My Work in Asuncion

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Just a short blog to talk about the teaching I'm doing here, my classes so far, that kind of thing...

So... as of this week, I have four different courses. Two at the Anglo and two business classes, and I am very much enjoying all of them.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays I have classes for one hour and a half in the evening with an advanced group. They are a great bunch. Age ranges are from teens to late thirties, so quite a mixed group. Some are studying at university or are still at school, others have full-time jobs and learn English in their free time. As I have them three times a week I am getting to know their different personalities quite well now and I can have a good laugh with them. Some are very talkative, hard to get to shut up at times! Others are very quiet and need a lot more encouragement to speak. I suppose this is the same with all language classes everywhere.

On Saturday mornings (yes, Saturday MORNINGS!) I have another advanced group. This group is a little more difficult, as I only see them once a week, it is so hard to remember all their names, especially seen as more and more people arrive to start the course every week. This is also a bigger group, with a lower age range, most are teens and early twenties, so it is quite challenging to get them motivated! Especially seen as they have probably been out the night before. The class is three hours long, so it is difficult to plan for. And the teacher who had the group before me covered the wrong units, so I have less to cover than I should have. Which in a way is probably good as I can go over things in more detail, spend more time on conversation and adding in fun activities. Although I did not think it was good when I turned up to my first class having planned a lesson on the first few pages of unit 3, only for the students to tell me they had already done it!! Improvisation is an important skill here!

One of the business classes is with a Marine company, which I will begin this week, Monday and Wednesdays at lunch time.

My other business class is great. I really enjoy giving this class, even though it is at 7 in the morning, Mondays and Wednesdays, meaning I have to get up at 6! Eeek! The business is a pharmaceutical company which distributes medicines to the hospitals here, and I only have one student. She has an intermediate level of English and works so hard. We get on well and have some really enjoyable conversation in the classes. It is a really nice atmosphere.

I think I have been lucky with the companies I have been given as I know other teachers have classes for tobacco companies and international banks, which I have to admit I would not want to be involved with, and would probably refuse to do on moral grounds.

I have a private class being lined up at the moment too, which will bring in a bit more money for me.

At the moment, I am contracted to work 12 hours a week, for which I am paid just over 1, 200, 000 Gs (£172). For any work over this at the Anglo I am paid about 22, 000 Gs (£3) an hour and for private classes around 40,000 Gs (£5.70). Someone pointed out to us that monthly, we earn less than the minimum wage here... but then we only have to work 12 hours, and I'm sure most Paraguayans work many more hours than that for the minimum wage of about 1, 400, 000 Gs (£200).

So by the end of this week I will be giving around 14 hours of classes a week, on top of that I'd say 30-40 minutes of planning for each class (at the moment while I am still getting the hang of the courses) and four hours of Anglo teacher training a week as well. From all this I earn enough to live off, or at least what I hope will be enough to live off, and have plenty of time to chill out, go out, meet people.

The teaching is going really well. There are a few things, grammatical things, which I have to look up at times. And trying to keep students attention can be difficult at times. So I try to make my classes as interesting and fun as possible with discussions, although Paraguayans generally don't seem to like giving out their opinions. It takes a lot of encouragement! Breaking the lesson up into many different activities seems to help keep students attention but sometimes, such as Friday evenings and Saturday mornings, they just don't want to be there. Lessons are quite boring when the pages in the workbooks are just full of reading exercises too, its not nice sitting in a class of silent pupils who are reading away, not enjoying themselves, so I try to do these with the class as a whole.

So what have I learnt from my teaching here so far...
Well, as my dad likes to say, failing to prepare, is preparing to fail. I find this is true when making lesson plans.
Always have back-up activities planned incase an exercise nose-dives or is too easy/too short.
Improvisation is an essential skill!

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Comments

[Melissa]

Hey, interesting reading about your time in Paraguay. I am a teacher too, in south korea but I was in South America for six months just before this and LOVED it! Traveled Argentina, Brasil, Uruguay, Bolivia and Peru. I would love to come back to work there - so wondering how did you get your job? P.S My blog is on here too (on Korea and South America) http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/South-Korea/Incheon/blog-555043.html

[Sandy]

Anglo
Hi, It's great to hear from someone else at the Anglo. I was there 2006-2007. I guess you're probably doing the British Council Assistantship? I loved my time there - loads of great people, fun and the foundations of my current teaching career (I'm in Brno in the Czech Republic now). I was reading about your groups, and I think the student you have at the pharmaceutical company may have been mine in the past :) If you're travelling now, have fun. It was two of the best months of my life so far - amazing experiences! Good luck for the rest of the year! Sandy