If you’ve ever moved to a new city, you know the feeling of starting over. Creating new routines and finding new connections are a normal part of adjusting to a new place. However, for someone learning English, making those connections can take much longer and be much more difficult to access or understand. Your students […]
Connecting Students to the Community Read More »
As Christians using English ministry to love our international neighbors, we know that it’s vital to create a classroom environment that feels welcoming and safe. Our students are entering a classroom that mostly or only uses English, is staffed by native speakers, and possibly is even in a church. All of these factors are understandably intimidating for
Making a Welcoming Classroom Environment for Your Students Read More »
This 3 part series is an excerpt from the the Institute of Cross Cultural Training’s “Reach Out With English” training and has been shared with ICCT’s permission. When planning a Sunday School curriculum, we often begin by focusing on people’s spiritual needs and then we think about how we can address those needs through our
Focus on Learner Needs: Key 3 Read More »
This 3 part series is an excerpt from the the Institute of Cross Cultural Training’s “Reach Out With English” training * and has been shared with ICCT’s permission. When the need for ESL teachers in our communities is so great and there is pressure to begin teaching as soon as possible, it’s easy to be
Quality Teaching: Key 2 Read More »
This 3 part series is an excerpt from the the Institute of Cross Cultural Training’s “Reach Out With English” training and has been shared with ICCT’s permission. In making your decision to become an ESL teacher, you have probably prayed about your desire to minister to those who have a range of needs that go
Cultural Understanding: Key 1 Read More »
In my previous articles I’ve discussed various aspects of prayer. In this article I want to encourage a particular prayer practice to you. It is one that is not new, it is in fact very old, but it might be new to you. It was new to me several years ago. It is the practice
Adapting An Ancient Practice Read More »
Previously, I wrote about four foundational truths we affirm when we pray, and then I followed up that article with another in which we reflected on God’s ability to do far more than we ask or think. When we think of prayer and why God answers our prayers there are a few reasons God answers
In my last article I shared with you four foundational truths about prayer. You could, broadly speaking, place them in the categories of God’s character and attributes. Character being his willingness to answer. Attributes being his ability to hear and to answer. In this article I want to talk about one of his attributes in
When it comes to the Christian life there are several fundamental and foundational habits. Perhaps you can think of a few, like reading the Bible, or gathering with other believers for worship and encouragement (what we often call “church”), or maybe giving to the church that you are a member of. All wonderful good, godly
Assumptions of Prayer Read More »
As classes start up again this fall, it’s a good time to look at classroom rules and the impact they have on student learning. Every “rule” should be necessary to move us toward our end goal and provide each student with a fun, supportive, healthy learning environment. Fortunately, for most adult ESL classes rules don’t need
