by Steven Starry
I think the most important thing is to remember that you’re
the one who’s going to be doing the teaching: not your boss,
not your school and certainly not your students. You’re the
one who’s in charge. Whatever your weaknesses and your strengths,
your classroom is your boat and you’re the captain and everyone
will be looking to you to pull it all together in order to
get the job done.
That’s why I recommend that you take a TEFL course before
you even get started. I also think that before you do the
TEFL course, that you study a book like Murphy’s English Grammar
in Use to get most of the basic English grammar that you’ll
be teaching because you won’t get that on the course. But
reading a book like Jeremy Harmer’s “How to Teach English”
wouldn’t be a bad idea either. Finally, you should have a
look through a very good textbook for beginners like OUP’s
English File 1: the textbook, teachers’ book, workbook and
other resource materials corresponding to this book.
Reading these books won’t get you out of doing the TEFL
course as it’s required by most schools in lieu of other extensive
teaching or business experience. But also, you’ll need to
practice your teaching with some real students first to get
the hang of it.
There are plenty of other little details that you’ll have
to learn on-the-job afterwards. For example, if you work in
an academy, your director of studies or the school director
(even worse) will choose your textbook and put together the
groups into levels. If they don’t do a very good job of this,
tough luck! You’ll have to work with this mess everyday.
There are a lot more problems that you can come across on
the job than I have time to talk about right now, so I’ll
just say that I recommend that you Organize yourself around
Problems and Solutions: Learn to take a “practical” problem/solution
approach to everything you do, but remember that every solution
both takes time to work out and can create more problems.
Still, unless you’re awfully experienced and/or creative,
you can’t come up with an entirely new lesson from scratch
for every single class. So, as much as possible you’ll want
to use the best one-size-fits-all solutions. I’m mainly talking
about textbooks and other resource materials.
When you’re looking into your solutions, you should be aware
that there’s quite a bit of bs out there. Everybody’s making
loads of money in this business except for English teachers,
and there’s as much money to be made from selling these textbooks
and methods than from the actual teaching. (This probably
goes for TEFL courses too, by the way.) There’s a lot of money
spent on marketing the students’ learning how to speak - or
teach - in 30 hours and so on. That’s balderdash and if you
have to teach English under those circumstances – again -
you’ll be taking on an unnecessary extra load of stress. A
good rule of thumb is either to get the complete freedom to
teach English however you want or to double-check any methods
or textbooks they saddle you down with first.
Teaching English can be a lot of fun and you can make enough
to live on at it if you’re planning to make a career out of
it, and it’s easy enough to start up in, but it does have
its ups and downs and ins and outs. And when you get into
the thick of it working far too many hours teaching 5 or 6
different levels, you will make mistakes. Coming up with the
right solution for each and every problem won’t always be
simple and sometimes you won’t have the time or energy to
do so.
My advice is to learn how to pace yourself. Remember to leave
a day free for class prep including any research on a certain
bit of grammar, for instance. It usually takes me at least
a half day every week to prep the basics of my classes, but
I always spend at least another half day working on prepping
songs or something else to spice them up a bit and make them
more entertaining. I’ve always got a song or two just in case
and more materials than I’ll need for the next couple of classes.
I also usually have some sort of a problem with a student
who I don’t know what to do with that I have to sit down and
think about for a while and try to work something out.
I think it’s your responsibility to try to teach your students
a little something in each and every class, but don’t feel
too terribly bad if some don’t learn. Remember that sometimes
you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
They have to try to meet you half-way. You can’t do everything
for them. You can’t memorize vocabulary for them and so on.
You’ll see that some will eat your classes up no matter how
overly difficult or easy you make them and others will cross
their arms, their eyes will haze over and they’ll start saying
something like “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t” at the least little
obstacle they come across.
English teaching is really varied and there are a lot of
differences, contrasts, sometimes even opposites in it. For
example, I’ve taught lots of different types of classes like:
groups of children in elementary school and academies, teenagers
in high school and academies, top executives in huge multi-nationals,
programmers, complete beginners, proficiency level students,
a minister of some government agency, a published author,
a playwright, pilots, secretaries, accountants, business English,
business owners, engineers, a TV news program presenter, you
name it. It can get pretty crazy and you’ll have to draw on
everything you’ve got to adapt to some of your students’ needs.
Remember that even if some of them just want to talk to maintain
their level, it can get pretty challenging after a while.
What do you talk about after your 45th hour of class? Some
of these students will only want to talk about one or two
topics, soccer and marathons, for example. Maybe you’ll have
to read the newspaper every day for fresh topics and maybe
your students will get to know quite a bit about your personal
life and hobbies and interests, and vice versa.
Also, though you do have to be friendly and entertaining
in this job, your students’ actually learning English is your
number 1 problem or the centre of your “teaching” universe.
Everything else you do will revolve around this axis. There
are a lot of things that will distract you from this goal
including your students’ own needs to relax and be entertained.
And if you’re working in an academy, you’ll have the petty
pecking order to contend with, with your fair share of boot-licking
holier-than-thou characters around, which, if you’re very
competitive and fall into the trap, might further distract
you from your central objectives. Frankly, take me for example,
I think I’m just your average English teacher. I know I’ve
got my weaknesses and strengths just like anybody else. You’re
free to take whatever you hear me say with a grain of salt.
Finally, remember that English teaching is a business and
you’ll have to make enough money at it if you want to continue.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the job, you can’t help
but worry about the money side of it: it’s usually seasonal
and very unpredictable, and this will have an impact on how
you teach.
This is a Youtube video article by Steven Starry for new English
teachers about how to organize yourself when you first start teaching
English.
Right-click and select "save as" to download: 
How to organize yourself when you first start teaching
English.
