Oh, those post-uni glory years where I made side money teaching English while travelling the world.
Except it wasn’t that glorious. More tedious actually.
I can’t knock it as a side hustle because it can definitely put food in your belly if you know what you’re doing.
And ‘knowing what you’re doing’ doesn’t mean understanding grammar or having a solid grasp of pedagogical theory. It means putting up with the crap listed below.
10 Lessons Learned from Teaching English as a Foreign Language
It’s a cliché, but you really do learn more from your students than they learn from you.
I mean… how much could they really learn from me when I was tanked on vodka half the time?
1 – There’s a lot of racism out there
Chill out, North America.
I know you guys got some racial tensions and shit but the way you’re acting it’s like you don’t even recognise the progress you’ve made in the last few decades.
You think other countries handle racism and xenophobia better than you?
Okay, Canada and England does…
But ask any Asian what they think of their neighbours. Most of the time you won’t even have to bring it up. Everybody hates each other so much that poison will just flow naturally into conversation with no prompting from you whatsoever.
I remember making the mistake of telling my Korean student that my favourite country was Japan.
Her response?
“I. Fucking. Fucking. HATE. Japan.”
She spat the word Japan like a dirty word.
Then that’s all she ever wanted to talk about in our lessons from that day forth – stuff about the war she’d heard from her grandfather.
Here’s a game you can play with your students:
- Pick a country that borders their country and drop it into conversation.
Hope you brought popcorn.
2 – People don’t want a teacher, they want a therapist
80/20 rule applies here.
20% of my students ACTUALLY wanted to learn English.
They were self-motivated and they improved quickly because they either:
- Had a mastery of English tied to their greater goals
- Had a love of the English language for its own sake
The other 80%?
They used English learning as a guise to escape their lives.
When you get good enough at another language and just “need conversation practice”, an attentive teacher is cheaper than a therapist.
- There was the Turkish guy who used our hour-long classes to talk through his trauma of being cheated on.
- There was the Russian woman who used our sessions like Christian confession and admitted to cheating on her husband.
- There were the Japanese girls who used the sessions as a “boyfriend experience” and acted as though we are on a date.
Solution to these things?
Raise your prices.
People want a therapist, give them therapy prices.
Understand your students’ true aims, come at them with a sense of flexibility, and help them with what they really want.
That’s what your success is tied to.
3 – You have to respect your time, because no one else will
I was buzzed during most of my teaching career.
That meant I was pretty content and didn’t mind being a “nice guy”.
If students cancelled a session last minute, I’d always figure they had some super important reason and it wasn’t their fault.
So I let ‘em off without paying.
Big mistake.
Give an inch, they’ll take a yard.
The students who cancel once last minute, will do so again and again and again.
They’re also the same motherfuckers who will get annoyed and outraged (fuelled by entitlement) when you finally tell them they need to pay for the missed slot.
Don’t make this mistake.
Students are paying for your time slot.
If they cancel within 24 hours, you’ve lost a reserved spot. And if you don’t charge them, you’ve lost money you could’ve got from someone else.
I got sick of being taken advantage of pretty quick and decided on a blanket rule:
Cancel within 24 hours of the session and you still gotta pay up!
Guess what happened?
Cancellations dropped to almost 0% and the times in which students did cancel I was more than happy to enjoy paid free time.
4 – Smiling hurts your face
Quora chastised me for admitting to getting drunk before a lesson.
I love smiling.
When it’s genuine.
A day of genuine smiles and laughter still hurts your facial muscles but in a good way. And it leaves your soul refreshed.
But smiling to PLACATE someone?
Smiling because some motherfucker gave you twenty bucks?!
I blame Berlitz Japan.
They trained me up in the art of Japanese customer service.
That means attentive (read: rigid) body language and a constant psychopathic smile whenever dealing with customers.
But some students simply suck…
Like the ones I talked about above.
Spend an hour smiling while a Russian girl tells you about how she wants to kill her mother…
Tell me how you feel after that.
After a while, I dropped the smiles and I learnt two things:
- Act the way you wanna act and you save your soul.
- Russians and Germans trust you more if you barely smile.
Now that wisdom belongs to you.
5 – Your energy is strongly related to the energy of those around you
Bad day for Teacher Ben.
There were ends of days where I’d need to lie down in a dark room with a blanket over my face and not talk to anyone…
Then there were days where I’d be bouncing off the walls, chirpy, talkative, and enthusiastic about life.
When someone hands you money to be in their company, you need to assess how much you’re REALLY getting paid.
I got $50 for teaching this one girl. It was basically a babysitting gig where we’d play games. On paper, it wasn’t hard. But it took a piece of my soul.
I quickly figured out I wasn’t trading an hour of my time for fifty bucks. I was trading my whole day. Because my psyche would be off the rest of the day after teaching this bitch.
I fired her as a student. Even when she upped the amount she wanted to pay.
I’d rather take a gig for less money that leaves me feeling light and happy and able to enjoy the rest of my day.
Never look at a job as a direct time trade for money.
There’s a lot more that goes into it than that… And, often, it’s just not worth it.
6 – Shut up when I’m talking to you
To quote those dreamy Linkin Park boys.
This is hard, and something I’m still working on today.
When someone’s speaking, LET THEM SPEAK.
And actually listen.
You know how to know if you’re actually listening?
Because questions will pop into your mind about what that person’s speaking about.
Not meaningless questions vaguely related to the topic to “show you’re listening” but real nuanced questions that go much deeper.
People really pick up on when someone’s listening to them because most people don’t listen.
English teaching is an easy gig if you learn to shut up.
If you think you’ve just gotta yap yap yap and impose your will and thoughts on THEM, it’s gonna feel like pulling teeth.
My favourite technique was to let students finish completely what they were saying. That means there’s a pause – a silence of a few seconds most would find uncomfortable – at the end. And then, if I didn’t have nuanced questions, I’d nod or in some way prompt them to SAY MORE.
I’ve lost count of the amount of students who told me I’m a good teacher after a lesson where I barely said more than a few words.
I think I’m an okay teacher. I’m nothing special (though I’m learning how to improve that). But something I can do well some of the time is to shut up and listen. And having someone truly listen is something worth paying for.
7 – You could learn stuff that will change your life, but you’ll miss it ‘cos you’re a stupid teacher
Back in 2014 I had three different rich Russian students who taught me about Bitcoin.
These students could have been the same person.
Each one smart, masculine, dry sense of Russian humour, and usually guzzling red wine during the lessons.
They all told me to get in NOW on the Bitcoin thing.
But they were talking to a clueless kid who just smiled and nodded and thought he was helping their English.
Here’s a lesson for the ages…
No matter what you’re doing right now, make sure that’s not ALL you’re doing.
Keep your eyes and ears open because opportunity will present itself and it probably won’t even look like opportunity.