ESL Teaching: How to survive your first few months

If you’re interested in the thought of teaching English in a foreign country, but like me you have never taught a lesson in your life, here is my guide on how to convince people you are actually a teacher. This is rather than a travel-loving journalism graduate who has somehow ended up in a classroom full of forty hyperactive Vietnamese six-year-olds.

1. Be prepared and be creative!

It sounds pretty obvious, but the amount of times where I have gone into a class with a lesson prepared and the Vietnamese teaching assistant explains that they have already done it is silly. Always make sure you have a list of games in your head, as it’s likely you will need them. Not only for situations like these, but for in case your planned class has gone quicker than you expected. Always have a structure of how you want your lesson to go in your head (or written down). Though it is likely to completely change when you step inside the class, it gives you the confidence of knowing what you’re doing.

Try and be creative too but still keep it simple. I bought some of my clothes in to school the other day and dressed the students up. 1) It was educational as they could practice vocabulary for pieces of clothing 2) they loved it and 3) it was bloody hilarious.  

      2. Act like a massive weirdo

Literally the kids bloody love it. The amount of weird animal noises and dances I do each day is pretty cringe worthy, and I lose count of how many times I scream head shoulders knees and toes. If my friends at home could see how much of a clown I acted, they’d crack up. But you just have to embrace it.  If you’re boring then the whole lesson is boring. Also give out plenty of high 5’s and pull weird faces to gets kids attention. Now I’m writing all these things down, I am in fact, cringing hard.   

3. Don't let one bad lesson put you off

I’ve had a few bad lessons where it’s the last lesson of the day and the students have just been out of control. At first, it really made me question whether I should be teaching. However everyone has lessons like this - It’s normal.  So don’t let it put you off. And besides having the odd lesson like this puts into perspective how great some of your other classes are.

With this (obviously dependent on where you plan to teach) be prepared that the teaching assistant may discipline the children. I’ve seen a couple properly slap the children three times in a row. I normally discreetly turn away, as I feel uncomfortable seeing this. But it is a completely different world over here compared to the UK, and obviously I have to accept that living in a different culture.

4. Be enthusiastic about everything and don’t get stressed

This could seem difficult when the children are sometimes so hyperactive (I actually had one kid kick me because I didn't pick him to play “slap the board”…he was fuming). Most of them are just so excited to be with a foreign teacher. Don’t confuse this excitement with bad behaviour; otherwise you’ll just spend the whole lesson telling forty 6 year olds off, which is never fun. Just embrace their excitement and always be enthusiastic to see them. Even though primary school children are so young, I feel they can still pick up any bad vibes in the classroom.

5.    Don’t go out on school nights!

Though it can be tempting, DON’T DO IT. If you’re put on days with pure primary school lessons, do not go out the night before. I promise you will only regret it. It isn’t like at university where you could go out on school nights and rock on up to 9am lectures in your pyjamas. Teaching primary school, you have to be 100% alert all lesson (the only thing I am jealous of those with mostly high school, as you can give them worksheets whilst you sit at your desk trying to hide you’ve only actually had an hours sleep). Dealing with 40 screaming Vietnamese children, in this heat annnd on top of a steaming hangover would only be your worst nightmare.

And for Secondary School…? No idea.

I flew to Vietnam with the knowledge that I would only be teaching primary school children. Oh how wrong I was. Since the beginning of February, I have been teaching a group of misbehaving 16-year-olds at a private school three times a week for 2 x 1.5 hour lessons (horrendous). Luckily, Wednesday is my last class with them before their summer holidays. All I can say is being in a room full of teenagers who don’t want to learn English is more painful than it sounds. But I survived. Just.

Therefore, I won’t be writing a guide on how to be an ESL secondary school teacher, as I myself have definitely not mastered this yet.