Oh yeah I teach too

Although, it may look like its all play and no work I have indeed been working as an English foreign teacher. When I decided to leave for Asia what was so appealing was the unknown. Not just the unknown of a foreign country but also the unknown of teaching. My thought process was, "hey I speak English how hard could it be to teach it." Well.....as I found out it is a little more complicated than that.

My training in Cambodia went for about a month and was a lot of information to take in a short period of time. I wasn't naive going in to it. I understood that the company providing the training, LanguageCorps, was still a business at the end of the day. It's their job to churn out teachers at a month at a time and generate a profit. I learned very quickly that as much work that I put in was going to be the amount of success that I got out. I was a number to them and at the end of TESOL course I was going to get my certificate and I wouldn't be their problem anymore. I had a job lined up beforehand in China because that is the only way to get into China, so the worries of unemployment was not weighing over my head.

There were growing pains for sure, during our classes there were good days and bad days. Days that I just froze up during demos and days that I left class feeling like I could really do this. Being out of school for a couple years made the adjustment tougher. Getting back into student mode and the 8-5 class days brought back some remembrance of my college experience. Also, I realized that other than the basics I didn't really no much about English. Noun, verbs, adjectives.....the hell is a gerund? I was a Marketing graduate disguised as a graphic designer. It's safe to say English was not my forte.

  I knew nothing

The staff training us to be future teachers were a mixed bag. What they lacked in traditional teaching qualities they made up with the years of experience of being a English foreign teacher. I found the course material kind of dry and their were a lot of generalizations about teaching in Asia and Asia in general. None of the teachers taught in China, so I didn't really know what would really apply to me. Also, the person running the program was my favorite person so there was that to deal with. As with most endeavors that I take on I just went with it and applied my personal mantra that I have always lived by that all things will work themselves out in the end.

Not a good sign.

And things did eventually work out. I think what made them work was that the people in my group were all pretty like minded. We luckily got the right mix of people and really got along well. They were really helpful in the late night lesson plans and then the subsequent trading of lesson plans when I was too tired to make new ones. It was safe to say we had each other's back in this whole teaching thing. 

One of the biggest questions with I had for myself regarding teaching was, would I like it? Lesson planning is not my favorite thing in the world I am an expert level procrastinator so that really works against me. As for teaching...........IT'S GREAT! It's something that I've gravitated to more so than any other job that I've had. Sitting in an office doing minimal work in San Francisco had its perks but I seldom felt as invested as I feel in teaching. I had my reservations with dealing with kids, kids can be dicks. I like to work a job where I can see a direct result of my the work I put in. When a student gets it in means that the work I put in has paid off and when a student doesn't get it, it means that I need to put more effort into it. It's not always that simple of course. There are outliers but a smooth class feels way better than praise over a good report or a well received design I submit in my old jobs. 

The kids in the above picture are from the SSD orphanage in Cambodia. These kids will be hard to be  replaced as my favorite class of all time. They didn't have much but their positive outlook and enthusiasm for what I had to offer them was great. They kind of get a raw deal given that they are used as a training ground for potential teachers. Imagine having a new teacher every 2 weeks. The lack of continuity of lessons and styles is difficult to say the least. I tried to make the most of my time with them and hopefully I helped them in some sort of way.

I have a long way to go as a teacher and many things to learn. At the time of this blog post I am 1 month removed from Cambodia and a full time English teacher in China (that's another story for another blog post). I have a long way to go in becoming the kind of teacher that I think I'm capable of. Each class is a learning process and I take away new helpful techniques everyday, but I'm going to have fun along the way.

It's not all fun and games....except for the fact that it is.