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32 contributions to Teacher Support Network (Free)
Should we call students "students"?
I posted this on LinkedIn the other day and go two types of responses: 1. People who completely agree with the idea 2. People who don't No surprise, I guess 🀣 What's your take? Should we call students "students" or "learners." Does it matter? Should we reflect on our role in the learning process, and that we don't necessarily "teach" a language like other subjects? These are takeaways from our interview with the legendary researcher Bill VanPatten. Here's the post below: We shouldn't call them students. Call them learners. What they learn is beyond our control. These are some of the takeaways from our chat with the great Bill VanPatten this week. We'll have more posts and snippets coming out shortly, but this one caught my attention. He calls this the "Atlas complex." Where teachers feel they must do everything and anything to help students. And this is wrong. After all, in a language classroom - or via your own courses if you're selling them - the students' brains are equipped to acquire knowledge beyond our control. Hence the switch from "student" to "learner." They learn with or without us. Which also means we aren't the "teacher," but rather an "interlocutor." Which reminds me of what Paul Nation said when we interviewed him: "As a teacher, you've gotta believe that by NOT teaching, people can learn." And this really is it, isn't it? TL;DR: 1. Don't call them students; call them learners 2. Don't call ourselves teachers; refer to ourselves as interlocutors 3. We have very little control over what learners acquire
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New comment May 23
0 likes β€’ May 23
@Andrew Woodbury While the use of "learners" vs "students" is definitely context specific, your podcast with Bill VanPatten convinced me that using "learners" helps change the mindset we have about what we are doing in the classroom. I had never heard of him but what an interesting person, full of knowledge and experience that comes through in the interview. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in teaching, linguistics, the history of esl, esl research and other stuff as well.
On track
It's been a while since I've been here. Life got busy! But I just wanted to share some recent wins. I'm on track with some goals I set for myself as a result of some of the courses on here. I've resigned from my job and will finish there at the end of June. I have also left the underpaying TEFL platform I was using. My list of contacts is growing and I've managed to successfully receive payments from China. I even increased my price. Looking forward to being able to take on more private students from July onwards and make this my main source of income rather than just a sideline. I hope everyone is also enjoying some wins and keeping on track. Anyone else want to share some of their wins?
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New comment May 23
1 like β€’ May 23
@Sandra Armstrong thanks for this post. I have been too busy to work on my own business project but see that it is really the only way to go in the long term. Thanks for sharing these successes!
Add your Reflections Here
Have you also waited for the perfect moment? Do you resonate with what we experienced? Are you trapped in the consumption wheel?
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New comment Jun 6
Add your Reflections Here
1 like β€’ Nov '23
@Carolina Vecchio Carolina, I am in complete agreement - I definitely feel 10 (maybe more?) years behind, but I do also bring a variety of experiences to teaching. *Every* skill can be useful in the classroom and probably for business but I also have not figured out how to use it all for the latter.
3 likes β€’ Mar 19
@Melinda Buck It's the same for a lot of us that the perfect time never arrives. I'm moving forward with the project 5in30, very slowly, but still forward. There's a lot of legitimate stuff of life that comes up and takes priority, but I also see how much time I waste with stalling tactics (I need to learn more first, It's not perfect, Maybe it'll never sell so why bother, Someone else has already done something better, etc). But slowly forward is better than not at all for the moment.
Recording: From 1:1 to Hybrid Courses
Big thanks to @Carolina Vecchio for the incredible presentation today. Here's the recording for anyone who missed it or wants to relive it. As we say, you can't teach 1:1 forever. So if you have your business running and want to move on from exclusively selling your time in 1:1 lessons, Carolina's story, journey, and insights will help you immensely. We had a great Q&A at the end as well. We're happy to call Carolina a client and are so happy to see all her success. And if you want support creating your own courses, book a chat with us to tell us about your vision and see if working together makes sense: https://learnyourenglish.net/schedule
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New comment Mar 20
Recording: From 1:1 to Hybrid Courses
2 likes β€’ Mar 15
Thanks for making this available. I was able to stay for only part of the session and what I saw was great and very encouraging, and I'll watch what I missed in the coming days. @Carolina Vecchio , thanks for being so generous in sharing your experience.
Impostering yet again
So I had a big "imposter syndrome" experience last week, where I'd prepared lesson plans for a class that meets for four hours. Late in the day prior to the class, the school emailed me and said the course would be taking a different direction and that I would need to prepare four new hours of lessons for the class. Well despite the time crunch I was able to do it and it went just fine. However, my first thought on leaving the school building was, "Looks like I fooled them all for another day." If any colleague had had this experience and told me about it I would be super proud of them and impressed. It's such an absurd dynamic!
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New comment Mar 7
0 likes β€’ Mar 7
@Andrew Woodbury Thanks for that feedback! Lesson Planning remains an issue but yes I have made some progress. During the CertTESOL the longest lesson I'd planned was 60 minutes, and now I'm in the classroom for hours at a time. And in addition here I am at LYE making progress (as slow as it is) developing business ideas. It's good to be with you all in this endeavor
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Michael Toczek
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83points to level up
@michael-toczek-2093
I'm trying to learn as much as I can to be a better teacher and earn more.

Active 106d ago
Joined Oct 1, 2023
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