Strong post from AJ over at Effortless Language Acquisition. Bottom line:

The honest truth is that (especially above the intermediate level) teachers and classes aren’t necessary. Therefore, the only honorable purpose I can claim is this:

My job is to help students break their dependence on teachers and school. My job is to help them learn how to learn English… on their own. My job is to help them become autonomous learners.

The whole post is worth a read. BE teaching with its smaller groups and individual classes should exempt most teachers from this level of frustration, but the overall conclusion is about the same. Two other thoughts:

First, it’s great to see fearless “action research” like this. Here’s a teacher reflecting on what’s happening in the classroom, and concluding that…it’s a waste of time. I love the lack of complacency.

Second, in BE we can integrate performance support into our teaching, and add value that way. So maybe we can say that as BE teachers our primary roles are fostering learner autonomy and performance coaching?