Hi all, just a note to say that I have begun my TESOL course (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) in Guadalajara, Mexico, and as a result I will be posting a little less in the coming weeks. It is a very heavy workload, with 9 and 10 hour days, 5 days a week, including a lot of grammar work in the classroom, as well as live practice as a substitute teacher in a private language school. This week, I need to create lesson plans, write a thesis on the learning style of a student that I interviewed, as well as a CV and a list of 5 cities that I would like to teach in. Narrowing it down to just 5 is going to be difficult for me!
Due to the amount of effort I will be sinking into this course between now and February 2, I will sadly have less time and fewer mental resources available to produce quality content here on Steemit. However, I do still have many great stories that need to be shared with the world, plus I am preparing a weekly opinion/insight series on the mindset of a full-time traveller, and other general travel topics. So please don't lose faith - I'm not going anywhere!
Today I taught my first class, of 7 highly motivated university-aged students who are in the advanced stages of their learning. I was a little nervous, but when I told my trainer later, she told me that the nerves were not visible. We discussed mysteries using the deductive past modal tense (could have, must have, etc), and I asked the students what they think happened to Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. I was pretty blown away when one of them suggested that the plane spontaneously combusted! So a pretty easy class to get my feet wet. Tomorrow I have a class of intermediate students and will be teaching them the past perfect tense (I was walking, we were dancing, etc).
Here's me proudly rocking my desert boots.
And here's my not-so-short list of cities that I'd love to teach in, by continent:
Europe
- Tbilisi, Georgia
- Budapest, Hungary
- Berlin, Germany
- Belgrade, Serbia
- Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina
- Kiev, Ukraine
- Zagreb or Split, Croatia
- Barcelona or Ibiza, Spain
Asia
- Izmir, Turkey
- Beirut, Lebanon
- Tehran, Iran
- Astana, Kazakhstan
- Lahore, Karachi or Islamabad, Pakistan
- Mumbai or Bangalore, India
- Kandy, Sri Lanka
There's over a dozen others in Africa and Latin America as well...
If anyone reading this has any experience teaching as a foreigner in any of those locations, I'd love to hear your thoughts!