Are there any other super important aspects of our work than the mental health/pedagogy tandem?
I can’t think of any. Because when we have the right pedagogy – for me it is nontargeted comprehensible input based on images that kids create – everything else falls into place.
So it has dawned on my slowly – too slowly – that the academic piece that I thought was so important when I started teaching forty years ago cannot happen without children feeling capable and happy in the classroom first.
Oh, what a piece to forget, to not embrace! But, then, loving others is hard work. Especially loving those whom we cannot love because we think that they are not capable.
So love them first, understand that you are the one who is not capable if you think that they can’t learn a language, and reach them first through their hearts, for that is the magic passageway into their brains.
We tried it the other way. It didn’t work.