Alumni Experience: ✅ Teaching English to IT Specialists
I have been teaching English in Ukraine for over five years. I started at Greenwich school as a native speaker, but there was not much training involved. I was in the travel industry, so I wanted to fill up some of the free time I had earlier each day. My work with Canada was mainly after 4 pm each day. After teaching part-time, I began to enjoy it, so when more and more companies and students needed me, I filled up fast.
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This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Darren S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.
Greenwich School
Teaching at Greenwich was a decent job, and they helped me with some teaching ideas. Primarily I was leading from books, like Market Leader, to different offices, but they were mostly I.T. companies. Since they were mainly groups, they never lasted long because of my inexperience, or my style was not attractive enough yet. This was five years ago, and I am sure I have evolved enough as a teacher. Indeed I am much more confident in my abilities as a teacher now than I was at that point.
Group Dynamics
Larger groups were always challenging to me, primarily due to the first groups I had with Greenwich. In the larger groups, it seemed that many students would miss classes, and they were disinterested when they returned. Looking back, I would say that having structured book lessons with categories missing students fairly often was a mistake. But, this is what these companies wanted. The school directed me to stick with the Market Leader workbook.
Personal Approach
With other companies where I had individual lessons, I tried to make a more personal approach, even though I was still required to use Market Leader. These lessons were much more productive, in my opinion, and those students built a great rapport with me. Unfortunately, I was hired by the I.T. company I work for now. Some of these students even tried to pay the school more money to keep me, but the new I.T. company soon needed me full-time. Working for Greenwich was great while it lasted. I just started earning a lot more money with one company. To stay in one office all day, every day, was much more convenient. Not to mention they paid much more.
I started at this company four and a half years ago when it was still a start-up. It now has over one thousand employees worldwide, with a significant office in Ukraine. When I started, I taught only one-on-one lessons, and those I believe are very effective. It is a unique company where they only hire top engineers, and they are well vetted. The hiring process is very stringent, as they require each candidate to be interviewed up to eight times. So the people here are great and a lot of fun to teach.
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I have gained enough confidence over this period to confidently say I could teach just about anyone. I enjoy working at this company very much and would have a hard time working elsewhere. To say that this is a dream job would be an understatement. I have developed a love for teaching I never thought would be such a big part of me. I have fun every day, and I enjoy going to work every day. So much so that I have pretty much given up on a travel business plan I had.
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