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Even though I am an English teacher who loves books, I have to admit that I don't always get around to reading as much as I should...or even as much as I want to. (As I've mentioned to some of you, I love buying books even though I rarely finish reading them.) It seems a little strange for me to say this, but perhaps that's one of the reasons why I love my "English Literacy" class.

On Monday evenings and Wednesday afternoons, my students and I meet together and we get to spend a lot of time discussing, analyzing and interpreting some really interesting texts. I love finding ways that writers' lives have blended into the words that they put on the page. I love the fact that we can learn about our own culture and even find new ways to compare it to other cultures by looking at literature. I love how I always see something that I never noticed before when I talk about what I've read with other people. And most of all, I love how everyone sees things differently, even if we are all talking about the same story. Sometimes I think that I'm learning right along with the students in my class.

But I guess that's how a lot of things go in life, right? Most things are better when we can share them with other people. Even work! Last week I went to help an acquaintance with a big project he had in progress. He usually has to do everything on his own, so this time was quite different for him. There was certainly nothing interesting, exciting or special about the job that we were doing, but what I realized as I was leaving was how quickly time had seemed to pass as we worked, how much I had enjoyed getting to know my new friend as we chatted while we worked, how the task itself became more valuable than just the finished product or the output of our labor.

I hope that students in my classes are able to feel this way when they study English. One of the reasons that I love teaching classes with many students is because it energizes me to see so many people together. I have some Japanese roommates who often study for hours at night alone in their rooms; they look drained at the end of the evening, and that makes me feel sad. I definitely don't want learning English to feel like "work" for you!

Maybe the most important lesson I have learned from this is that when I only concentrate on the "work" to be done, it can become easy to feel overwhelmed or even to dread what needs to be done. Sometimes we can lose enthusiasm for something altogether. But even the most boring tasks can be made into something more worthwhile if we focus on the joys of interacting with others, if we really appreciate what other people can contribute, if we never lose sight of any new skills or knowledge to be gained from our work. I believe that then, not only do we become better workers, but we also feel better about our work in the process. Happy studying!

(P.S. Just a quick reminder that I'll be on vacation from Kaplan between September 20th and September 28th. Be extra nice to my substitute teachers!  I'll miss everyone while I'm away, but I look forward to sharing with you about my holiday after I return. See you!)

▼▽▼▼【講師】Melanie先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━

・【Being Comfortable is Less Important than You'd Think】2010.07.23 (Fri)