Teach ESL to Kids

I didn't start out that way! I used to work as a technical support rep for a software company. That was a great job, but after awhile it got a little boring and I wanted to find something that was more meaningful.

During a short trip to Japan, the seed was planted that I should live in Japan and try teaching. It appealed to me because i thought that i probably would like teaching, but to teach in America, I would need to go back to school to get a teaching certificate. This way, I could try it out with little risk.

I knew that I wanted to only teach kids, so I applied with a company that teaches English conversation to children ranging in age from 2-18. I got the job and a few months later, I was in Japan.

Turns out I was quite good at the job. And more importantly, I loved it. I especially liked working with the very young children, so when I heard about a job in a preschool teaching 2-4 year olds, I jumped at the chance.

At the first job, they had a pretty strict curriculum that I was supposed to follow. The only major change that I could make it it, was to change the activity that they provided. But in the preschool, I was given free reign. They had a set of guidelines as to which vocabulary words children should know at what level. But other than that I was on my own.

As I tried to learn more info about teaching ESL to such young children, I found there to be a serious lack of information. I've had to adapt almost everything that I've found to fit either my children's language ability, or their developmental level.

Teaching comes naturally to me, but I know that it doesn't come naturally to everyone. Because of the lack of information out there about teaching ESL to very young learners, I wanted to create a warehouse of information that could help new (or even old) teachers.

After doing a bit of research, I decided to create a blog. I was happy with this for a few months, but as I started looking at the "click-in data" (the terms that people were searching for in the search engines that were bringing them to my site), I became a bit troubled.

Let's say that someone reached my blog while searching for "lesson plans for toddlers". The most recent blog entry may have been a cute story about my class. The next entry, a game I use with 8 year olds. The next entry, a list of my favorite songs. And so on.

The actual post about lesson plans for toddlers may have been buried 10, or even 20 posts deep. And I don't know about you, but if I have to search a page for the information I'm looking for, I'm just going to hit the back button.

Clearly, the information I wanted to get out there was not getting to the right people. The blog format was not sufficiently organized to be the great resource that I had hoped the blog would be. I needed a more traditional website.

Now, I know quite a bit about HTML (Remember, I mentioned that I used to be a tech support rep? I was often the go-to person when someone had a problem with an HTML document.), but the task of creating a whole website from scratch was a bit daunting. Even if I did create it, would people be able to find me among all the millions of websites out there?

Fortunately, I was able to get all this started. The site has gone through several changes since it's first incarnation, but I'm pretty happy with it. And am I successful?

Well, every week, I get at least one email like this one:

Just wanted to thank you for your site. My friend and I are working in a program that we thought would be mostly English speaking preschoolers but it has turned out to be a class of mostly toddlers that do not speak English. Many of our lessons have been right on track with your information BUT the circle time with the games and songs has been a great help. I was also happy to find the key phrases for their families to speak. Again, many thanks. Angela

E-mails like this are enough of a reward to keep me going.

To be totally honest, I don't teach ESL to kids on a regular basis anymore. But I know that the information I have from my years of teaching is valuable to those who are just starting out. So I continue to maintain the site as much as I can.

I believe that everyone out there has a story to share. Everyone has some unique knowledge that, in sharing, could make the world a better place. What's your passion? What's your expertise?

I hope that you always feel free to contact me with anything!

Love,
Shannon Sensei