Attitude 

- However ‘nice’ teachers are, the students are unlikely to follow them willingly unless
they have confidence in their professional abilities. Students need to believe that we know
what we are doing. This confidence in a teacher may start the moment we walk into the
classroom for the first time – because of the students’ perception of our attitude to the job.
Aspects such as the way we dress, where we stand and the way we talk to the class all have a
bearing here. Students also need to feel that we know about the subject we are teaching.
Consciously or unconsciously they need to feel that we are prepared to teach English in
general and that we are prepared to teach this lesson in particular. One of the chief reasons
(but not the only one, of course) why classes occasionally become undisciplined is because
teachers do not have enough for the students to do – or seem not to be quite sure what to do
next. When students have confidence in the teacher, they are likely to remain engaged with
what is going on. If they lose that confidence, it becomes difficult for them to sustain the
motivation they might have started with.

HARMER-page 93-

Agency  A lot of the time students have things done to them and, as a result, risk being passive
recipients of whatever is being handed down. We should be equally interested, however, in
things done by the students, so that they become, like the agent of a passive sentence ‘the
thing or person that does’. When students have agency, they get to make some of the
decisions about what is going on, and, as a consequence, they take some responsibility for
their learning. For example, we might allow our students to tell us when and if they want to be
corrected in a fluency activity, rather than always deciding ourselves when correction is
appropriate and when it is not. We might have the students tell us what words they find
difficult to pronounce, rather than assuming they all have the same difficulties.

Tessa Woodward points out that teenagers get bored by activities that last too long, or by
slow-paced lessons. They may have some problems with authority (especially if they have
problems at home), have a highly developed sense of what is right and fair, and get irritated if
they do not see the reason for activities (Woodward 2011b). page 83-HARMER

If this all sounds too negative, we need to remind ourselves that adolescents also have huge
reserves of (temporary) energy: they often have passionate attachments to interests such as
music and sport; and they are frequently deeply involved in and with the lives of their peer
group. This passion can also extend to causes they believe in and stories that interest them.
They can be extremely humorous – teenage classrooms are often full of laughter – and very
creative in their thinking. As they develop, their capacity for abstract thought and intellectual
activity (at whatever level) becomes more pronounced. Far from being problem students
(though they may sometimes cause problems), teenage students may be the most enjoyable
and engaging to work with.

A key ingredient of successful teaching for this age group is to make what we do relevant to
the students’ lives. For example, we will want to get them to respond to texts and situations
with their own thoughts and experiences, rather than just answering questions and doing
abstract learning activities. Although adolescents are perfectly capable of abstract thought, we
might want to say that in general ‘if what is being taught does not have a direct connection to
their real lives … they simply switch off’ (Chaves Gomes 2011: 31). - page 84-HARMER
A moment’s reflection, however, will remind us that in learning, as in many other facets of life,
some people are more capable of being autonomous than others. Perhaps we should see our
task, then, as offering our students guidance towards achieving autonomy and then supporting
them as they try to get there. But we can’t force it. Instead, we can do our best to make it
easier for those who wish to take control of their own learning and language development to
do so. But it may not be easy. HARMER - Page 97

When teachers and classes first meet each other, they suggest, the students expect leadership
and direction. This gives them a clear focus and makes them feel secure at the same time. But
as classes develop their group identity, teachers will want to relax their grip and foster more
democratic class practices where the students are involved in the process of decision-making
and direction-fi nding

IN THE FIRST place, being democratic and letting the students participate in decision-making
takes more effort and organisation than controlling the class from the front. Furthermore, the
promotion of learner autonomy (where students not only learn on their own, but also take
responsibility for that learning), is only one view of the teaching–learning relationship, and is
very culturally biased… HARMER- page 113.

Finally, we need to consider what kind of a persona a teacher should have in the class. Some
people, for example, think that teachers should keep themselves aloof from their students and
erect some kind of professional ‘wall’ between themselves and the people they teach. Jim
Scrivener does not agree. ‘I don’t want to spend my life acting the role of a teacher,’ he writes.
‘I want to make contact with learners, human to human’ (2012: 37). And yet one of the things
that we all have to do – or fi nd – is how we are in the classroom.

. Perhaps we might agree with Jody Keisner that ‘developing a teacher persona requires
teachers to experiment with a variety of classroom activities and teaching styles, to solicit
feedback from their students on what is and is not working, and to keep a journal where they
can refl ect on areas that cause the most frustration or curiosity’ (Keisner 2008: 51)

Many people enter the teaching profession almost by accident and find, almost by chance,
that it suits them. It is then a process of learning how to teach and reflecting on what happens
through a process of continual professional development—115 HARMER