no interest

leiyang1979 · Post by **leiyang1979** » Fri May 19, 2006 2:27 am

I feel bored with teaching English!

mesmark · Post by **mesmark** » Fri May 19, 2006 2:38 am

Do something new.

Teach using a different method.

Change your routine.

Read some new books about teaching.

Complacency and routine will make you bored at any job.

leiyang1979 · Post by **leiyang1979** » Fri May 19, 2006 2:48 am

I still feel bored. I want to give up.

Lorikeet · Post by **Lorikeet** » Fri May 19, 2006 3:43 am

If you tried all of that in 10 minutes, I'd be pretty surprised. If you are that bored, your teaching will suffer. If you don't want to try and get some excitement back into teaching, then perhaps you should find another career. There is nothing deadlier than a bored teacher, uninterested in teaching his or her students.

Vanessa Jiang · Post by **Vanessa Jiang** » Fri May 19, 2006 11:03 am

I am a would-be English teacher in China. Seeing your post, I feel quite depressed, because I have heard so many similar complaints from present English teachers. It seems to be a normal phenomenon for English teachers to feel bored after teaching a number of years. Since I am going to become a English teacher one year later, I wonder if there are any more stimuli to keep our passion for English teaching.
I would be very obliged to receive any feedback or opnions from you. Thank you very much in advance for your reading and thinking.
Your truly,
Vanessa

Lorikeet · Post by **Lorikeet** » Fri May 19, 2006 4:06 pm

Mesmark's advice was very good. Try something different. If you teach the same way with the same material to students with the same degree of English proficiency year after year, you will get bored. Try something new. Depending on what your program allows you to do, you can inject some more interactive kinds of activities. You can find many ideas in these forums; anything Sally Olsen wrote about her experiences teaching in different places would have a lot of good ideas.

I have been teaching English as a Second Language for 37 years now. My latest change was to add CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) classes. I learned how to use Flash and make webpages so I could make exercises for my students. I'm not suggesting that as an alternative for you, but using it as an example of how you can get yourself excited again if you feel like you are burning out.