My Teaching Philosophy

As a new-to-the field ESOL teacher, I’m a work in progress. So too is my teaching philosophy. Here follows, then, my philosophy “so far,” informed by more than 120 hours of 1:1 tutoring through the Literacy Volunteers of Massachusetts (LVM) program and in-classroom assistant teaching with the International Institute of New England, as well as my coursework for the Certificate for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages at the University of Massachusetts.

Translating marketing experience to effective teaching practice

I came to teaching after a nearly 39-year career in the advertising/marketing field as a strategist, writer, editor, leader, and mentor. Very soon after beginning as an LVM tutor, I discerned a powerful parallel between the two fields:

In marketing, successful messages meet customers “where they are” on their path to a purchasing decision, resonate with them, and move them closer to purchase.

In teaching, successful lessons meet learners “where they are” on their learning journeys and advance them along that path.

I attribute my success as an LVM tutor to this idea. LVM’s central value is the delivery of needs-based instruction — meeting learners “where they are” in their lives and language journeys with lessons that answer immediate needs and empower greater independence in the English-speaking spaces they inhabit and move through daily.

How I teach right now

In my view, meeting learner needs entails the understanding of not only those needs but also the student as a whole person. I strive to achieve this through:

My abiding curiosity about the world and its people.
My desire to find connection with others and learn from them.
My ability to listen to others and discern matters of importance to them (and for the purpose of delivering effective lessons, their learning styles).
My proven ability to connect those individual interests with the topics being taugh, stirring those “a-ha!” moments of clarity and understanding.
My own passion for the English language and wide-ranging personal interests (from cooking, to music, to being outdoors, to my daily puzzle obsession).

In practice, my approach manifests itself in lessons grounded in a single-minded SLO and created to be resonant, eye-opening, and enjoyable. It also (and often) transforms to what I (and my learner) sometimes call “jazz teaching” — in-class improvisation to answer a need in real time. While this practice cuts into planned teaching time (or even tosses out the lesson plan entirely until our next session), the impact is powerful and vividly evident in my learner’s animated “Yes, I get it, I get it now.” These moments never fail to energize me; they’re my greatest rewards as a teacher.

How I structure my lessons

In my experience, the core elements of an effective lesson include:

A clear, single-minded SLO.
Target language emphasis (if not exclusivity).
Maximized Student Talk Time.
Error correction that supports the SLO while discouraging fossilization.
Whenever possible, authentic texts that support the SLO and resonate with student interests.
Opportunities for students to be active (conversational role-playing, collaborative activities, whiteboard work, in-lesson “tutors,” etc.).
My own energy and natural enthusiasm for the topic at hand.
Encouragement and positivity — Belief in my students and their potential.

Regarding student assessment

My philosophy around student assessment is strongly informed by my management experience in the business world: In either formative or summative assessments, students should understand the criteria of the assessments prior to beginning study. In the workplace it is unfair for employees to be “in the dark” about how their performance will be reviewed; it is equally unfair to students in the classroom.

AI is here to stay — let’s use it for good.

As you can read in this blog post, as a marketer I went into the AI age kicking and screaming (“I can write better than my computer!”). As a teacher, though, I’m intrigued by the potential of AI as, for instance, a help in creating lesson plans or (as I’ve seen “live” in my IINE class) a real-time, multi-language translation aid (if an imperfect one).

This I believe whole-heartedly: Teaching (and learning) are at their core nuanced human endeavors. As helpful as AI can be for teachers, it can’t replace the compassionate connection teachers make with students. And it certainly can’t turn on a dime and improvise in-class to answer students’ curiosities.

Embracing every opportunity with humility

I find it both exciting and humbling to enter the ESL teaching field because I have so much to learn and expect to learn more every day — from my teaching peers, from my students, and from the wealth of available resources. I look forward to the opportunities ahead of me to put into practice what I’ve learned so far, get feedback, and fine-tune my methods for continuous improvement as a teacher — and sustained success for my students.