When I started teaching English almost 30 years ago, I was roaring to go—I wanted my students to become amazing English speakers as quickly as possible. I saw time as the enemy and felt anxious to speed up the process. Because of that, I crammed too much grammar and vocabulary into a single class. I wrongly assumed my motivated students could handle it, but in reality, they were overwhelmed. My “grand master plan” backfired, and I learned an important lesson: don’t overload students with too much information.
Once I tempered my expectations and lightened the workload, my students actually started producing excellent results.
Takeaway: Less is more. Focus on clarity and achievable goals. Your students are humans, not robots. They’ll have both good and not-so-good days, but if you position them to succeed and keep nudging them along an upward path, they’ll navigate the peaks and valleys of language learning with confidence.