It finally clicked.

My husband's been pushing me for years to identify something I'm passionate about and publish something about it. 

 I like to write, I like to research, I like to present (what teacher doesn't like an audience?)  but I never felt strongly enough about anything to make the effort.  Like most of my colleagues, I was surprised when I started attending conferences how easy it was to do a presentation....we all say " gee, I could do that!" but my problem was not that I thought I couldn't, but I didn't care enough to want to. 

Especially the past 4 or 5 years, I have been feeling particularly passionless about just about everything in the TESOL field, and lately I have been wondering if I'm in the right field at all.  I like what i do, but i thought I had lost my passion for it..I don't LOVE it, and if you don't love what you do for 10 hours a day, you really should get out, especially when your work is with other humans who depend on you for something. 

But I realized this morning, I HAVE had a sincere passion all this time and just never really connected the dots.  Not only do I have a passion, but it's a passion about something that as far as i know, is a HUGE gap in the entire field of education.  And I really don't know how it's possible that I could have been saying I had no passion for years and years when I did, all along. 

As an undergrad studying Early Childhood and primary school education, I realized teacher education courses spend no time, or almost no time, specifically talking about the unique needs and considerations of ESL children.  My activities with my native English speaking students didn't go over so well with my ESL kids, and i didn't know how to fix that. 

 While obtaining my MA in TESOL, and in talking with others who got MAs at other universities, or certificates at any one of the dozens of TESOL certificate courses available worldwide, I realized TESOL education classes, generally, spend a great deal of time on adult second language acquisition and adult motivation and adult-centered themes and issues, but unless you are taking a specific class on teaching children, very little or no mention is made of the unique needs and considerations of teaching young EFL/ESL learners.  Most people get general teacher education or general TESOL certifications, so the majority of educators have no idea what to do with young ESL learners. 

the problem is that general ECE courses are very good at explaining how and why children are different from adults, citing child psychologists and researchers like Erikson, Piaget, Bronfenbrenner, and how their brains are fundamentally different and the best practices for them.  However, they do not deal with second language or dual language acquisition issues. because it's assumed little kids just "pick everything up easily and naturally' so there is nothing special to consider about them, which is totally untrue! 

On the other hand, TESOL education courses assume the majority of its graduates are going to go into adult education, higher education, or at least secondary school. They are very good at explaining how the brain processes language, but overlook the fact that the adolescent and adult brains are fundamentally wired differently from the young child's brain.  However, because research has conclusively proved that the earlier the better in terms of SLA, parents and governments are increasingly expecting their kids to start English education in ever earlier grades, and in many cases, from Kindergarten or even infancy!  there is a huge market for teachers willing and able to teach young children, so many TESOL grads end up working with very young children. 

After a period of trial and error, many figure out what seems to work, but I have seen some shockingly developmentally inappropriate educational practices conducted by even long term veterans.

This bothered me so much in Japan, I conducted no fewer than 8 or 9 workshops on the topic.  it bothers me so much in Hong Kong, I don't even want to be a part of the massacre of the young mind.  There is a systemic problem, starting with the very top people in government, that absolutely no one truly knows or seems to care what is appropriate or even possible for pre-operational and concrete operational thinkers.  it's like even 4 year olds are expected to be able to learn like 14 year olds.  Since HK seems to score at the very top of international standardized tests, no one seems to have a problem with it; whereas i was warmly welcomed to give workshops on the topic in Japan (who recognizes they have a problem in their educational system), no one is in the least interested in my soap box efforts in HK. 

it's shocking, considering the number of general education teachers who end up teaching ESL children, and considering the number of TESOL certificate grads who end up working in primary schools and kindergartens around the world, that more attention is not paid to this very important area.  it seems there are a lot of myths about teaching children that are so pervasive, no one even thinks there is a problem. 

Myth 1: teaching children is easy
Myth 2: children are chock full of motivation and enthusiasm all the time
Myth 3: children are sponges and absorb everything (that's almost true, but they forget just as quickly as they learn for a variety of biological reasons, and there are variety of factors that influence just what, if anything, they absorb at all)
Myth 4: children only need exposure to acquire language ( this is based on baby brain research and is true for pronunciation, but not other features of language acquisition)
Myth 5: you can teach children to read English the same way you teach them to read their native language OR
Myth 6:  it's a bad idea to teach reading and writing to children; oral fluency is the only important part. 
Myth 7: techniques that work with one age group can still be effective with another age group
Myth 8: Homework is an effective tool for revision for pre-adolescents and young children.


There are other common fallacies, mainly corollaries and associations with the above myths, but these attitudes result in teacher education courses severely lacking in direct instruction on how to work with young children in the ESL/EFL context,  I think this is a shame because there are some genuine benefits to starting language education early, as long as the language education is done appropriately.  Thus, many parents and community leaders are introducing their kids to ESL/EFL study at earlier and earlier ages, using teachers who are learning how to teach youngsters by trial and error, without any real understanding of both childhood cognitive development and second language development. 

I've actually been rather passionately discussing these issues for years without realizing it was something i was passionate about.  How did that pass me by for so long? 
But it finally clicked. 

I'm so glad to learn I wasn't as dispassionate about TESOL as I had been thinking I was.  I was stuck in this mindset I needed to be excited about an adult-oriented topic.  But i am positive i can and should pull the things i learned in early childhood education classes and TESOL classes and find ways to help teachers of young ESL children, a large and growing segment of the TESOL field.