Collecting makes perfect

As strange as it sounds, collecting can actually improve your teaching significantly and let you look back in time allowing for a unique perspective on your past work.

When I say collecting, I mean keeping materials you have used in the past that were interesting for your students and highly educational too. These are materials such as newspaper articles, books, essays, photos, flashcards, etc. that helped your students learn better. This collection of materials is your activity bank where you deposit your teacher life-savers. The best advantage of having such a library is that it contains elements of your personality too. In other words, by choosing a certain materials to keep in the "bank" you actually involve in critically selecting materials that you review, test, modify, retest, deposit. These materials have stood the test of teaching and time and they will be always there for you to use and refer to when needed.

Choosing materials is also important in terms of better understanding your students' background. For example, you know that the article about the multicultural festival in Brazil is going to appeal mostly to your Latin students who will be interesting not only to read a review of this festival coming from a different country, but will also contribute to the topic and get engaged in interesting long discussions about it. Another example is that new shopping mall brochure that will be a perfect fit for your Asian students who will be happy to learn about shopping tips and ideas from you.

All these valuable materials are available for free and great to use in the right time with the right students. They will also provide the opportunity for you to look back and reconsider some of your teaching methods... maybe you can use that same brochure in a different more creative way next time...