Lima, Peru has more than 10 million inhabitants, and I’m one of them. An urban jungle of concrete and steel, it’s an environment that never sleeps and generates a constant, reverberating noise in the surroundings. This noise filters into my classroom at Euroidiomas, where I teach English and impedes my pupils’ - and my - focus and concentration.

The constant noise is nothing new for my pupils - there’s a cultural tendency in Peru to play loud music at every occasion, which from infancy predisposes my students to cognitive dissonance. When this is combined with rapidly advancing technology, my class full of “digital natives” have extremely short attention spans. I asked one of my students recently what he had learned in class the day before and he couldn’t remember. Studying for exams on a crowded bus is common.

Since teaching here, I’ve had to adapt my methods to compete with these distractions. I’ve incorporated a set of physical, interpersonal activities that make it difficult to continue a conversation on Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp. I’ve also learned that the instructor must, in some ways, become an entertainer equipped with jokes and funny stories, much like a stand-up comedy routine. Every day I try to demonstrate that my lessons, illustrated in real life, are so much more meaningful and relevant than any chats with virtual friends.

Unlike many of my international teaching peers, I don’t teach purely in English. Over the years, I’ve developed fluency in Spanish and Portuguese and communicate both with students and other staff in their native language. It helps to clear up any misunderstandings and allows me to experience firsthand the difficulties my students encounter when learning another language.

Euroidiomas is one of the best language institutes of Peru. It specialises in those languages found in Europe such as German, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Russian, and of course, English. Our institute, and others like us, while licensed by the federal Ministry of Education, are considered extensions of the formal, public education system. This fact, along with the forward-thinking vision of our academic administration allows us a certain amount of freedom to be flexible and to interpret the textbook in ways not usually found in the mainstream.

The results have been overwhelmingly positive. My students in Basic 1 (Year 8 in the UK) are frequently mistaken for those at much higher levels. So, while not fluent by any means, they are able to speak coherently and confidently in English in just a few weeks. I attribute this success not just to decades of teaching experience, but also to a willingness to experiment and even to risk breaking the mould of the status quo. We mustn’t give in to complacency and mediocrity. We must become the change that we want to see in the world.

Each of my pupils represents a unique and isolated world to which I must relate. It’s a teacher’s job to be asking questions like: is pupil A not learning because of a bad emotional encounter with a previous teacher? Has pupil B been inhibited by an environmental factor? Or could pupil C be facing a physical limitation or a learning disability? When one of my pupils couldn’t answer the question on the board, I discovered that she needed glasses and my temporary solution was to ask her to sit in the front row. The question is not if we are teaching but if our students are learning. This happens best if our teaching style is personalised to each student.

James Williamson is an English teacher at Euroidiomas, Peru

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