Why I decided to go travelling, and why I enjoy teaching children English.

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July 19th 2015

Published: July 19th 2015

To talk about reasons for my decision to go travelling, it's important to have a bit of background on my lifestyle in the UK, as well as motivations for leaving.

I wanted to escape the trap of buying a house, getting married, and settling into a job I wasn't passionate about. I'd also squandered my free education on a degree that I wasn't passionate about, because there seemed to be few other options when I finished school. I'd coasted through school, not caring about grades, or trying earn lots of money later on in life. I spent my degree doing exactly the same thing. To me, a degree was a way of meeting people, and gaining life experience away from home, rather than the educational experience. The education was just something you had to get through to obtain your magic piece of paper after the 3 years... That most employers in the UK couldn't care less about. I achieved my goals degree-wise; I met most of my closest friends during my time in Newport, I got the grades needed to pass, and I worked part time at a supermarket to throw some more experience onto my CV. I tried sales jobs, sucked in by the 'easy money', and the social lifestyle. My friends started to talk about a lifestyle comprised of getting X salary, and getting battered annually at X place in Spain. Other friends started talking about travelling abroad properly, but didn't know when they'd start. I was in the latter camp. My lack of decisiveness frustrated me, and my situation embodied such indecision. I left a care work job (shit pay, especially for the hours, and night shifts! But it was the first job I really got under the skin of.) for a comfortable office job at a brewery. I had everything I'd wanted at the care work job; plenty of money, easy working hours, and easy shift patterns. I loved the change in work pattern, as I now worked from 9-5, and I enjoyed the perks of working for a brewery - free beer, and an active social life. I could pay off my student debt! I could buy expensive things that I wanted! I could live a very comfortable lifestyle!

I did this for 6 months, and started to feel like I didn't want to progress in the business, and also didn't want to carry on doing that particular job for a long time. I was well-treated, and enjoyed the experience, but felt suffocated by the lack of possibilities for travel. (I'm bad at saving money, so backpacking wasn't an option.) I started to look at TEFL courses out of banal curiosity. I'd chatted to my sister about TEFL courses before, but not really thought about them in great detail. Was it really possible to travel the world, and live in countries as far away as Asia or South America, with just a poor degree (2:2) grade and a £300 TEFL qualification? The lady from the company I rang certainly seemed to think so, and a variety of the teaching jobs I'd looked at online were open to 1st timers. Furthermore, she announced that the course was 33% cheaper this month, and that there were only 3 days left on the offer. I chatted to my housemates, and my best friend, to hear some other angles, and to see if anyone could pose a question I'd not thought of yet. The next day, I paid the £300, and spent Christmas of 2013, and January of 2014 doing the 120 hours of online work required for completion. The bulk of the course was easy, with the exception of the grammar module. I'd always counted grammar as my strong point, and always got full marks for it during university. I was to learn during this painful module just how wrong that assumption was. I passed the grammar module at the third attempt of the allowable three attempts, getting 78%; 3% more than the minimum mark of 75%.

I applied for numerous jobs during the second half of the course, once I knew I'd pass. I got a fair number of interviews, to be conducted via Skype, and got offered 3 jobs (pending completion of the course). One job was in Thailand, and two were in Indonesia. I took the job that was with the biggest company, and with the interviewer that made the best impression on me. I finished the course with a month to spare, and begun to book flights, sort out travel arrangements, and handed in my notice at the brewery office. I then flew to Java, in Indonesia, unfortunately with many people thinking that I'd be back not long afterwards. Not the case.

I've documented my Indonesian experience in this blog previously, and it was phenomenal. I've read and seen an awful lot of stuff about my home country during the last year. The bulk of what I have seen makes me hugely glad that I'm not living there, and have no plans to return in the near future. During my last couple of years in the UK, I became increasingly aware of the mood changing in the country. The mood change of society towards foreigners, people on benefits, and so on. I also became aware of the toxicity of the media, which seems to breed ignorance towards politics, and facilitates the existence of the glut of career politicians prevalent in UK politics today. People were more interested in researching how much Manchester United had paid for a new player, or who Joey Essex was shagging on the The Only Way Is Essex, than talking about poverty and the environment. I was no different; being just as unconcerned with the system, and how unfit I was for living within it, before I decided to escape.

Anyway, blah blah blah. On to teaching!

