A wonderful greeting filled with warm sunshine and a soft, cool breeze for you all. 

Jen, I am. 

A newbie in the world of teaching, I often find myself looking for new interesting ways to teach my students. People ask me what my teaching philosophy is and I tell them it is...

TO HAVE FUN! 

I am an ESL (English as a Second Language) instructor. 

Basically, I teach introductory English to ADULT English learners, who are often immigrants. Many of my students have little experience in a school setting. The last thing I want to do is put them through a lecture-based class, so I play games and do learning crafts with them.

I have had colleagues who tell me teaching adults is different from teaching little kids and that they must be RESPECTED aka NO ARTS AND CRAFTS. This was one of the first advice given to me when I first started and it turned my class into a bland blob of everyone's basic English class. 

Two weeks in and I decided to OZ the class. 

Bringing back the Magic!

I have a soft spot for ART. I initially wanted to teach pre-k just because I wanted to do crafts with the little ones, but then I figured along the way that I can't handle kids (yet). Thus, here I am making my adult students do arts and crafts along with other interactive activities. I was really amazed with the change in atmosphere, though. The students became more talkative and they even help me come up with PROJECTS. I was afraid that they would feel DISRESPECTED or think of the materials as CHILDISH, but it was well received.

The class is becoming more COLORFUL and I am proud to say our comfort level has reached, or even surpassed FAMILY level. 

We love our CALLIGRAPHY DAYS. We don't just WRITE our vocabulary; we CALLIGRAPH those letters, draw pictures of the words--sometimes even build stuffs--and then put them on DISPLAY. Hopefully I can get some pictures up, but here's a sample of my calligraphy hobby (Alluring Anireeta-calligraphed for my good friend). 

(Excuse the filters)

I truly LOVE  the adult ESL student population. If you have never taught such a group, I encourage you to do so. Every day, they show me such great appreciation that I no longer question, WHY AM I TEACHING?

Look forward to some follow-up posts of actual ACTIVITIES, ARTS 'N CRAFTS, and CALLIGRAPHY done in my "UNICORN" class. I would also love to hear what others are doing in their classrooms. 

Hoping to enjoy SteemIt as my first blog platform.

And with that, I bid thee a sweet farewell overlooking a field of soft daisies, whose petals have been slowly kissed by the warm orange rays of the sunset. 

-Unicorn Jenoodle

(Greetings to Wang)