
Along with your students you will be finding out things you did not know before. Sometimes you may feel frustrated thinking: "Hey, I am the teacher here! I should know that!" However, it does not work this way. Teachers are life-long learners. Imagine you are a sponge that soaks up everything that happens around. Your students may be older than you, they may have more experience than you in certain aspects of life. Use this information to become better and to know more. Experience is the best teacher.
For example, most of my first students were Korean and Japanese. After teaching them for a couple of months, I found out that I knew so much about their home countries, that new Korean or Japanese students would ask me if I had actually been in Korea and Japan. I had not. All I learned was from my conversation with my previous students. If you find that you do not know anything about a country or something that your students may know, use it as a topic for your class. It will be interesting for them to talk to you about it and actually feel as if they are teaching you something new (which always brings their involvement in the lesson to a higher level) and you will have a perfect lesson where your students get to practice their English and meanwhile you will learn a lot from them. It is always a two-way process. Learning never happens in one direction only. Consider it as your professional development and growth as well.
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