Last time, I talked about whether or not it was wise to speak the mother tongue in a classroom setting, and that got me thinking about something else: if I go to all of the trouble to make my students work hard to learn English, rather than just doing it the easy way and telling them how to do the exercises in Spanish, I must actually love what I’m doing!
I guess I’ve never really thought about whether I love teaching ESL or just simply do it, because I’ve been working in this profession for so long. But this week, I finally came to realize that I truly do enjoy my job. (Why else would I work for so little pay, right?)
But then I started to wonder just how much that would change if I didn’t get to experience the many things that I do because I live in another country.
What about you? Are you in this career because of the satisfaction that comes from teaching and watching your students learn English, or do you do it for the cultural experiences and adventures that oftentimes go with the territory? While I do enjoy the profession, I wonder how much I would enjoy it if I was teaching in the United States. In other words, if I didn’t get the chance to experience another culture, country and the wacky experiences that go with it, would I still be an ESL teacher? Honestly, I don’t think that I would.
Does that make me any less of a teacher? I don’t think so. Instead, I think that it takes a special blend of character traits to be a good teacher, and in order to be a good teacher in another country, it takes those, plus an entirely different set of them. (patience, a willingness to try new things, and a laid-back attitude, for starters.)
Now, I’m not saying that teaching English as a second language isn’t an experience in itself—it only takes one visit to an ESL classroom to discover that! But there is something about stopping at the local market on your way home from class and seeing, tasting and smelling those foreign “things”, or spending your free time in a whole new cultural setting that adds another dimension to this work.
Am I the only one who feels like this?
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Posted by msimmons at 02:35 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
March 11, 2005
Can You Say Hola?
Or perhaps the better question is: Should you? Recently, I was in one of my beginner classes—where I make it habit never to speak anything but English—and one of my students was having a difficult time understanding a particular point. Every single fiber of my being wanted to shout out the sentence in Spanish to make it easier for him. But I didn’t. You know why?
I have a theory. If my students knew that I spoke Spanish, I believe that their expectations of me would change immediately. No one wants to struggle to get a point—people naturally want do things the easy way—but that’s not necessarily best when it comes to learning a new language. And so if they knew that I spoke Spanish, they would expect me to use it in the classroom.
And so I fake it. I pretend that I don’t understand anything they say to me in their mother tongue, and I make them work for every noun, verb and adjective that they acquire.
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Posted by msimmons at 12:19 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
