From Student to Teacher

  Each person acts according to his or her cultural rules. Therefore, for a TESOL teacher, the interpretations given to certain actions are of utmost importance. Jumping to conclusions is never ideal, especially in a multicultural environment.Understanding, tolerance, and patience must be fundamental in the classroom. For example, African American and Hispanic students tend to be more expressive because it is part of their culture. Their expressiveness does not imply that they are bad students or want to be imposing, as they may be perceived. On the other hand, we have people from Asia who tend to be more quiet and reserved, because in their culture the teacher is an authority figure who must be highly respected. Many factors as expressiveness, emotions or timing vary from culture to culture. Therefore, something key is the benefit of the doubt. Professor Ivers explained this principle when he said, “Whenever a student is from a different place or ethnic group or something does...

  Why? Although during childhood we have a stage of asking very often the why of everything which we later overcome. When we grow up, we acquire certain beliefs about why certain events happen, some of them we attribute to our own actions and others to the actions of other people. These beliefs remain in our brain, and we apply them to our life and to the life of other people. These beliefs are reflected in the classroom between teachers and students or among students themselves. It is important that as teachers we are open to understand that our reasons are not the only valid or the only possible explanations. An event can have many causes. We must also make our students aware of the same, with love and patience.

  Many factors impact human relationships and among these factors is personal space. It is that mental bubble we create around ourselves and the things that belong to us. It is the space between us and others. According to Westside Toastmasters, “Each person has his own personal territory, which includes the area that exist around his possessions, such as his home, which bonded by fences, the inside of his motor vehicle, his own bedroom or personal chair and, a defined air space around his body.” This factor within a TESOL classroom is of great importance, since it can affect even the way to greet or make someone feel welcome. For example, in my country Venezuela it is very common to greet with a kiss on the cheek, even with a hug. These actions are a symbol of courtesy, kindness and companionship. This behavior is something completely normal, however, for other cultures a simple handshake or a hand gesture is enough. Therefore, the interaction between people with different p...

  Decisions. We all have to make them at some point, and these bring their consequences, no decision is free of them. According to the patterns within which we have grown up, decisions may have great or little importance within our social group. According to Professor Ivers, " What is considered an acceptable choice to make in some cultures, might be considered a betrayal, possibly, in other cultures." For example, in Latin America changing political sides is considered high treason towards a specific group to which one belonged. Whereas in other countries it is considered a very individual choice. Therefore, we can find societies that are group oriented and others that are individualistic oriented. In the first ones, there is a great respect for the collective good, decisions are not individual, but in an intricate way it must be considered how that decision will affect the group. In these societies, standing out is not the most important thing, in fact, in a certain wa...

Although we all have the same emotions, we do not all express them with the same intensity when we are in public. Therefore, it is easy to misinterpret the expressiveness of emotions of people from other cultures. It is even easy to misinterpret people who belong to our own culture but who have different ranges/levels of tolerance to expressiveness. These ranges of tolerance (from low, to high) are passed down from generation to generation. This has made me reflect on how I express my own feelings? What patterns do I possess and how might people perceive me if I express myself in a certain way? Emotional expressiveness is key in a TESOL classroom. It is necessary to learn to work with the different ranges or tolerance levels of expressiveness that can be found in a classroom or even in our lives.

We usually hear that communication is key in any relationship whether it is a friendship, work or love relationship. But what happens when both parties communicate in their own way and the other person interprets that communication based on their perspective or paradigm? The result is miscommunication. This can happen on a daily basis, and even more common if we talk about communication between people from different cultures. Each person acquires his or her own paradigm of how to communicate, what gestures to use, in what order to express ideas, what responses are appropriate in certain social situations, how to deal with problems, among many other things. Normally, people who grow up within the same culture acquire a similar paradigm, although it should be noted that not necessarily all people of the same culture will act in the same way because each person lives different experiences, and acquire different values and principles. That is why one of the best things we can do when inter...

   What is really important to us? What do we value most?  What is our order of priority? For example, let's talk about time. For some people is a resource of great value, keeping to a schedule is of utmost importance. If this is the case for you then, you are monochronic type. In the other hand, if you like to be more flexible with your time, you don't have problems with changing schedules then, you are a polychronic one. Living in a Latin American country - Venezuela - I have witnessed how time, punctuality and schedules take a back seat. Because of this I decided to develop patterns to help me handle certain situations. For example, when a scheduled meeting is coming up, I send a reminder a day before or a couple of hours before to confirm and remind me of the gathering. However, I have learned that I have to know who to use this pattern. Polychronic people will thank you for this reminder as they probably didn't remember, overlooked it or scheduled another appointment...

  Is it a six or a nine? The answer will depend on who you ask. Likewise, if we ask questions such as what is beautiful and what is ugly? What is shameful and what is not? What is being polite and what is not? We will get different answers because we were not all raised with the same values, ideas or principles. And this is something fundamental to take into account in a classroom. What kinds of cultural paradigms do I have? What kinds of cultural paradigms do the students have? There are so many different ways of looking at the world, what may be embarrassing to someone is totally normal to someone else. A well-known BYU professor, Irving, said "Your paradigms force you to interpret reality in a certain way." How students and teacher perceive each other is key to creating an environment in which learning flows in a natural and enjoyable way. Feedback from student to teacher and vice versa is therefore of vital importance. A space for feedback is key to know if we are takin...