Inspired!

[eveglass]

I had an epiphany about two minutes ago. It occurs to me that, aside from the actual course content, I love my job as a corporate ESL teacher. I love oh-so-many things about it:

- my students are: 1) adults, 2) genuinely interested in my class (otherwise they wouldn't have signed up), 3) interesting people with life experience
- my students are generally advanced enough (ie: intermediate to advanced) that I can have conversations with them about interesting topics and don't need to dwell on the basics
- my classes are small enough (3-5 people) that I can give every student individual attention and really respond to the needs of the class
- for a person my age, the hourly pay is quite decent
- I love teaching

In fact, the only thing I don't like about being an ESL teacher is the actual "ESL" part of it. I find it hard to stick to grammar, especially when I don't have a context to put it in, or the context is contrived.

In fact, when I work as a writing tutor, I tend to function by having my students bring in a writing sample, and then we go through it in order, noting mistakes as they occur. I like working like that: taking something written by my student and using it as a jumping-off point. I don't work well by taking a textbook and just working my way through it.


My other great love is reading and discussing what I've read. I have always, as far back as I can remember, been an avid reader. I was polishing off 3-4 books a week when I was in late elementary / early high school. My university schooling was focused around reading classic books and discussing them with other smart people, and much of my graduate school experience was similar. Even now, the only reason I don't read more than I do is because I can't afford the books!


The epiphany may seem amazingly simple once you read these two things coupled together, and I'm surprised it's taken me five months to see it. I want to combine these two loves and teach ESL to adults via the medium of great texts.

I know some of you might be thinking, "these texts are challenging for native English speakers! What makes you think you can get ESL students to understand them?!?" My answer is that the difficulty often lies in the speed the texts are presented. If I start with intermediate students and go through the texts slowly and in-depth, they'll get it. And then we can discuss the texts, using those discussions as a springboard into all sorts of other interesting topics. And, finally, I can get my students to write stuff about the texts, bring it to class, and then review some of the mistakes together as we go. I can't believe I didn't think of this before.


The only question now becomes implementation. I can visualize exactly how I would structure the class, exactly what type of students I want. I just have no idea how to reach them. Are there venues already existing for something like this? There must be; it's such a simple idea it would make no sense if I were the first to come up with it. If you know of a venue like this, please please let me know. If there are no venues already existing, I'll have to figure out how to reach my students and where to teach them. Any suggestions are amazingly welcome.


Okay, that said, I need to plan my lesson for tomorrow. No matter how inspired I am, I can't really work my idea at my current school, so it's time for some grammer-based lesson planning. *grin*