Life as an English teacher

Admittedly I don't talk about my job much, which is rather ironic since these days the majority of my time is spent working. Becoming an English teacher in another country is surprisingly easy, and as long as you're open-minded and courageous, you can teach just about anywhere....that is, if you're a native speaker. I'm not sure if native speakers make the best teachers, but that's the way it is.

Anyways, my life as an English teacher is surprisingly different from what I thought it would be like. For one, you have to be flexible, able to adjust to many different types of students, coming from different backgrounds and from all sorts of age groups and levels of language capabilities. What may work great for one group of students may be a disaster for another group. Or perhaps a group of 2 students can't really play the same games that a group of 10 students can. It really depends.

The second thing I've noticed is how mobile you have to be. I don't have a permanent school for the moment since I just arrived, and I've been sent out in virtually every direction of the city, teaching at all sorts of places. As a new teacher who is under hours on their contract, you can get called at any time to substitute teach a class, which means you never know your schedule really.

Although it might get old after a while, always moving about (which fortunately later on I will have my own classes when they start up in January), I actually enjoy all of the excitement. The best part is getting the chance to meet all sorts of people, and learn a lot about them, in class! I've taught businessmen, accountants, teenagers, bored housewives, the boss of a big company...Most of these people are really invested in learning the language, and it's inspiring to see their drive and motivation, as they ask me questions about grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary. Even the teenagers, who are studying for an exam, had an argument over past continuous in class that got very heated!

I find it really interesting to teach in companies, since you end up in a meeting room with a white board, and you never know what will happen. Sometimes the students are coworkers who get along really well, and can debate in English. Other times they somberly walk into the room at 9 in the morning, dreading the class that I haven't even taught yet. There are the ups and downs of teaching, but you have to admit, how often do you end up in a Russian executive office, drinking champagne and eating chocolates with two beginner students who make 10 times more money than you do? Indeed, it's an odd life.