Summer Job

I finished my summer job today so thought I'd better write all about it! I'm not going to name the company I have been working for as that would be unprofessional, especially when I have got some gripes....

I've done five and a half weeks working for a summer school teaching English to teenagers, mostly from Italy, but a couple of Turkish and Russian students thrown in the mix too. They have been at the school for two and a half week blocks doing half a day of classes and half a day of excursions out and about around London. Students have been fantastic - really motivated, fun to be around, hard working, interested, and just really nice teenagers. Management on the other hand have been a bit of a nightmare. I arrived to what should have been an induction morning, and instead found complete and utter chaos. I ended up teaching classes whose level I had no idea about and no preparation for and really wondered what on earth I had let myself in for!

Things did settle down but I was pretty frustrated with having to sign a zero-hours contract and them saying it would be full time but it really wasn't. I ended up with only one week of full time work and the rest were either half-days or we had two days with no work in the middle of the week. While that time has been nice to relax in, it has meant my budget is not looking as healthy as I would have liked going into three/four weeks of no pay until school starts up again. I was also unhappy with being expected to teach effectively but given no time (no paid time) to plan good lessons so I have mostly just been teaching from the textbook. The textbook was okay but certainly not the kind of lessons I would normally expect myself to teach. I felt extremely undervalued by the company which made it hard to want to put in extra time and effort. Eventually, I found a compromise between doing what I was paid to do, and doing what I felt was good teaching and fair for the students. It wasn't their fault that we weren't being paid well enough or being supported by the company and I wanted to do what was right for them.

I mostly taught intermediate level students which was a nice level to teach. Students had enough language that teaching in English didn't require too much modification from me and we could access some more interesting topics. We covered things like film, future transport, holidays that go wrong, healthy and environmentally friendly eating habits, hobbies, future jobs etc, and got to play some fun games etc too. I was lucky to be teaching some upper level students in this last round who were basically fluent and they were a real joy to teach. I was impressed with their maturity, knowledge of themselves, and their obvious enjoyment of engaging with the world. We got to talk about genetic modifications, living a nomadic lifestyle, modern dating, parenting (not that any of them are parents...), climate change, life lessons, etc. It was brilliant! I will miss that particular group of students immensely.

It has been an interesting experience, especially since the relationship with the students was more relaxed than in a normal school setting. But, I hope I am never in a position to need to do that kind of job again! I now have about 3 weeks before the new school year starts and I move house in just under a week which is super exciting.