Are adult students just students?

Here we are, ready to start another class.
We’re feeling lucky because we have the adult students, the ones that are eager to learn. We don’t have to worry about class management, letters to parents, ongoing fights of kids in a class and behavioral problems.

We step in the class, positive and motivated. We also have the motivated students. Everything seems perfect and we are positive that this class would be one where the learning process would be fun, rewarding, focused and what is more, not struggling.

But as soon as we are faced with the very first class of adult students, everything changes. Something doesn’t change for a fact, their motivation to learn. They really want to learn English, but they don’t know how. It’s our responsibility as instructors to show them the way. But it’s difficult to show the path to the ones that have long ago beaten that path. What do we have to do? How can we put them into a new path? Can we tell them that their previous learning process won’t work anymore? Will they accept that?

One thing is for sure, adult students want to learn and it is us, the teachers that have to facilitate this process.