Do you follow your students or do your students follow you?

Twinkl Singapore asked me to share my latest edu-thoughts. Twinkl is the world’s largest organisation that does educational material design. Here’s what I had to say! 👇 ✨Do you follow the students in your class, or do your students follow you?✨ 🧐I’ve noticed that most of us forget that we should teach the students, not the curriculum. Sometimes, while pushing content out to our students, we forget they are also children. ✅The one thing that helps me grow as an ESL teacher daily is following my students. Yes, my lesson plans took hours to make, and yes, I may have been designing this digital game for a whole afternoon, but my students want to play now. 🤯They have questions. 🤯They want to jump. 🤯Move. 🤯Paint. 🤯They want to know what I ate that day. To grow as teachers, we need to evolve our teaching philosophy. For me, that meant going from a fully structured curriculum to a more open-ended one that allows play, exploration, and hands-on learning. ✅The learning aims will be achieved eventually, and students should have a say in how we achieve those aims. 💓If your ESL students want to build LEGO animals or suddenly want to stick stickers on their faces - adapt on the spot. The curriculum can wait because they will never forget those moments or what you taught them when you gave them your undivided attention and validated their ideas.💓 What do you think about this? #englishforkids #englishforchildren #onlineenglish