A few days ago I gave an online class on storytelling to a group of 12 year olds.
I like to work with students of that age, because they are old enough to participate with more complex reasoning than the younger ones, and they have fewer filters than the older ones, so if they have an idea, they speak out loud their mind without fear of mistakes.
This makes our lessons very dynamic, and even though I prepare them carefully and follow the key points, it’s very interesting to hear their ideas and let them take us to uncharted territories.

The point of the lesson was to familiarize with storytelling, to understand how we can be more clear in our communications and write more effectively.
I am always very careful to explain to my students the purpose of what we study and how they benefit from that in real life.
This is what motivates them to follow me even if the topics we cover are difficult.

I remember all the frustration when I was a high school student, especially the day one of my classmates took the courage to ask the Maths Teacher the reason why we were studying that stuff.
He immediately got angry and replied:
– What are they for, what are they for? Just study them! Why, what is gymnastics for? And what is Latin for? And they dare to ask what maths is for! 

Other times.
Now I realize that in the world we live in today, mathematics is perhaps the most important subject, but I agree with my classmate of when we were 16: studying something without understanding what its practical uses are is pointless, and I can confirm that nothing we did then has ever helped me.
If I had known how to apply that to real life, it would have been very different.

With my class about storytelling, I started from One Thousand and One Nights, which has a very interesting setting: 

The Sultan of Persia finds out that he has been betrayed by his wife and has her killed. Because of the trauma, he thinks he can no longer trust women, so he decides to marry one every day and have her killed the next day, so that she doesn’t have the chance to betray him.
This goes on for so long that his adviser has a hard time finding new women who will face certain death by marrying the Sultan.
One of his daughters, Scheherazade, volunteers to marry the Sultan against his will.
The girl has a plan and begins to tell the Sultan a story. She continues until the morning, and when the sun comes out, she stops with a cliffhanger, telling him that she will finish the story the next evening.
So she is able to postpone her execution for one day.
The following evening, as soon as Scheherazade finishes the story, she begins another one, and the same happens over the next days, each time extending her death sentence by one day.
In this period of time she makes the Sultan fall in love with her, until he realizes he has overcome the trauma of the original betrayal.

This immediately tingled the interest of the students and motivated them to participate in a discussion.
Letting students argue their ideas is an aspect of teaching I believe in.
Especially during TEFL classes, this shifts their attention from the difficulty of expressing themselves in another language to the willingness to share their opinion.

Later, we saw the video of Aesop’s fable The Lion and The Mouse, which I report below.


Starting from this story, we talked about what the PROTAGONIST and the ANTAGONIST are, finding out that the antagonist can also be an idea, or a character who never appears in the work.

The most interesting part of the lesson, however, was discovering that the Protagonist and the Antagonist are not respectively The one who has more space in the story and The bad guy, but it all depends on the point of view of who tells the story.

If you think about it, this also happens in real life: sometimes we think that someone is a liar, while he is simply telling the story from his point of view.

In this specific case, for example, the Lion is caught in the Hunter’s trap and a Mouse comes to his aid, gnawing at the net and allowing him to escape.
Therefore, originally, the Hunter is the antagonist, but if we told from his point of view, it would be another story, with details unknown to us and in which the Mouse, who is the hero of the situation, becomes the Antagonist (the bad guy).

Being able to change your point of view, that is, being able to understand the motivations of your students and empathize with them, is essential to be a good teacher.
If we think about ourselves as Know It Alls and see our students merely as learners, this makes the lessons boring and prevents us from enriching ourselves through their experience and enthusiasm.
Nonetheless, this is a way of doing that becomes part of the habits of the teachers, especially those with more experience and whose age gap with the students starts to be large.

Closed-mindedness is one of the greatest enemies of the teachers, one of the most widespread and that we should fight with in every lesson.
In general (and I don’t necessarily mean you reading this), teachers tend not to want to learn new things and be the worst students.
This is a shame, because the society we live in is constantly changing and it should be teachers (together with parents) who direct the new generations to the right side, motivating and inspiring them.

I avoid sitting at the desk if I have no reason to. I move into the classroom (Corona Virus permitting), sit with the students and invite them to sit in my seat when they want to speak to the whole class.

When I teach online, I cannot use my freedom of movement to give my students a sense of tranquility.
I warn them that I don’t close their microphone, so those who want to speak can do it, but they must keep in mind that if two people talk together, it is difficult to understand each other, and they have to wait for me to feature their screen, before continuing.

So far, they have all been very respectful, because I have treated them as my equals, also urging them to tell me when I am wrong (for example, when I forget to put the camera back on me).

Another thing I do when I realize that I am losing someone is to ask for a volunteer, then pretending I thought that person had volunteered.
It is a very relaxed atmosphere and we often laugh together.
I avoid embarrassing my students at all costs so that they feel free to talk to me and their classmates.
The lesson is also a time in which they can socialize.

This way, the lesson is an opportunity for growth where they can learn from me as much as I can learn from them.

What do you think? If you would like to add something on this topic, or give me a different point of view, write to [email protected].
Maybe you can write a piece about your techniques, which are in complete contrast with mine and work, I’d be very interested in a different point of view.

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