I'm both a teacher and a student. And I think that such a combination is really useful, as it gives you insight how it is to be in both positions, so you can understand different behaviors of th teracher, when taking up the role of a student, and also, as you're a student yourself you can predict what your students (dis)approve of/(dis)like/would prefer.
Theoretically naturally, you;re offered such knowledge while being trained to be a teacher, but in practice it's very easy to forget the student's perspective when you only concentrate on teaching entirely.Therefore, I've promised to myslef that I'll always try to be in the student's position, that is take up new courses, both in orrder to educate myslef, but also to be an understanding teacher.
As a teacher I prefer to teach adults/young adults, as this is much easier than teaching children. A lot of people wrongly aasume, that teaching young learners is the easiest task possible pointing to the low level of language that is needed. However, the practice shows that it's the most challenging to keep a young learner involved and teach them sth.
Therefore, I teach mainly teenagers and adults (on courses/private lessons) I'm in the comfortable situation that those poeple are highly motivated, and minimum intermediate level, so what I do i s talk to involve them in conversations basing on the coursebbok, but also supplemeting these with extra up-to-date materials for the net. I try to limit the amount of grammar, and rather students concentrate on grammar issues at home. We only focus on the problematic things and aim at as much praciticing
listening and speaking skills as possible. I prefer to emphasize the contents rather than the actrivity, that is, the aim of listening tasks is to understand the main ideas, and details if necessary, learn new words, not only complete the activity designed by the author of the book.
That's basically it.l
Rgds,
KOciamama.