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Reflection: Why & Where We Teach 

By Renea Bartlett 
Nido de Aguilas International School 

Santiago, Chile 
reneabartlett@gmail.com  

 
 
 
 Teaching can take you places. I always knew this, and it’s one of the primary reasons 

that I became a teacher. For stints of a few months to a few years, I have taught in the 

United States, Mexico, Japan, and Chile. In the beginning, it was about me. Let’s be honest, 

there are very few people who wouldn’t be drawn to exotic destinations, meeting people 

from around the world, learning about new cultures and languages, and those long weeks 

of summer vacation. International teachers, particularly, often have a few shared character 

traits that I also find in myself: insatiable wanderlust, a love of change, a high degree of 

adaptability, and intellectual curiosity. These characteristics serve as a catalyst for change. 

Most international teachers I know are constantly asking themselves:  How long should I 

stay here? What’s next? WHERE do I go next? Would a position in Thailand/Brazil/Austria be 

better? More interesting? More challenging? More…?  

 I had this same conversation with several international teachers at a dinner 

party last night. It is a constant refrain.  As such, it would be easy to talk about the 

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mailto:reneabartlett@gmail.com


differences among teaching contexts. However, I am more interested in sharing what I see 

as similarities among what could be considered widely disparate settings. Rather than 

focusing on what is different in terms of student dispositions, access to resources, and 

instructional environments, I want to reflect on how the dispositions an individual teacher 

espouses impact her teaching context. 

 In my first teaching position, I was assigned a faculty mentor who had been at the 

school for, at the time, twenty-eight years. Mrs. Jones knew every child in the building by 

name, had taught many of their parents as elementary students, and every lesson I 

observed was highly engaging and effective. She had boundless energy, a constant smile, 

and a friendly greeting for every child as they walked in the school building each morning. 

Despite serious budget difficulties in that district, lackluster administrative leadership, and 

near constant changes in standards and curriculum, Mrs. Jones taught me that the students 

do not know about those things. Nor should they. What students do need is a teacher who 

is consistent in her interactions, and who is constantly growing in her practice as a 

professional educator. One of her mantras was, “You’re either green and growing, or dead 

on the vine.”  

 Fifteen years after hearing that axiom, I still use it to stimulate learning and change 

in my practice as a teacher - whatever my teaching context. Diaz-Rico (2013) calls this “the 

edge,” and states that in nature this is “the growing tip of the root where growth is possible. 

If possible, this is where the expert educator works, at the edge where learning takes place, 

a social and cultural border that functions as a horizon of opportunity” (p. 292).  

 Moving from country to country, the contexts may be widely disparate but I try to be 

consistent in my approach to education in each new setting. This consistency includes my 

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philosophy of teaching and learning, learned practices to put to use, and a reflective 

mindset. These dispositions are essential because they determine the learning 

environment that I create in that context. Regardless of the larger setting, teachers can, and 

should, be very intentional in the creation of the classroom environment. As an English as 

an additional language teacher (EAL), I share three essential beliefs with Buhrow and 

Garcia (2006) in creating a favorable learning environment: students should be able to 

study topics that are interesting and comprehensible; students should be highly engaged, 

such that they forget about the stresses of language production; and the teacher should not 

push for output before the student is ready. We can create an environment like this 

whether in a small pull-out classroom in Chile of eight students or in a class of forty in 

Japan. Granted, the curriculum can be limiting or the resources sparse depending on the 

school. Yet, if we keep our attention on the important task of teaching students the 

strategies they need to make connections between what they know and what they are 

expected to learn (Alvermann, Phelps, and Ridgeway, 2007), students are more engaged in 

the process.  

 It is encouraging to see this structure of support for student learning wherever it 

occurs. In the years since my first teaching position with Mrs. Jones, I have learned that 

there is no end point for someone who strives to be an expert teacher. To use Diaz-Rico’s 

analogy of the root, the edge is always pushing deeper. That is true of roots of everywhere, 

no matter the location of the soil called home.  

  

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References 
 
Alvermann, D., Phelps S., and Ridgeway, V.  (2007).  Content area reading and literacy:  

 Succeeding in today’s diverse classrooms. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. 

Burrow, B. and Garcia, A.  (2006). Ladybugs, tornadoes, and swirling galaxies: English  

 language learners discover their world through inquiry. Portland, ME:   

Stenhouse Publishers. 

Diaz-Rico, L.  (2013). Strategies for teaching English learners. Boston, MA: Pearson 

 Education, Inc. 

 

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