Warning: cheesy post (sorry!)
This month marks my first year anniversary as a teacher, and I can’t believe how fast it went, or how crazy it has been. It seems like I quit my real estate job six months ago, and I still consider myself as a newbie teacher!
I had some ideologies when I decided to become a teacher: that my students would always come first, that I will always try to create a personalized content, that I will make them feel at ease. I grew up in schools, and I know how they work: I wasn’t afraid to take the plunge.
But I didn’t end up in a school. I did a two months internship in a primary school, I loved it, I loved the students, I thought that it was too perfect to be true. After the director told me that she couldn’t hire me, despite a vacancy, because of my citizenship, and the fact that I was non native (and despite the fact that the kids had no idea that I was French), I left France for England, and took a CELTA.
I wrote several times about my CELTA, already, and I won’t do it again here. You may know that I became a freelance teacher in Lyon.
Being a freelance teacher in France is far from easy, and I realized too late that it was not made for me. I always imagined myself teaching in an institution, in a school, with a team surrounding me and within a structure. Being a freelance teacher, right after CELTA, was presumptuous, and led me to believe that I wasn’t good enough. The day I took a waitressing job because I didn’t have students left was one of the worst I ever had (it was also temporary, I resigned two weeks later because I had found new students).
These past twelve (almost thirteen now) months taught me more about myself than I ever experienced. I wanted to do a MA for a long time, but I didn’t know which one to choose (for the record, I started a master in marketing and left after a few months, seven years ago) and these past events made me realize that what was moving me was Second Language Acquisition, and not only teaching English as a Foreign Language. I am starting my MA next September, distance learning, through the University of Portsmouth.
That year has been rough, but I met incredible students, I witnessed some incredible efforts, and I tried to mix it up a little (I even wrote an article in EL Gazette!). In a few weeks, I will start a new adventure, one I dreamed about for years; Yale’s TEFL seminar begins on the 25th of June.
The journey is far from being over, I still a long path ahead of me but I have to admit: I can’t wait to write about my second year anniversary.
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