ESL Teacher

When I first arrived in Perth two years ago, I needed a little extra work to pay the rent. I remembered an ad I’d seen for online English teachers and got in contact with the company, and I was soon spending my evenings on the telephone to students in Japan, running half hour conversation lessons with them and picking up some decent pocket money.

In principal, the online or telephone English learning idea is mostly about making money, but then again, a lot of ESL education is focused on the bottom line, isn’t it? Matching up students somewhere – anywhere in the world is possible – with native speakers, wherever they’re living, and setting up short one-to-one lessons – is what these schools are all about.

On job boards like Dave’s ESL Café job list, you can still see ads for these kind of jobs. The pay may not always be great – although that probably depends on the cost of living where you are at the moment – but it can be fun work and a nice way to get a bit of extra cash together.

I ended up having quite a few regular students and discovered that yes, it was possible to build a great teacher to student relationship on the telephone or on Skype. Just a couple of these students also had a web-cam and that certainly enhanced the experience even further. Of course, Skype or other internet communication capabilities depend on the internet speed where the students and teachers are located, but it’s certainly possible in many situations. I’d recommend it to ESL teachers who might be wanting some part time work or just some extra cash; I had a lot of fun.

I know that you can’t stereotype nationalities because even with general traits, there are always many exceptions to the rule. But when it comes to being on time to class, I can certainly give a few stereotypes that ring true in at least 90% of my experience.

In Japan, nearly all the students came on time – sometimes high school teenagers were late, and some people arrived really early – but in general being late was pretty rare, and only a matter of a couple of minutes.

In Slovakia, there is no stereotype. I remember an 8.00am class I had in suburban Bratislava. One guy would be there at twenty to eight when I arrived. A woman usually showed up at ten to. Probably nobody arrived at exactly eight. And then the rest would stream in at any time up to nine o’clock.

In Germany, my students were the epitome of punctuality. At first, I wondered if the students were all meeting somewhere nearby at a prearranged time and then coming to class at the minute before the starting time in a large group – but I soon learned that they are just all absolutely punctual. And I have to say, as a teacher, that makes life really easy.

In Australia, I teach students of many nationalities. But it’s usually true that if some of the students are late, it’s rather likely that it’s the Brazilians. They tell me they work on Brazilian time and that’s a lot different to Australian time. What can I say?

I’ve been lucky enough to teach English in four different countries on three different continents. Now I’m going through a fairly settled down phase of life where I can’t see myself moving to another country again, at least not this decade or next. But I still like to dream about where I might end up teaching.

Friends I’ve made during my teaching career help inspire these dreams. One teaching couple I know have now taught in Poland, Slovakia, China, Turkey and Colombia – a fascinating list, to be sure – and are now on the road looking for their next stop. Others have headed to the Middle East or to Taiwan and Korea, and send me email dispatches describing what they like and dislike about their new teaching and living environments.

If I had a magic wand, I’d go and teach in the Maldives for six months. I once saw an ad from a resort in the Maldives looking for a teacher to teach English to their staff for two hours every morning, and the rest of the time you could do what you wanted and had a room at the resort with food provided. I know that the dream of resort life would fade pretty fast, but I’d love to curl up and write a few books while teaching a couple of hours every morning – at least for six months or so.

I’ve also always been intrigued by the idea of teaching in Morocco. I had an interview lined up for a job there once, but before the interview time came around I’d accepted my teaching job in Germany, which I took over Morocco because jobs in Germany were so hard to find – I could teach in Morocco “any time”. I haven’t, yet, but would still love to one day. It’s important to have dreams!

If you could teach anywhere in the world, where would it be? Let me know in the comments, please!

Thanks to the internet, finding a job in another country has become remarkably simple. I found my jobs in various ways and if you follow some of my methods you’re sure to find a great job, pretty much anywhere in the world:

•  Japan: I found my job teaching in Japan through an advert in my local Australian newspaper. They interviewed us here in Australia before shipping us over to Japan. A pretty easy interview and not too much drama at all.
•  Slovakia: Here the internet came to the fore, and in particular, Dave’s ESL Cafe,  a website that has everything a teacher could want, including new jobs! These days they have separate job boards for Korea and China and all the rest are mixed together. From a job ad here I ended up having a short phone interview (really short - and really friendly!) and then got a contract in the mail.
• Germany: This was a more difficult country to find work in, since I didn’t have an EU passport. But not impossible, obviously. After searching for schools across Germany I started emailing them my CV and bingo, one school was after a full-time teacher. From Slovakia I drove up for an interview over a weekend, and she offered me the job.
• Australia: I was already here before I started job hunting, and that made it especially easy. I got online and found a list of schools close to where I was living, printed out my CV and hopped in the car. The first school I stopped and took my resume and said they’d call me (they didn’t); the second school asked if I had time for an interview right away, and I started teaching there two days later.

I adore my job. I’ve taught English as a Second Language in four different countries, to students from at least thirty nationalities, perhaps more. Can you imagine how interesting that is? Every single day I learn new things from my students, we laugh together, sometimes cry together, and sometimes even they learn something!

I can’t imagine sitting in an office and working in front of a computer all day. As an ESL teacher I get to stand up half the day, sit down when I feel a little tired on my feet, move around a lot and feel active, a thousand times healthier than sitting in front of a computer monitor.

Without my ESL students, I wouldn’t have hilarious stories to tell my family and friends. Misunderstandings and culturally unusual ideas, and just the simple stories my students tell me and laugh about with me of what’s happening in their everyday lives, and what happens when I try to interfere in them.

From my ESL students I have learnt about every topic under the sun. I’ve had students who were engineers, chefs, doctors, teachers, lawyers, hairdressers, journalists and accountants. Every single one of my students has something unique to teach me about and I always try to find out what that is.

And when either I leave the country or my students leave, we are all sad. I make so many friends and connections through this job that enrich my life so much; life wouldn’t be the same without my ESL students.

I’ve taught in Asia, Europe and Australia, and every experience is unique. If I had to pick just one, I don’t think I could. Every teaching job I’ve had is very special to me.

In Asia, I taught in Japan, where my students were utterly respectful of my position as a teacher (even if I was, at times, a terrible teacher!), and they were always striving to please me.

In Europe, I taught in Germany, in major companies, where my students were always punctual and interested, and so keen to improve their English.

I also taught in Slovakia as it was joining the European Union, where my students were so optimistic about the future and so eager to learn more about the world after emerging from the closed mind of socialist rule.

In Australia, I teach students who come here from all over the world: South America, Europe, Asia, and occasionally the Middle East and Africa. Having this diversity in the classroom is a blessing for the teacher and the students. There’s nothing I love more than meeting a class of students who’ve all just got off the plane, some of whom have never met an Asian in their life or never spoken to a Brazilian before. Fast forward a couple of weeks and they’re all the best of friends, planning barbecues and parties together and discussing each other’s home countries knowledgeably. It’s magic.

I’d love to teach in South America, where I think my students would be always fun and friendly (if not all punctual). I’d love to teach in Africa, where I could learn so much from my students about a continent I barely understand. Heck, I’d teach English on another planet if they found lifeforms there. It’s the best job in the universe!