25 motivational messages for TESOL teachers

Positive messages to chant to yourself in front of the mirror or record on your iPod include:

1. “I will make my students love English so much that they cry when they can’t come to class”
2. “Having no money is good for my karma and the environment”
3. “I am totally psyched about teaching adverbs of frequency”
4. “The Present Perfect Continuous is all part of God’s great but mysterious plan”
5. “I was put on the planet to correct dependant prepositions”
6. “Everyone must find their own purpose in life, and I have found mine in teaching collocations”
7. “Connected speech is beautiful, and so am I”
8. “It is my life’s mission to protect the apostrophe from abuse”
9. “There is no such thing as a student who can’t pronounce th”
10. “Nothing is impossible, not even teaching every phrasal verb that could come up in the Cambridge Proficiency exam”
11. “Every day in every way, my knowledge of adverbs is getting better and better/ my speaking speed is getting slower and slower”
12. “A good warmer is better than sex”
13. “If someone moves my cheese, I’ll just steal their lesson plans”
14. “Time spent with Jeremy Harmer can never be wasted”
15. “If I can just make my students feel the passion that I feel right now for correct punctuation, nothing will be able to stop me”
16. “The quest to become more like John and Liz Soars starts with a single step”
17. “If someone has moved my cheese, I’ll just take it as part of a mingle activity”
18. “If I can do this humanistic language teaching warmer without dying of shame, for the rest of my life I will have nothing to fear”
19. “Reducing my self esteem with the use of mime and slapstick humour in class is another step towards satori”
20. “Teaching Headway/ the Present Simple/ with PPP again is like the wax on wax off in Karate Kid- tedious-seeming but essential training for the sudden appearance of TEFL superpowers”
21. “Every new edition of Headway is like a new chapter in my life”
22. “Today is the day when I’ll understand the difference between ‘going to’ and ‘will’”
23. “No two lessons about Seamus Mc Sporran- The Man with 13 Jobs are really the same, just like you can’t step in the same river twice”
24. “If I can finish today knowing that I taught some 3 year olds animal noises in English, I will be able to die a fulfilled and happy man”
25. “Da da daaaa, da da daaaaa, da da daaa da da daaa, da da daaaa, da da da da da da” etc.
The last one obviously being the theme tune from Rocky, which you can even have playing as you come into class if you like. The rest of them you can combine with jazz chants practice by saying them over and over while jogging round the park or doing circuit training in the gym.

Stumble it!

Tags: Humour

This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 1:59 pmand is filed under Alternative teaching techniques, Headway, Humanistic language teaching, Motivation, TEFL celebs/ TEFL heroes and villains, TEFL heroes- Jeremy Harmer, TEFL heroes- John and Liz Soars, Teaching, textbooks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.