My thoughts on teaching ESL

Having been in an ESL classroom for 4 years, I have seen and learned many things. Of course, most of these things are the ins and outs of having students of different cultural backgrounds and ability levels, but one sticks out in my mind more than anything. To put it simply, being an ESL teacher sometimes places you in the driver’s seat of a vehicle that has a lot of hands on the steering wheel. You find yourself torn between doing things that will help you keep your job and doing things that will benefit your students. I say this because a lot of the things that will help your scores and make you look good as a teacher will not actually benefit your students and their acquisition of English. Unfortunately, many of the things you can do in class to help your students learn English will not reflect directly on your yearly assessment scores. I say this from not only teaching my own classes, but from seeing my husband (who teaches ESL in Middle and High School) go through the same turmoil. You must always ask yourself the questions, “Why am I doing this?” and “Will this benefit my students?” Sometimes the curriculum will dictate that you do things that will make you answer “no” to the second question. Your goal, then, is to make sure that you make each of these goals coexist. That goal, unfortunately, is often not too easy. Here are a few pictures of my students that have made the biggest impact on me and that have answered that question "Why am I doing this?"