ESL Teacher

A real bonus about ESL teaching is the ex-students who keep in touch with you. I left Japan more than five years ago but I still have some Japanese students who keep in contact with me, which always puts a smile on my face.

Today a Christmas card arrived from a middle-aged woman who I taught in Japan - I remember her so well because she’d spent a year living in Australia before I met her, so she was always keen to talk about her experiences Down Under. I found a thick envelope in my letter box with a card and a gift of a Christmas-themed scarf in really pretty colours. Aren’t I lucky? I think there aren’t too many jobs in the world where satisfied customers still send you gifts five years on.

I mentioned one of my favourite ESL tense review memory games a while ago, and now that the Christmas season is upon us I’m reminded of one of the funniest times I’ve had playing this game.

I was teaching a Cambridge preparation course in Bratislava, Slovakia, and we had a two-week break over the Christmas and New Year season. At our first lesson back, I wanted to ease them slowly back into the idea of studying and I had them all stand up in a circle in the middle of the room (an almost empty room, as this school provided chairs but no desks!).

The instructions were for them to tell us something they did in the holidays, so it was really just a basic past tense review, as well as being a good warm-up and welcome back to school. The main rule was their sentence should use a verb that hadn’t yet been used, and when they repeated the sentences of the students who came before them they couldn’t make a mistake or hesitate longer than three seconds, or they would have to sit down. And the last student standing would win.

The first couple of students told fairly normal things, as far as I can remember. Then we got to Martin, a smiley computer programmer. After reciting the sentences of those before him, he added, “I killed a carp with a hammer.” Carp is a traditional Christmas food in Slovakia and families like to buy a fresh (living) one, have it swim in the bath tub for a few days and then prepare it for Christmas. Martin’s job was to kill theirs and he’d used a hammer. Eek. Of course, I then had to hear this gruesome sentence repeated over and over as each student added their own sentence. “Martin killed a carp with a hammer” (giggle, giggle). It made me squirm so badly to picture poor carp, but everybody else was just laughing so much that even I ended up joining in.

I love it when students write me farewell letters when they leave my class – I guess in my teaching job here in Australia about one in ten students who leave write me a card or a note before they return to their country. I got one from a Korean nicknamed George today, and like most of them, it was full of grammatical errors (oh! Did I teach him nothing?!) but also really full of heart. Some of the highlights:

When I came to school first time, I couldn’t understand what someone asked me. I said Yes or No, like stupid … Actually I didn’t talk so much during the study, because I am a man of reflection mind. So sometimes I made a mistake, sorry. I will go back to my country next week … I will never forget a memory that I spent time in Perth.

And for me, that’s what teaching is all about – sure, I hope that my students learn English grammar and vocabulary and can get a better job because they have better language skills, and all that – but above all, I really hope that they enjoy my classes and create some good memories. I figure that if students are happy and feel good in the classroom environment, then that’s the most important condition for them to actually learn something. For students who leave their own country to study English, it’s usually a really big decision – this student, for example, had been away from Korea for eleven months – and it’s a life-changing thing – something I’m really glad to be a part of.

When I was teaching in a small school in Japan, students were randomly assigned to different teachers each time they came in. This meant that students would try to get particular teachers (although this was technically not allowed – but I’m sure it just depended on how well they got along with the front desk staff) – and conversely that teachers tried to get to teach particular classes.

I guess our students didn’t realise we were fighting over them, but one of the students we all wanted to teach was Takeshi. He was a teenage boy, I guess eighteen or nineteen years old, who had just finished school and was about to leave for a year in Australia – he’d won a scholarship to study there.

Takeshi was hilarious. Not only was he a human sponge – he would instantly remember any new phrase you taught him – but he was absolutely motivated to know everything about English-speaking culture. In some ways, I think, he didn’t fit very well into Japanese society and probably felt more at home speaking English than Japanese. He was hilarious and creative, and always made the lesson fun. When he eventually really did fly off to Australia, there was more than one teacher who was sad to see him go.

Students probably don’t realise this, but teachers know that having a few students like this can really make the difference between a good teaching job and a great one. Students who are so thrilled to learn really provide their teachers with a huge degree of satisfaction. I don’t know where Takeshi is now, but I’m sure he’s still having fun.

One of my fondest memories of teaching in Bratislava is going out to the Christmas markets with my students.

These were my first experiences of Christmas markets, after growing up in a country where Christmas happens in summer and therefore lacks a lot of the normal traditions. In Bratislava they set up a fantastic display of markets through the old town centre, especially near the town hall and museum. Absolutely picturesque!

Added to that, it’s cold. Really cold. Rugging up in a thick coat, scarf, hat and gloves gave me an extra Christmassy feeling!

My favourite expedition here was with two students who worked in marketing in an international company there. They were both about ten years older than me and loved to tease me, so our lessons were always full of laughter. One day they decided that instead of sitting in their meeting room for our lesson, they’d take me out to the Christmas markets, a short walk away. We ate traditional Slovak food, drank hot honey wine (which made me pretty tipsy very fast!) and had a lot of fun. At moments like those, thinking to myself that I was getting paid to have this experience, I couldn’t believe my luck.

Several other classes of mine decided to take me to the Christmas markets that week, including some of my evening classes, which was especially dangerous - all of that medovina (honey wine) made it pretty difficult to get up early the next day for my morning classes. But since my students were in a similar boat - all the locals spend many evenings at the markets - nobody seemed to mind.