In this article, the author shares her experience and the lessons learned in teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) for a decade. After thousands of lessons, uncountable revisions to those lessons, numerous hours of professional development, access to dozens of talented colleagues, and an abundance of thoughts and insights from students, the author offers ideas about best practices generated from these years of teaching English language learners. These ideas are meant to ease students' stress and accelerate their language learning, thereby yielding greater academic satisfaction for both English language learners and their teachers. This article thus suggests effective approaches to teaching English language learners in ways that can be of benefit to all students in mainstream middle and high school English classes.