by Elizabeth Robinson
Last week a school director called me up to tell me that the book they chose last summer was not working for them.
I am a consultant for an editorial company in Mexico and I had sold them the series. I have also been head of a school for 10 years and an English teacher for 15 prior to that, and the minute those words came out of his mouth, I knew what he was going to ask. He wanted me to give the teachers a workshop, on how to make those books work for them. We agreed to meet the following week, as by chance I was traveling to his particular city.
I got those books out, and sat with them for 20 minutes, looked through them with my teacher questions in my head. If I were a teacher again, what would I do with this series to make it work for the teachers? That is when it dawned on me! It is not about how to make the book work for the teachers, it’s about what the teachers can do to make the book work for their students.
Any book, or workbook that we choose for our school has the capability of being the best book in the world, but it is not the responsibility of the book to be great! It is the responsibility of the teacher to make it great!
Why? Because it is the responsibility of the teacher to make everything that their students do in their classroom, if not fun all the time, at least a gratifying learning experience.
So, with this new perspective in mind, after reviewing the books, I thought of dozens and dozens of ideas that would make those books a great learning experience for the kids. I almost wanted to go straight into the classroom and start working to show their teacher how truly great those books were and what the potential of those books could be, IF and only IF they were willing to put in the 20 minutes needed to do the planning and properly prepare a good lesson.
All you need is a good attitude, a positive outlook and the drive to become the best teacher you can be for those young children who will remember you for the rest of their life.
Needless to say, they got the message and suddenly, what was once a dull workbook, became the means to motivate a group of teachers that thought that the book was the one that had to do the work.
