It often happens that teachers entering the field of education with a great sense of purpose - to help students - lose sight of their own personal learning goals.
ESL teaching is hard work. Daily interaction with students at any level keeps a teacher's mind engaged 24/7. Teachers try to grasp the reasons behind a successful class so that they might make the magic happen again, and they reflect on classes that did not goes as planned in order to avoid falling into the same trap in the future. And teachers think about their students- the thirty, or forty, or fifty or more students that demand significant chunks of their time and energy. Where's the ME time? Sadly, for some teachers it doesn't seem to exist.
Personally, I do not view my career in education as a one-way street. I design lesson plans that allow me to learn from my students as much as the lesson aims to instruct them in some new way - a recent grammar exercise required students to rewrite (see Copying exercise) sentences that expressed less commonly known aspects of their cultures. To be sure, I learned some new things, but I also left the class feeling that I had attained a reasonable balance between what I "give" as a teacher and what I "receive" in return as a person interested in learning about other cultures.
Maybe I'm just selfish to think that I deserve get something out of my teaching experience beyond a paycheck and an often vague notion that I'm doing some good in the world. I really dont know, but I'd be glad to hear what you think about it. Feel free to respond to this blog and start a discussion.
