One day, after teaching hundreds of kids for countless hours, this phrase came to my mind to describe my main goal as a teacher.

I'm not a kid anymore, but I still remember how I felt in the many classes I took when I was a kid. I remember what was exciting and interesting, and what was boring. Equally importantly, I also remember who was exciting and interesting, and who was not.

I hold onto these memories as a teacher to keep my lessons with kids as dynamic and lively as I can, while calibrating the degree or liveliness to each kid’s personality, culture, and age.

From my early days as a teacher, I noticed that young children from ages 4 to 8 respond very well to play, music, movement, and theater. Why? In very simple terms: young children are very much alive!

Young children are naturally playful. They are also very musical, kinetic (movement-oriented), and emotional. They have so much energy and they not just love, but need to be active! For this reason, I routinely incorporate play, music, movement, and theater into our lessons. Not only do these elements make class more fun and engaging, but they also help kids learn faster, and better remember what they have learned. This is because singing, movement, and acting create new neural pathways to learning and retaining language.

However, these same techniques, while highly successful with young learners, will often seem babyish to older students, so I use different ways to engage them. Older children have already been through many years of traditional schooling, which of course is necessary, but sometimes children of this age tell me that they feel tired and burnt out. Therefore, I try to bring the lessons to life so they seem interesting and relevant to the student instead of like meaningless rote exercises. I try to help them relate to the topic personally by asking them questions. For example:

• We are learning words for different types of music. What kind of music is your favorite?
• Do you have a favorite band? Tell me about it.
• Why is this your favorite band?
• Let’s listen to a little of their music! Do you know the words?
• Would you like to be in a band?

I try to elicit as much conversation as I can from these students. I ask them lots of questions about their interests, culture, and routines so they can practice using English about topics that are meaningful to them. So with older students, besides trying to present the lesson materials in an engaging way, I also try to give them tools to express their thoughts independently.

This is what I mean when I say “English comes alive.” We all have experienced a class about a subject that seems dead and irrelevant. However, any subject can be taught in a creative and dynamic way. When I think about my favorite teachers, they didn’t always teach my favorite subjects; rather, it was the way they taught that showed me why their subject was indeed interesting and relevant to my life. They seemed to care about us students as people, and through their passion for the subject, they communicated why their subject mattered, and why they wanted us to know about it too. These teachers made their subjects seem real, interesting, and important. They made their subjects come alive! And somehow they changed our lives for the better.

Can you remember a teacher, or teachers, who taught in a way that made you excited to learn about their subject? What kinds of things did they do or say? How did they behave? How did they relate to you as their student?