Teach English in ZhAngzhuAng Zhen - Xuzhou Shi

Having been an English teacher and tutor abroad for over a year now, there are many aspects that I love about my job. When I think about what these aspects are, I realize that the things that bring me the most happiness and satisfaction are the positive outcomes of my students learning goals and the relationships I have developed with them. It is a wonderful feeling, seeing someone happy after they have learned something or achieved a goal, even if I do not necessarily benefit from these interactions in some material form myself. I like my job and I work well because my greatest rewards are the positive emotions connected to the success of my students and our relationships. Becoming an English teacher out of necessity and not necessarily choice, I dove head-first into the world of teaching English with minimal teaching experience. My prior experience related to mentoring adolescents with substance abuse disorders and relationship addictions in a therapeutic setting, giving me a good psychological advantage to sort out my clients learning needs while teaching English. While being a therapeutic mentor and English tutor are two completely different things, they do have one factor in common that can lead to success in both occupations: understanding your client and caring about their future outcomes. Impactful teaching requires that we understand our students needs, and that truth lies also with teaching positive behavioral strategies in therapy. In both scenarios, just giving exercises or advice without context is not effective. Teachers must also understand how the students learn and analyse the best strategies to present materials. In order to both provide the knowledge tools necessary in any learning environment and properly teach this knowledge in any setting, we need to not only be invested in our own personal gain but that of our students. We cannot just give lessons without having a strategy on how students can retain the information. When teaching, monetary and or other personal gain is an important factor. However, the learning becomes most effective when the teacher is motivated by the emotions of positive learning outcomes in students, because this would mean that the teacher is paying attention to how their students feel and respond to the lessons. If we look at teaching English in this way, we can see how intrinsic motivations become fuel for teaching success. In order for student’s goals to be achieved, teachers must identify the methods and resources necessary to create progress and achieve these learning goals. If they do not focus on the needs of the students or have little interest in teaching them other than receiving a paycheck, the students would receive very mediocre lessons and not be enthusiastic to learn English. Teaching English is a great way to make money if you want to travel the world or find yourself living in a new country for a long period of time. We should not hinder people from learning to teach English in order to obtain quality life experiences or make a living wage. However, it should be recognized that if a teacher is not motivated by the success of a student emotionally and when the teacher doesn’t have emotional motivation to teach, this may result in ineffective lessons and low motivation in students. When our students reach success, it means that we as teachers have succeeded also.