Languages for teachers

Welcome to the 5-week Linguist Show. Today I want to talk about language for teachers. So the very first thing that I want to say before I get into anything else is that you teachers are amazing. And I’ve been teaching for, I don’t want to tell you how many years, since my early twenties. And every year I have more respect for teachers. And it’s not just because I am one, it’s because I see what teachers do every single day.

I’m sure if you’re a teacher you’ve heard this quote before, or statistics rather, that teachers make more decisions in a day than an air traffic controller. I believe it. There are so many decisions that have to be made. And not to say that they’re all big, because many of them are small, but it’s, you’ve got 10 people asking you a question at the same time. You’ve got the phone ringing, you’ve got constant competing demands and not always the respect we deserve. Sometimes we have some really unrealistic expectations put on us. I do agree with some of the quotes that it takes a certain kind of person to teach.

However, we can’t do all the work. It’s the person who does the work, who does the learning. And so much of what teachers do is spending time, making, learning, engaging and fun and enjoyable. And they put themselves last. Teachers do so much looking after so many other people that they don’t all look after themselves. Right? And it becomes a way of life where you get used to working incredibly long hours and trying to help people learn as much as they possibly can with the time that you’re given.

But one question I get a lot from my teacher colleagues, and I’m not counting my language teacher colleagues, how do I learn the language? And I just talked about all the things that teachers do, right? Teachers are the busiest people I know. And I’m not sure that, apart from the planning and the classroom and everything teachers do for that part of their job, the grading, all the stuff that comes after school, I’m not sure that people realize if you’re not in teaching, how many other things teachers do. All the committees at school, the fundraising. If kids want to have an activity or you want to do a trip, you have to raise the money. And that involves things like bake sales and working extra jobs at school to help out with that. Planning and putting on special events and coaches, oh my goodness.

Coaches do such an amazing job. They give kids such a productive thing to do that involves building teamwork and a sense of belonging and physical activity. It’s just every year, I’m more in awe of what teachers do. But I wanted to share some tips for teachers to learn other languages. And I know that people, we all have different motivations for learning other languages. And the main motivations that I see for teachers to want to learn languages are first of all, they work at a community to be able to communicate with parents. They might have people from, service a lot of immigrant communities.

So learning another language sure will help in doing your work. So a very practical reason, as well as making a connection with the families, that home/school relationship. The other reason I often see is that teachers are smart and they want to help their kids learn another language because they know about all the advantages they give them. Or even teaching it a little bit in their classroom, just a little sprinkling on top of something. Teaching some words in Spanish or some words and phrases, just having one small part of the day where you can help your students learn that languages aren’t a scary thing and help them get the benefits of improved executive function...