What My Students Taught Me About Being a Student
Insights from the classroom that reshaped my studies
It’s presentation prep day.1.
After our class greeting, I watch my fifth-graders automatically break into pairs, speeches in hand. One student recites her lines while her partner reads along, correcting her pronunciation before I’ve even reached their desks. Across the room, an early finisher is coaching a struggling classmate through a tricky sentence. Someone comes over to me: “Can you check my communication?” In our classroom, that means delivery and body language, not just words.
When I had time to observe everyone, I stood there watching and thought: When did this become automatic?
And then: Why I am I not like this with my Japanese?
What I used to think English teaching was
When I started teaching in Japan, my mentor told me: “English classes have to be fun and engaging.” So I made fun games, thought of engaging activities, and executed high-energy lessons.
Most kids loved it. But there was always one or two who didn’t. Not because the lesson was boring, but because they didn’t have the skills to access it. Some students didn’t know enough English to just jump in and felt lost. The “fun” didn’t help them learn. It just highlighted what they couldn’t do yet.
That’s when I learned that enjoyment doesn’t automatically lead to understanding. Until students had ways to process input and produce language, the fun lessons simply moved too fast for them.
What I teach now (besides English)
Over time, I shifted from teaching just English to also teaching practical skills. My most successful students weren’t necessarily the “smartest,” but the ones who used the best tools. Here’s what those tools look like in action:
Mark up the page
In my classroom, a pristine textbook page is a sign of a lost student. I tell my kids to circle unknown words, scribble phonetic notes in the margins, and make the page look used. They do it without prompting now. The mess is evidence of engagement.
My own Japanese textbooks are practically pristine. I don’t scribble on them because I’ve always felt the need to preserve them, even if it costs me some learning progress. Also, a clean page doesn’t really cement your mistakes which does still embarrass me at times which is probably also why I’ve avoided it. Now I’m trying to let that go and focus more on improving.
Learn with someone else
I watch my students lean into each other to check things like grammar, pronunciation, and meaning before I’ve had a chance to weigh in. Peers explain things in language that’s more accessible than anything I could offer. The learning happens between them, not from me.
I’ve been studying Japanese on my own for years, and I sometimes wonder if it would be better to learn in a classroom or alongside someone at a similar level. I also think about what it would be like to teach a beginner and whether I could explain things as clearly as I think I can. To find out, I want to start learning with others and look for chances to help beginners.
Start before you're ready
When my students write together, they produce better work than when they write alone. They catch each other’s small mistakes in real time, suggesting better ways to say things without making it feel like a correction. The mess is where the learning happens.
I stopped writing in Japanese because every sentence felt like it had to be complete and correct before it could exist. Watching my students simply start and improve as they go has made me want to do the same.
Teach what you know
Early finishers in my class help struggling classmates. Teaching someone else forces you to articulate what you know, which deepens it in a way that reviewing alone doesn’t.
I don’t need to be a high-level learner to explain a basic grammar point to someone else. In fact, doing that would probably help my Japanese more than another hour of flashcards, so I want to start leaning into that.
Ask for feedback early
My students show their work to a peer before they ever show it to me. Feedback arrives while there’s still time to do something with it. They’ve learned that feedback isn’t judgment. It’s just information on what to improve and what you’re already doing well.
I avoided feedback for years because at some point I started treating my Japanese ability as a measure of my intelligence. It isn’t. It’s just where I am with the language right now, and I want to be more open to feedback.
Celebrate the small things
We celebrate small wins in my classroom and normalize the struggle out loud. A sense of community is one of the most consistent drivers of persistence in language learning, something I knew from research long before I understood it from the inside.
I’m my own harshest critic. My students are kinder to each other than I am to myself when I forget a word I should know by now, and I’m working on changing that.
What I realized about my learning
I built a classroom around these ideas and then went home and ignored all of them.
I was asking my students to be risk-taking, messy, and collaborative while holding myself to a standard of perfection that I would never ask of a ten-year-old. The mechanics of learning don’t change just because we grew up. Whether it’s fifth-grade English or adult Japanese, progress happens on marked-up pages and in corrected pronunciation and in the slightly uncomfortable moment of showing someone else what we’re working on before it’s ready.
I’m starting simple this week. More writing in Japanese. Sentences that don’t have to be perfect before they exist. Feedback I’m actually going to ask for instead of avoiding.
The kids figured this out without being told. I had to watch them for years before I understood what they were doing.
Better late than never.
If you want to try the same, I have a set of language learning journal prompts you can download below for free. They’re a low-pressure way to start. No perfect sentences are required.
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Waddle on. 🐧
Article Cover Photo
Utagawa, T. (c. 1800). The Noda Jewel River in Mutsu Province [Woodblock print]. JPWoodblocks. https://jpwoodblocks.com/utagawa-the-early-masters-of-the-japanese-woodblock-prints/Heads up: The timeline here doesn’t match the current school year. I drafted part of this article back in January 2026. 🌻
I remember talking with Sayaka-sensei about her book and how I planned to do all the exercises in a separate notebook and she said, "It's a workbook! you're SUPPOSED to write in it! I'm giving your permission to write in it." The easy cop out on why I can never bring myself to write in books is because of what I do for work, but honestly I've been like that my whole life. I want to keep the pages pristine and avoid the possibility of visual evidence of a mistake. 😅