I'd had little experience of children, having never worked with them before I went to Indonesia. I didn't know whether I'd enjoy teaching, and I didn't know what classroom management would be like. In reality, it's similar to care work in some respects; you have a tone of voice for praise, and a tone of voice for discipline. You set boundaries, and you let the kids go as close to those boundaries as they like, but never cross. My year in Indonesia fostered a love for teaching that I didn't expect, and I have become much more paternal towards children now than I was before. I often say "aww" when I see a cute kid in the street. I often make similarly soppy noises during classes, prompted by the infinitely adorable, and numerous, idiosyncrasies of children. I love the alacrity of children, who seem to be in an almost constant state of mania about something as simple as leaves on the floor that need to be stamped on. Immediately! *leap*

After teaching in Indonesia for a year, I knew that the culture wasn't for me, and decided to seek a new country. I'm now in Taiwan, and the people here are fascinatingly different to British people. One resounding example; they all seem to believe in the spirits of the dead, and many Taiwanese people give offerings at temples to feed their ancestors, and also to keep them happy.

The English school I teach at has about 150 children, and is very regimented. The kids stand up at the start of the lesson, say "good afternoon Teacher Tom", and then bow in unison (very cute indeed!) The Taiwanese teachers are strict here, which explains the aforementioned military behavior, and they use sticks in schools when the kids are young. This results in very well behaved kids, whatever your beliefs regarding such methods... I'm no fan, but since I'm a visitor, it's none of my business.

Usually lessons here are comprised of an hour of presenting, drilling, and practicing spoken grammar structures, followed by an hour of book work, reading, and phonics. The kids here struggle to think outside the box in a second language, and often look at me with bemused expressions following my favorite question; "why?". I love teaching because I get to help these children to question their beliefs, any stuff I tell them, and their environment. I also get to watch their English improve exponentially, as kids soak up new language like a sponge when they're engaged. Teaching here is different to teaching in countries with the Roman alphabet because the kids have to learn to write letters they've never written before. This has meant that I've had to learn stroke patterns, as the school has a specific way of teaching kids to form the letters, including getting the kids to make the letters in the air with their fingers. Stroke patterns are simple, but when you're 25 and used to doing things a certain way, old habits die hard. I immediately found that I formed many of the letters in an 'irregular' stroke pattern, such as a lower case 'f'. I'd draw the horizontal line first, which is incorrect. This is a classic example of learning your own language properly, just before you teach it to other people... Watching the alacrity with which children learn the strokes to new letters is one of my newest-found favorite aspects of teaching.

Grades are very important in Taiwan, so kids are under pressure to perform. I once gave a test paper back to a middle-of-the-pack student who'd managed to score over 90%, and she actually jumped for joy, giggling, and kept running back to me again and again to show me her mark. Needless to say, this was very gratifying. Given my apathy towards my secondary school education, I'm often shocked by how much the teenagers here genuinely care about their grades. I suppose this reflects the pressure placed on them by their parents from an early age. The parents here would consider Western parenting to be supine by comparison, because of the amount of free time Western kids get. Many kids here wake up at 5am or 6am for school, go to school for the day, have a number of after school classes, and then have a heap of homework on top of that. Social time is for weekends. During my schooling, I woke up much later, and did my paltry assortment of homework on the bus, if I did it at all... I also had no after school classes, so social time was often greater than school time.

I prefer teaching the young kids to the more advanced (age-wise, or ability-wise) classes. I like the speed at which they learn, their happy disposition, and I don't have to relearn complex grammar points before I cover them in class. I have a memory like a sieve, unless it involves names or numbers, so I forget grammar points very easily. Taiwanese kids are curious about everything from my beard to my distinctly un-Asian size and weight. Because of my beard, even the teenagers often estimate my age at around 40-45. They're shocked to learn that I'm only 25 years old. As with all kids, they often take a little while to relax in my presence. Once they do, the questions flood in; how old are you? Where do you come from? What's your weight? Do you have a wife? One particularly bright student asked me, when prompted to "ask me any question you like" during a test, "why do you like to teach English?" I gave her the best answer I could in language she could understand; "I enjoy helping kids to learn, I enjoy talking to kids, and I like living in new countries."

So here I am. I had no plans to be here 6 months ago, but I love it! I'm in Taiwan, in my little apartment, looking forward to teaching tomorrow afternoon. During the next 6 months or so, I've got plans to travel to Japan, the Philippines, Java, and to go trekking in Borneo with the money I'll get from my tax rebate here. I don't know where I'm living next year, but I look forward to continuing this travelling lifestyle; prioritizing experience over money, and freedom over security.

Why I decided to go travelling, and why I enjoy teaching children English.

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