Approximately 8 weeks ago I finished my Cambridge CELTA course, allowing me to seek work as an ESL teacher (that’s English as Second Language). When I started looking for jobs, I was surprised at the number of private schools and colleges there are out there offering such courses to people. But of course, like everything else, the pandemic has affected the industry in multiple ways and so I entered the job market at exactly the wrong time – not the first time that’s happened.
There was a glimmer of hope about a month ago when I did a Skype interview for what, on the face of it, seemed like a very lucrative online teaching job – but as with most things that seem too good to be true, it wasn’t. It was a scammer looking to get hold of my identity, and probably bank account, for unknown but doubtless nefarious purposes. Luckily I saw the red flags in time and said scammer got nothing from be but a euphemistic “no thanks”.
Undeterred I plodded on, trawling through the list of private education institutions looking for the ones who could potentially use my newly honed skills, sending CV’s, cold calling etc, and last week I got a result. I’ve signed on with a college in the city centre to do a mixture of face to face and online teaching, to groups and individuals. The face to face classes will be either at the centre, or at the students homes/offices and the online classes I can teach from home – so it’s a proverbial tick in every box. Part-time to begin with but may well lead to a full time role once I settle into it. As Joey “The Lips” Fagin said in The Commitments, “It’s a start, and I believe in starts!” 🙂
So that’s really all I can tell you for now – I am going in tomorrow to sort out all the admin stuff before I get started, and then we’ll get stuck into it – I’ll let you know how it goes once I’m a week or two in. I’ll continue doing my online live stream gigs, because at present there is no sign of live gigs coming back to the bars and clubs any time soon.
Stay safe!
G
Ger Mythen 
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