After the holidays, returning to school marks a fresh beginning for many. It’s a time when new aspirations are set, the curriculum is brimming with fresh responsibilities and tasks, and the pristine pages of school notebooks eagerly await the start of the new academic year. However, it’s essential to consider how prepared we are for this fresh start...
Toxic Educational Environments
What’s worse than seeing your students shivering in fear as they hesitantly enter your classroom on the first day of school, only to be frowned upon by their classmates with contempt or even hate? Sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it? How many of us have been bullied at a young age, desperately pleading with our parents to...
When we walk into a new class, we have “absolute musts” in mind. Some of my “absolute musts” is that I inspire trust through personal credibility, that my students get an overview of the academic map of the year, and that I get across as a pleasant professional with expectations of myself and my students. Formulating a shared class vision is top on my...
Back to school is all about setting targets, inspiring, motivating and drawing the pathway to achieving class goals. It is the time of the year when we ask question of the type “Where are we, where do we want to get and how do we get there”? We set the target and plan the journey there. If this journey is unsuccessful, we will end up with bored students...
At the onset of a new school year, collaboration between teachers, parents, and students is essential to ensure a productive academic journey in foreign language learning. As an educator, I firmly believe that meticulous planning, organization, and fostering a positive learning environment lay the groundwork for a fruitful and successful academic...
Like most teachers, I use the first lesson for a ‘getting to know you’ period to establish a harmonious classroom community. There are three activities that we do at this time:
By Helen Papadopoulou, EFL Teacher
1. Play 10 questions Before the students enter the classroom, I write five statements on the board about myself. Two of them are true; the...
Back to school is all about setting targets, inspiring, motivating and drawing the pathway to achieving class goals. It is the time of the year when we ask question of the type “Where are we, where do we want to get and how do we get there”? We set the target and plan the journey there. If this journey is unsuccessful, we will end up with bored students...
So here we are again, ready to start a new school year, in volatile times, not aware if we are to continue in our classrooms or whether we will remain at home and teach (and our students and pupils hopefully learn) through various applications online, synchronously or asynchronously, or even if what lies ahead is a combination of contact teaching and of...
In his 1997 masterpiece Life is Beautiful (La vita è bella) Roberto Benini narrates the story of a father who tries to create a world for his son while being in a Nazi concentration camp. Far-fetched as it may sound, during the pandemic era educators have acted (or at least they should have) like this caring parent in a dystopian environment that has...
