Side Hustle...CHECK

I hustled and bustled and I finally got a side hustle! The first month I was here I browsed through Loquo and saw an ad that struck my fancy. A woman was looking for experienced English teachers to become tutors. I sent her an email and since my schedule was pretty hectic for a few weeks we had not been able to get a timetable worked out until last week. She acts as my "agent" and finds people for me to tutor through the English academy she works for. So far I have two clients and one on the way.

The TEFL course that I took over the summer has really come in handy. I went over most of the modules and used several of them to help plan my lessons. The women that I tutor have different levels of English. One has a lot of trouble with grammar and pronunciation especially with words ending in "-ed." I found this blog called esl-tutor which has been a life saver. The other woman I tutor reads and writes very well, but wishes to improve her conversational skills. This website is excellent for conversation topics. I highly reccomend both of them for esl teaching and tutoring!

TEFL

TEFL stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language, also known as Teaching English as a Second Language. It has become a very popular path for young adults to take after they graduate from college or even several years later when they are considering a career change. Teaching demonstrates organization, leadership, patience and the ability to influence others. While I am not interested in a life long career in Education, I believe these qualities are extremely important and overlap in a variety of different career paths. In order to prepare for my career as teacher I enrolled in a TEFL course this summer through the TEFL Institute. The course consisted of a weekly reading and then several assignments, mostly lesson plans to measure our understanding. The final project was a thematic unit including five days of lessons. I have learned so much about different teaching styles and the importance of understanding the learner. I am now certified to teach English as a foreign language anywhere in the world. This will help me to secure tutoring jobs when I am in Spain and to charge higher rates than my peers who are not certified. I highly recommend it if you are interested.