Open your social media account and take a look at what people post - to-do lists for the day, grand plans for the upcoming year, better, harder, faster, stronger. And we all feel obligated to follow suit. Our life has become so goal-oriented and achievement driven that we sometimes forget to take a pause and consider what we have actually already achieved. The daily grind, the rat race, the struggle for more is excruciating and never-ending, and it may leave us an empty shell. But isn’t it true that the journey is more important than the destination?
Today we would like to encourage you to take a look at the path BEHIND you and not ahead. Compare yourself with you from the past, see what has changed, what you’ve learned and how you’ve grown as a professional.
Your First Lessons
Take a moment to remember your very first lessons? Were you afraid of your students? Did you behave like a caricature soviet teacher, strict and unforgiving, the-bell-is-for-the-teacher kind, or did you try to be too laid-back and friendly feeling unnatural? Think about the way you feel in class today, how you navigate around different activities, social situations and tricky questions. How you are able to build rapport with your students or find a key to anyone.
Your Language
The best way to learn something is to try to teach it, correct? You can look back at what your language awareness and understanding of grammar was when you first started and what it is now. How many more words do you know? Have you taken any language exams?
Your Teaching Skills
Even if you haven’t found the time or resources to pass any ELT exams, you definitely have become a better teacher. Think about all the coursebooks you’ve tried, how you plan your lessons and manage time, how you pace the lessons and what tricks you have accumulated over the years. You have surely come so far!
We hope, that this little exercise will help you feel accomplished and proud of yourself. Do not forget to enjoy the journey and every now and then, pause to look back and congratulate yourself on the distance you’ve covered. And now let us indulge ourselves a bit and feel the pride in our achievements, too!
How has Amazy grown?
We are thankful to all our readers, content creators and users, who continue to trust us and contribute to our fast-growing community. Amazy started a few years ago as a platform for connecting teachers and students based on their personality, but our focus soon shifted to the teachers themselves, their needs and pains.
Our lesson builder feature now has 15 different tools not even including regular text, that you can highlight and change colors of. The latest update was the Gap tool, which allows you to create multiple choice gapped exercises and more. We have big plans for this particular instrument, so stay tuned, we have many surprises in store for you.
In August 2021 we started a challenge to create 500 lessons in community - a space for sharing ready-made materials with others! A year later and we have far surpassed that goal, achieving 20 623 unique lessons created by our users. We haven’t been wasting time and now teachers all over the world can save up their time and find interactive, effective and exciting lesson plans to use with their students.
As for the active users, we can say that 2834 people have created at least one lesson on the platform, but there are also those who have created none. Who are they? Students of course! Shared tab has become an indispensable feature to use in class, allowing collaboration and progress-tracking.
As for the links
Here is one of the last lessons shared on Amazy:
- Crime. Justice issues. B2
And here is one of the first:
- Writing Emails (basics) / Present and past tenses revision, B2
Here is the most popular lesson:
- Memories, Narrative Tenses, B1
And the most generous creator:
- Ana
How have you grown as a professional? What are your achievements and personal victories so far?
PERSONAL OPINION
Hi, I;m Anastasia, and I’ve been an ESL teacher for almost a year now. However, the amount of knowledge and revelations I’ve had during this time is priceless. I found some of the them more surprising than others, so here is a small list of 4 things I have learned after being a teacher for a year:
1. You could think it’s the basics of teaching, but I myself underestimated the importance of setting the smallest and the most mundane goals and how it affects your productivity. You see, we all set the goals at the start of creating a lesson and build from them. The students achieve something and are very happy about it, and get the needed motivation. But how about you? You are also constantly exploring and trying new things as a teacher, studying and testing methodology. Make this a learning process for yourself too, plan a couple new things to try this week and come back to the list to see how much better of a teacher you’ve become. Instant motivation and validation!
2. There are so many methods to try, that you probably want to incorporate every possible thing in you lesson, that’s what I did anyway. I wanted to become better, like the people I admire and look up to. But I did not give myself time to properly understand how a certain game or a lesson structure works, and I just brushed past it. And only recently I have started giving myself time to probate my experiments. Now I see some of them as my fancy teacher repertoire, and some of them (Gasp!) don’t actually work.
3. All of that sounds like a lot of work: planning, having the lessons, setting goals for yourself and researching new methods. It might be incredibly tiring, but what is “being tired” to you, the new teacher, with all those ideas and eager students. “Yeah, I can work for eight hours with no lunch breaks, and I don’t really need a free day, look at all the money and experience I get, I love my work.” But then it hits you: I don’t want to work today. And tomorrow. And ever. In this profession, I believe, you have to have this fire inside, you need to be inspired to do it successfully, so healthy life-work balance is a necessity. Your future self will be grateful, and your present self too.
4. One thing that wasn’t important to me, but noticed and appreciated by my boss, was how I approached problems. There was an agreement between us, that she was supposed to be more of a mentor to me at first, so I never shied away from seeking help with any problematic situations during lessons. I carefully listened and followed through with the advice, and got better, truly. But it was unexpected to me, when during one of the feedback sessions she praised my ability to come to her and listen and actually apply new knowledge. And just like that I learned how my mistakes become my strengths!
Would you like to become a contributor and be featured in our newsletter as an expert? Let us know!
That’s all for now!
Stay amazing❤️