Building creative English lessons around students’ passions with Lilian Velázquez Salinas

Join us for another inspiring episode of Grow: A podcast from Cambridge. This week we join Lilian Velázquez Salinas, a passionate English teacher in Mexico City. Host Ricardo Morales discovers how Lilian focuses on truly knowing her learners and their interests. Utilising TV programmes, games and music to design lessons that feel relevant, joyful and meaningful in her classroom. In this episode you will hear all about: ⚖️ How Lilian balances different personalities and needs. 🌟 How she is adapting to changes in students' attention and behaviour. 🖥️ Why conferences, webinars and sharing experiences with other teachers keep her inspired. You’ll also hear from Cecília Lemos Harmer & Matt Ellman from the Professional Learning and Development team at Cambridge with a top tip on how to bring the Cambridge Life Competencies Framework into the language classroom. Timestamps: 00:00 Coming up on Grow 01:16 Introducing Teacher Lilian at Colegio La Salle 02:41 Becoming an English teacher and finding her path 04:02 Teaching young learners & discovering classroom joy 06:12 Lilian's core philosophy: transforming students’ lives 07:11 Staying motivated as a teacher 08:13 Motivating students with gamification 09:59 Managing 30 students with creativity and patience 12:57 Advice for new teachers 14:45 How education has changed—technology & post‑pandemic learners 16:05 Top Tip: Using the Cambridge Life Competencies Framework 20:12 Finding work–life balance as a teacher 22:15 That feeling when… 25:12 Quick‑fire questions with Lili 26:39 Final message: What makes a great teacher Want to discover more Grow episodes? 🎥 Watch the full series on YouTube:    • Grow: A podcast from Cambridge   🎧 Listen to all audio episodes: https://www.cambridge.org/english-gro... 📧 Get in touch: Do you have a question about English language teaching? Record an audio message with your question and email it to [email protected] and you could feature in a future episode of Grow! #WhereYourWorldGrows #cambridgeenglish