Shelby Machado: To Teach, or Not to Teach

It was the Sunday before the first day of class; I was so excited for my lesson the following morning. I had everything ready: sharpened pencils, laminated flashcards, and a packet of about six sheets (front and back) for the students to complete—which sounds like more than enough. I was ready. I mean what could go wrong?

***

Throughout the summer of 2023, I volunteered to tutor English Language Learners at a program in Greenville, South Carolina called Greenville Literacy Association (GLA). I was going to tutor Level 1 students, meaning that they knew little to no English when they stepped into my classroom.

Though it would be a stressful experience, I believed this would be a great opportunity, and I kept asking myself: what is the worst that could happen? The answer to that question is simple: the worst thing that could happen is that I don’t teach my students anything, and they waste six weeks of their time.

Luckily for me—and my students, of course—most of my lessons went smoothly, and my students learned a lot. After a number of classes, I decided to focus on conversational vocabulary—like asking someone how their day was or asking what someone’s name is. One thing I consistently noticed when focusing on this vocabulary was the verb “to be.”

This is the most common verb in the English language and I’ve used it over a dozen times so far in this essay. One cannot ask—or answer—the following questions in complete sentences without using the verb “to be”: How are you doing? What is your name? How was your day? These seem like the simplest questions and answers to English speakers, but they can cause enormous trouble to those who are new to the language. Most English speakers don’t even know how they choose the correct form of this verb because it’s instinctual.

I think I can confidently say that the majority of English speakers don’t think about the verb “to be” at all—unless you’re an awesome English major like myself. But English speakers learn this verb at such a young age, so they can use it without even thinking about it; however, this is not the case with English Language Learners. My Level 1 students don’t have the vocabulary to answer these questions—not yet, anyways. So, I decided to take a few weeks to solely teach my students the verb “to be,” so that they could have these conversations with English speakers. By the end of the second week of teaching this verb, they were clearly masters of it. They could use it in sentences correctly and use it in conversations with ease.

I’d like to say that their success was because of my teaching, but my students were also just very intelligent. Once they became more familiar with each other and with myself, they were not afraid to make mistakes and learn from them. This is one of the few things that every teacher wants, but it is a hard thing to teach; however, the class has come a long way.

All of this—learning the verb “to be” and being comfortable with making mistakes—was within the last few weeks of class. Now we’ll flashback to day one, where this essay began, to show how far these students have come from the beginning of the six weeks to the end of them.

***

It was day one of class and lordy was I nervous. I wasn’t sure where my students’ knowledge was when I came into the classroom, so I found a packet online with vocabulary, pictures, and other activities all related to the beach. I thought since it was summertime that it would be fitting—I mean, it was the first day of class; how am I supposed to know what they know? I got to GLA about an hour before class started to make sure I had everything in order—and also because I suffer from extreme anxiety. I was nervous about meeting my students, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that you can fake it ‘til you make it—and boy did I fake it.

Students slowly started to come into the class and they were extremely quiet, which is understandable; they are in a completely new setting with new people and learning a new language—who wouldn’t be nervous? Once the class started, I wanted everyone to introduce themselves by saying their name, where they were from, and what languages they speak. With a class of fifteen students, I thought that this could take about 15-20 minutes. It took five minutes. Luckily, I had a lot planned for the day; I had a packet of six sheets (front and back), so I knew that would take them a while—right?

I could not have been more wrong. I passed out the packets and asked students to only look at the first page. I was going over the first page which was some new vocabulary—or what I thought was new—and asked students to read it with me. Some read it aloud with me, but others flipped through the packet and did the other exercises. I reminded students to stay on the first page with me until I was done, and they did. But somehow, in just fifteen minutes, the class got away from me and all the students began to do other exercises throughout the packet, and some had gotten on their phones because they had finished the entire packet—in just fifteen minutes. So, I did what any reasonable person would do at this time: I panicked.

GLA gave me free reign on what I wanted to teach and how I wanted to teach it, which was nice; however, I would have loved some sort of guidance besides the 20-year-old textbooks that had coats of dust on them—especially now when I had nothing planned for my students. Nevertheless, I persisted. I had an entire hour left of this class with literally nothing else to do; I didn’t want to disappoint my students whom I had just met. I was panicking. I looked around for anything that could help me. Upon inspecting the room to see if there was anything—and I mean anything—for me to use to keep this class engaged, I found some flashcards on nouns and adjectives. These cards had clearly not been used for a while because there was a film of dust caked on all of them—just like the textbooks. But I had a class to tend to and didn’t have anything else planned. I got a marker, drew a line down the board dividing it into two sections, and told the class that we were going to play a game. I told the left side of the class that they were on Team 1 and the right side of the class were on Team 2. I called two students from each team and told them to draw, to the best of their ability, the noun that was on the flashcard. The first card was a turtle, so the two students drew a turtle as best as they could and their teammates had to guess what it was—it was essentially Pictionary™.

The entire class was skeptical at first, but once we kept playing, they let their guard down. The students were giddy and excited to guess the picture. Others were quiet, so I made sure that they were the ones drawing to get them out of their comfort zone. The entire class was having fun; we were laughing at people’s drawing skills—or lack thereof—and we were impressed by those who could guess the animal by seeing only one line drawn. I know that the students may not have learned very much on the first day of class besides the pronunciation of certain nouns, but I think playing a game was worth it so that students got out of their comfort zone and had fun when getting to know each other.

The next time I saw these students, they weren’t as shy with each other or myself, and they were excited to learn. This excitement stayed with them until the end of the six weeks of class, and they came so far from where they began. So, in the end it all worked out. My anxieties about teaching were put to rest, and, when deciding to teach or not to teach, I chose to teach.

Shelby Machado is from Fountain Inn, South Carolina. She majored in English and focused on Secondary Education at Lander University. In the summer of 2023, she worked with Greenville Literacy Association as a hands-on tutor of English to English Language Learners of all ages. She is expected to graduate in December 2023 and continue working with high school English students.