Wednesday 27 October 2010

So, what exactly is it that you do?



All my life I have known that I wanted to teach and spend my life surrounded by books. At college, my degree was in English, but instead of going straight into secondary school teaching when I graduated, I spent 2 years in the Czech Republic teaching English as a Foreign Lnaguage. The gymnasium in Humpolec was my first introduction to just how fascinating teaching language rather than literature could be. It was an amazingly formative time.

At present,I am teaching ESOL to all kinds of learners; adult and teenage, highly educated and lowly paid, at the Maybury Centre and Woking College. Now that M is at nursery, I work officially 3 1/2 days a week, but planning, marking and answering students' queries takes up the rest of my week. My work with Sixth Formers is most demanding of my time and has tested my understanding on occasion, but I enjoy the challenge and I am lucky to have a very supportive line manager and to work with colleagues who have become friends.

The part of my job I love most is working with people from all over the world and all walks of life. The part I like least is invigilating exams. In nearly 20 years I have taught students from Algeria to Zimbabwe. I honestly can't imagine doing anything else. This is me.

2 comments:

scrappyjacky said...

Love the way you've managed to incorporate all the alphabet into this.

humel said...

Very clever! Great journaling anyway, but to incorporate the whole alphabet makes it very special xx