A Reason to Smile

A few days ago, I felt that teaching was the most difficult job in the world. I was staring into a pair of 61 eyes and all I could see in those eyes were the words, "I don't care" and "I don't understand". I felt that I was giving everything yet I still see so many students with no interest in learning English. I decided to find out what type of learners do we have and so I changed my lesson the following week. Instead of giving them short dialogues and stories to read, I decided to use Dr. Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences which is basically a lecture type. I made few simple YES/NO questions for each type for them to easily identify their abilities.

The class with 61 students didn't disappoint me. More than half of the class said that they are Body Smart people, that they love sports and other outdoor activities than any other things. The rest fell under people smart, musical smart, number smart, nature smart and self smart. Out of 61, only one said that he likes to learn a foreign language specially English. At least there was someone in that room that made me smile.Then, going to the next class, I was expecting the same result. So, I just went on with the discussion and finally asked questions to more than 40 students. There were more than half of them who said they to learn English so much and that they enjoy our English class. When I asked about one girl about her ability she said she is musical smart and word smart. So I asked her if she could sing any English song. The class supported my request by saying, "sing..sing..sing". The girl started singing, "My Heart Will Go On". She has a really nice voice and the class gave her a big round of applause. Another boy was inspired by her song so he also sang, "God is a Girl", a song which I heard before but I actually didn't know its title. The singer is a girl but the boy gave justice to the song. He really did well.
Here is the video from youtube. No wonder this song has become no. 1 in China.

 

The last boy really surprised me when he said he can sing and dance like Michael Jackson. I thought he would do moonwalk or some Michael Jackson moves, but the class applauded more when he started singing "Nobody" and doing those  cute moves from right to left by Wondergirls.

I just felt that the students would do best once they are given the chance to do what they can do best. I always believe that teachers can motivate students, but that's just 50%, the students should add 50% of that motivation in order for learning to take place. That day, they gave me reason to smile :)