Through the window, light will stray,
Dancing leaves and dreams that stray.
A rocking horse, a book of skies,
A path unseen by waking eyes.

Step through the frame, where wonders stay,
Catch a world in bright array.

In my journey as a TESOL student and developing educator, I have embraced two core teaching principles that form the foundation of my pedagogical approach: game-based learning and real-life learning through authentic materials. In this book, Windows and Wonder, I hope to capture the spirit of my evolving classroom, where playful exploration meets tangible engagement with the world. Through the twin lenses of wonder and windows, I envision a classroom where students are discoverers, participants, and meaning-makers.

The Spirit of Wonder: Playfulness, Exploration, and Discovery

“Catch me,” whispers the claw machine on the first page of this book, inviting a hand to reach in, uncertain of what it might retrieve. Wonder in my teaching is not mere play; it is a posture of curiosity, an embrace of the unknown. Like the claw machine’s hidden treasures, learning should promise surprise, challenge, and delight. Plass, Homer, and Kinzer (2015) argue that game-based learning nurtures affective, cognitive, and sociocultural engagement—not by dictating outcomes, but by sparking active and motivated participation.

I saw the power of wonder during my time teaching high school students in Bali. These students, many of whom had limited access to formal English education, relied on our volunteer lessons for language development. To teach the topic of asking for directions, I designed a “blindfolded navigation” game: one student, blindfolded, sought another across the classroom by asking for verbal guidance from classmates, using newly learned phrases. The room filled with laughter and urgency, where students negotiated meaning, made mistakes, self-corrected, and ultimately built fluency.

When teaching occupations, we played a spirited variation of the “Radish Squat” game. Students selected different professions, chanting and responding in rapid succession: “Driver squats, driver squats, driver squats—chef squats!” Their energy was palpable, and through repetition and joyful competition, vocabulary that might have otherwise felt dry became embodied and alive.

Similarly, teaching younger children in China offered another window into wonder. When I first met them, I organized an icebreaker game involving a dice-based board. I introduced the dice-based board where each roll revealed a hidden question: “What's your favorite ice cream flavor?” “Tell me something about penguins!” ...They were so excited! The element of chance fueled their curiosity, and they listened attentively to each unfolding discovery. As Leavy (2020) suggests in her work on arts-based inquiry, the playful “not knowing” often opens deeper pathways to learning than rigidly scripted lessons.

Art also served as a portal to wonder. When teaching the history of the alphabet, I crafted a painting filled with Phoenician letter forms—an “A” disguised as a bull’s head, a “B” embedded in a house, a “Q” served as a rope. Students competed to spot and interpret the ancient symbols, marveling at how human history shaped the letters they use today. Even vocabulary review became an adventure: during the consolidation phase, I designed an original game where a parachute image was hidden beneath colorful puzzle tiles. Students eagerly raced to guess the concealed picture as I slowly unveiled it piece by piece. To my amazement, they often solved the mystery after just a few reveals, proudly explaining their reasoning with amazing intuition.

In each of these activities, “wonder” was more than fun; it was the medium through which exploration, connection, and deep learning flourished.

The Open Window: Connecting Classroom and World

If wonder animates the spirit of learning, windows structure its direction. A classroom, in my philosophy, must open onto the world. Language learning should not be confined to textbook dialogues and isolated drills, but rooted in authentic and real-life materials that reflect how language lives and breathes outside school walls (Goldberg, 2021).

Windows break the imagined border between “school” and “life”. They let in the maps, menus, photographs, and conversations that students will actually encounter. They equip learners not just to “know” English, but to live it.

In my classroom, I frequently incorporate real objects and cultural artifacts. Teaching the topic of dining, for example, I brought in fortune cookies collected from Chinese restaurants across Philadelphia. Beyond various blessings, fortune cookies became a discussion on cultural hybridity: how immigrant communities negotiate their identity within dominant cultural frameworks by creating hybrid forms that are culturally legible to outsiders, while still serving as markers of belonging and adaptation for insiders. Students realized that even a small dessert could carry profound stories of migration, adaptation, and belonging.

In another lesson on apartment hunting, I used photographs of real Philadelphia rental signs to teach immigrant students how to navigate housing ads. Instead of fictional examples, they learned to interpret real layouts and prices, skills they would need immediately in their lives. When teaching menus, I shared photos I had taken of Shake Shack’s ordering boards, showing students how to request items, ask about ingredients, and navigate American dining customs.

My experiences in Bali reinforced this “window-centered” approach. Knowing that many students aspired to work in tourism and hospitality, I brought in actual restaurant menus and designed role-play scenarios: ordering, recommending dishes, handling payment. These were not hypothetical exercises; they were rehearsals for real futures.

Building Positive Relationships: Learning Together with Curiosity and Trust

Central to both wonder and windows is the relationship between teacher and student. I strive to build classrooms rooted in mutual respect, playful risk-taking, and shared discovery. In game-based learning, mistakes are not failures but stepping-stones. In real-world simulations, cultural knowledge is honored, not erased.

I view myself not as the sole bearer of knowledge, but as a co-explorer alongside my students. Through humor, responsiveness, and careful attention to individual needs, I try to create a space where diverse racial, cultural, gender, intellectual, and linguistic backgrounds are assets, as Dr B. advocates (Broderick, 2015). In a multicultural classroom, games and authentic materials allow every student to bring their own histories and imaginations into the learning space, creating richer, more inclusive experiences.

Conclusion

Teaching, for me, is the art of opening windows—to the world, to the self, to each other—and keeping wonder alive inside those frames. It is crafting spaces where a blindfolded student can laugh their way to fluency; where an ancient letter hidden in a painting sparks a lifelong curiosity about words; where a menu or an apartment ad becomes not just a reading exercise, but a step into belonging.

Windows and Wonder is more than a book title. It is my belief that every lesson can be a window, and every moment can kindle wonder. In the interplay of the real and the playful, students do not merely learn a language, they find new ways to see the world, and new voices with which to shape it.

References

Broderick, D. A. (2015). Art as inquiry: Cultivating critical arts-based practices in an early pre-service teacher education program. University of Pennsylvania.

Goldberg, M. (2021). Arts integration: Teaching subject matter through the arts in multicultural settings. Routledge.

Leavy, P. (2020). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford publications.

Plass, J. L., Homer, B. D., & Kinzer, C. K. (2015). Foundations of game-based learning. Educational psychologist, 50(4), 258-283.