Every week we try to teach something that will improve the kids ability to speak properly. Since we get a lot of students saying that they eated lunch, we decided to focus and teach past, present and future tense. In teaching this week I had an interesting experience that reminded me about how important listening is.
So on Monday and Tuesday this week my classes went great. The kids understood the lesson just fine, payed attention and listened well. Then came my Wednesday morning class. Normally that class has been one of my favorites. But not then.
The class, unfortunately, was horrible. It was the worst teaching experience that I have so far. The class was noisy and did not participate. I don’t think the lack of participation was because they didn’t want to but because they weren’t paying attention and, most importantly, they weren’t listening. It was so unfortunate for them because they didn’t gain anything from the lesson and I was just fustrated.
They I had a turn around today. At my first class today I decided to try something that I haven’t done before. I took a minute at the beginning of class to emphasis with them the importance of listening and how when we try hard to listen we learn a lot. Well, it pretty much made a world of difference. The class was quiet, attentive and most definately listening.
Although this might not seem like much to you, it really left an impression with me. It made me set a personal goal to listen more to those around me. Which is important because you never know what you might learn when you put forth that extra effort to listen.
So do it. Open up your ears a bit more and you might be surprised what comes in.