COVID-19 has turned the world upside down. With nearly 9 million confirmed cases and close to 500,000 deaths, it’s changing the way we live. Over 60% of the world’s student population is affected by this global pandemic and it looks like it’s not letting up anytime soon. Many teachers (and parents, too) are jobless, angry,…
Whether you’re teaching expository, descriptive, narrative, or persuasive writing, the challenges are relatively similar. You’re there not only to teach students writing skills so that they can succeed in school and at the workplace, but also to ensure that they’re enjoying the writing process. It’s a well-known fact, after all, that students learn best when…
Learning English has made a whole world of difference in my life. I hope to make the same big impact on people’s lives as I teach them English. Leadership guru Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why says that great leaders inspire everyone to take action when they know their “why”. Today, I’ll share with you…
It’s the end of the year or close to it for students and teachers all over the world. Yet, because of the pandemic and its ensuing disruptions, it doesn’t feel anything like the end of the year. The electric excitement isn’t building in the hallways. There are no parties, no games, not even the adrenaline…
This global pandemic has taken a toll on the lives and health of many people worldwide. Foreign Policy writes that the next pandemic crisis is mental health. Though we teachers aren’t considered frontliners in this fight against COVID-19, I can only imagine the magnitude of stress that we’re all going through right now, what with…
Millennials are often thought of as an entitled, hard-to-understand, and difficult-to-please bunch. That’s a really prejudiced and unhelpful impression of this group of people born between 1981 and 1996. In the Philippines alone, they are 35 million strong and make up 53% working age population. That’s more than half of the working professionals in the…
Think of the best and worst teachers you’ve ever had. How did they make you feel? The impact of how you remember feeling about them all comes from the abundance or lack of emotional intelligence in these teachers. Daniel Goleman wrote a phenomenal book published in 1995 called Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More…
COVID may have changed so much about how we teach, but it hasn’t changed how fun and engaging games are for learners and teachers alike. If anything, COVID has inspired new online game platforms and countless new ways to use them for English teaching. Here’s a list of my 4 favorite free no-sign-up-required online game…
Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” He also emphasized that “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” What better way to enhance one’s imagination than by enhancing one’s creativity? Many people believe that creativity is strictly related only to the arts. Nothing could be further from…
The CEFR is a standard for measuring language proficiency. It helps language teachers accurately gauge students’ English levels as well as their own.