ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

A coworker (not pictured) and I won second place in a competition we had for game invention. We were asked to create a new game out of some randomly selected game materials at our headquarters (HQ). My partner is not pictured here. Instead, you might recognize some of the other staff. The girl on the left, too, won her own respective prize (bravo and props to her!), and the folks behind us are just some jolly positive people I urge you to befriend next time you meet them. These are some of my favorite people on the planet, and I have the distinct pleasure of working with them!

It might not seem a big deal to some of the readers to win a prize in games, but it is really important, I think, to be able to invent on the fly. It is one of the great traits that a teacher must have. In fact, being able to think on the fly and to come up with things on the go are some of the traits emphasized to have by the fellow behind me in the picture. As some of you dear readers might be all too familiar with, school can get a bit boring or staid at times. In order to keep things fresh and to reinforce retention of material, the teacher is in charge of keeping things interesting. To involve as many and as much as possible the student is a constant aim for classroom teaching. Besides being so important, it is a particular joy for me to innovate in the classroom. I take special pride in inventing new games and new uses with old teaching materials. What else can we do with flashcards? What else can we do with Bingo cards? What else can we do with dice? What else can we do with stuffed animals? What else can we do with boxes? What else can we do with our textbooks? What else can we do with English? What else can we do with the classroom itself? Since we teach the same material over and over again, it is additionally important for the teacher to stay engaged with him/herself! If the teacher isn’t enjoying the craft and labor of teaching, then the student, too, will suffer and feel learning as unenjoyable. In order to foster lifelong learning, we have to be fostered by it, too. We are models first and foremost.