I have taught pretty much every age group (from 2 year olds to seniors) and
levels (from beginners to Business English and university prep tests) an EFL
teacher could possibly get their hands on. But my passion remains to teach children. They are just so full of life, extremely intelligent and give
you a super great excuse to behave like a monkey in the classroom from time to
time ;)
I’m very grateful to be in a career that I love to bits and can pass my
knowledge on to others.
In addition to teaching EFL learners, which I have been doing now for over 15
years (writing down this number makes me feel so old… or well, experienced,
let’s say), I started to teach teachers 4 years ago and got hired as an
educational manager at a trilingual school last year, It's really wonderful to be able to help other teachers to learn about their full potential, to inspire them and support them with all the things I had to learn myself in the field to get to where I am today - and basically give them a shortcut to become the best they can be.
My journey started at a language school where I was hired as a tuition teacher
for teenagers. With the time I got more and more classes and responsibilities,
such as kids classes and business classes.
One day, I took one of my business classes out - into the real life - which was
quite a battle with the school’s headmaster to allow us to go out (you know,
insurance reasons). We went to a coffee shop and pretended we were all English.
It was such great fun. While we were sitting there, sipping on our coffees and
eating ice cream (yes, we did!!! And believe it or not, we ordered it in
English!), one of the business guys asked me why I’m actually still working for
that school and why I didn’t set up something on my own (see how great
networking is, when you have the right people around you to give you sound
advice!).
I had actually never really thought about leaving, because I was pretty busy in
the school, running from one class to the next and I loved teaching there and
all my students. So why change?
I have thought about it for a long time and I came to the conclusion that the
reason was quite simple... to have more freedom!
The freedom to choose what to teach.
The freedom to choose how to teach.
The freedom to choose where I teach.
The freedom to choose where I teach.
The freedom to choose with what material I want to teach.
The freedom to decorate my classroom as I want.
The freedom to do projects with my students.
And, of course,
the freedom to go outside when I want to hold classes outside ;)
So after four years teaching in the school, I decided to leave and do things on my own (yay!). It worked really well and I just loved what I was doing!
So after four years teaching in the school, I decided to leave and do things on my own (yay!). It worked really well and I just loved what I was doing!
7 years ago, though, I moved to Paris and started everything from scratch.
The Eiffel Tower .. yea no, that's the fake one from Las Vegas. Can you actually believe it? When we were on holiday, thinking we would be far from everything European ... this is the view from my hotel room ... felt just like home (well, almost).
The Eiffel Tower .. yea no, that's the fake one from Las Vegas. Can you actually believe it? When we were on holiday, thinking we would be far from everything European ... this is the view from my hotel room ... felt just like home (well, almost).
Here's the real deal. View from Trocadero.
It was not easy at the beginning, but such a blessing. I built up my own little network here, was hired as a teacher, then as a teacher trainer to pass on my knowledge and experience and I absolutely love what I do. And now I got hired as educational manager as well. What more can you ask for <3
Oh yea, blogging!! So this will be my first attempt to blog. I’m in no way an
expert, so please, don’t beat me up. But I have made so many experiences during many years of teaching that I would love to share with those who are at the
beginning of their ESL teaching journey or in the middle of it, we can never learn enough new stuff in thie fast paced world!
Let’s learn from each other and have a lot of fun!
Svenja Muller
Let’s learn from each other and have a lot of fun!
Svenja Muller
Comments
Post a Comment