Teaching Professional English

It’s hard to believe that in just a few weeks I will have been living in Madrid for two months.  The weeks go by so fast in a blur of work and travel.  It really does not seem that long ago I was just arriving, ready to start training.  I was thrown into my program while I was still recovering from jetlag.  While this was difficult, doing so helped prepare me for what I am doing now.

CIEE has several teach in Spain programs, in my program I teach adults instead of children  This means that the lessons and the schedules are drastically different from other programs.  There is a lot of riding the metro and killing time between classes.  For example, I am in a park next to one of the offices I teach at now, writing this blog post, waiting until I am acceptably early (but not too early) for class.  Sometimes my day starts at 8 am and ends at 7 pm, other days I do not start until 1:30.  The scheduling department gives me enough time between classes to travel, which is good, since most of my classes are outside of the city center.

For the first two weeks after arriving, we were in training.  The office is in the Quevedo area of Madrid, which is just slightly north of the city center.  I used to go there everyday for training, now I only go there about twice a week to print off class work.  The two weeks of training included an intense grammar review as well as studying teaching methodology.  It was quite brutal, we were there from 9 am to as late as 7:30 some evenings.  Starting from the third class we had practice classes, where we taught a group of volunteers and then received feedback on our lessons.  During all these we were looking for housing as well, so those two weeks were very stressful.  Everything settled eventually though.

For our lessons, we have access to an online platform which helps us plan our classes.  We assign homework for our students to go over before class and discuss the material in the next class.  We can also create lesson plans without the platform material.  For example, we can assign them a podcast to listen to and then have a debate about it in the next class.  We try to tailor each lesson based on each individual or group’s needs.  Some groups must strictly adhere to the learning path, others, especially one on ones, have more leeway.

This program may be suited for you if you prefer to work more independently and want more teaching experience.  You do not need a TEFL certificate and at the end of training you are officially certified to teach business English.  I wanted some more experience with business English, which is why I chose this program.  I liked the idea of teaching children, but if I choose to pursue jobs teaching English abroad, teaching business English will pay more overall.

There are disadvantages.  The schedule changes frequently, especially with class cancellations.  If class is cancelled, you still get paid, but it can be annoying to travel for forty minutes only to find out your one on one student could not make it.  Most of the time you will be notified earlier in advance, but last second cancellations do happen from time to time.  It can also make travel planning a bit difficult.  I mentioned in an earlier post that my Friday student cancelled several classes, meaning I wanted to plan some trips.  I have still been able to travel but have had to schedule a few make up classes on Fridays, meaning my dream of constant three day weekends did not happen.  If a class is cancelled far enough in advance we have to reschedule it for a another time, meaning that three day weekend you had gets filled with make up classes instead.

I do enjoy teaching, especially now that I am more used to it.  When I started I thought I would have to prepare lectures, but found that teaching English requires my students to speak more than me.  All my classes told me they wanted to focus on fluency, so I get them speaking as much as possible.  Rather than a lecture, my classes feel like a discussion.  I have learned a lot about Spain from the discussions I have led in class.  I do listen for errors and correct them.  There are also times where I have had to teach grammar, which is not a very fun topic.  It is so rewarding hearing my students improve however, I feel satisfied when I can tell that they not only learned something, but also had fun doing it.