I've been meaning to post on this topic for a while, because it has begun to intrigue me!
I, like many people out there, began teaching English well before I was married and had a family of my own. Parenthood brings a whole host of changes to one's lifestyle and outlook on life on multiple fronts- of course - but I've also found it interesting to compare what I was like as a teacher and how I felt about teaching and students before I had kids of my own to the situation afterwards. Most of my experience in teaching has been with younger learners and teenagers, and parenthood undoubtedly has an impact on you when you are teaching these age groups. But it's interesting the way parenthood changes your attitude to students who happen to be adults as well.
These sorts of changes definitely vary from person to person, but here's what I managed to observe about myself and the impact parenthood had on my teaching.
Teaching Young Learners
Having my own family meant I had a little less energy in the classroom, and I certainly had less time to pour into materials and activity design for these age groups. I still loved the kids, but it sort of changed - having my own kids made me think a bit more about the fact that these kids had parents and homes of their own. It gave me a greater appreciation of the notion that I should teach these kids the way I'd want someone to teach my own kids.
Parenthood also gave me a very effective lesson on the importance of patience. EFL in particular has a here-and-now "accelerated" feel to it when you follow the syllabus and look for successful learning in each lesson. Watching your own kids grow and develop makes you appreciate things like time, play, the "silent period" and variation in language acquisition, and the fact that "pushing" usually makes kids more distant than more rapid in their language gains.
As a parent, I also found it easier to talk with the kids' parents, and generally found them more receptive to my advice. Interestingly, I was also a little more demanding of parents. I wanted them to get off their backsides and make an effort to help and inspire their own kids - take some responsibility for education in the home - not just load the kids off to private schools and have strangers take responsibility for almost everything. The good old "I'm too busy to help my kids with their English" just didn't quite wash with me anymore!
Teaching Teenagers
This was generally similar to many of the changes that happened for teaching younger learners, though my own children were still too young to compare directly with the teenagers I was teaching. Probably the biggest change I noticed here was the way the teens actually regarded the teacher. Once I had kids, I found that my teenager students liked to hear about them and my family life more - and there was actually more respect from them. I think there was also more trust, as they began to see a caring family person and not just a teacher.
Teaching Adults
The university students I taught followed the same trend as the teenagers mentioned above, but possibly with more interest. I guess as young people they were on the verge of getting married and starting their own families much sooner than the teens, and were infinitely more interested in it all. Given I was in an EFL context and had married a local and had children, these students were generally more inclined to accept me as an insider and not "a stranger from a strange land" (marrying and settling locally in EFL contexts is another kettle of fish, though, when it comes to effects on your teaching).
The most poignant change I noticed, however, was with my business English students. At around the same age, with similarly aged families, similar life and career pressures, similar lack of time - these company employees started becoming much more like colleagues and close friends. There was just so much of mutual interest and concern for us to talk about! Language learning flowed beautifully as we counselled each other cheekily about spouses, kids, finances and recreation. Again, I was in an EFL context, and there was a lot of interest about the best ways to help their own kids with their English. It was fascinating to have a portion of our lessons dedicated to finding out how they could develop English within their young families. For my business English classes, parenthood did a lot of good!
There are probably a whole host of other changes that I haven't managed to touch on here, but there's what I managed to come up with off the top of my head.
How about you? Did parenthood change you in many ways as a teacher?
:-)
