Charlie, Austria
When I was 20 years old, I hitchhiked from my hometown of Ottawa, Canada, to New York City, from where I had a one-way ticket to a country I knew almost nothing about: Taiwan. Upon arrival, I set about finding work and, after making a few minor embellishments to my CV (age, work experience, credentials), I successfully landed a job as an English teacher at a private high school. My classes were large (almost 50 students) and long (two hours) – there were no teaching materials. I wish I could say I took to teaching like a fish to water but, unfortunately, I have to admit I was truly terrible at my job. I resigned after only one semester, convinced that I was not cut out to be a teacher and determined never to teach again.
For a long time, I mostly managed to avoid teaching. I only occasionally resorted to it to refill my travel coffers when there were absolutely no other options. However, 15 years after my first foray into teaching, I found myself back in Taiwan. My wife was pregnant with our first child and we had debts from several failed businesses. I resigned myself to the idea that I would have to return to teaching to put food on the table.
Much to my surprise, things were different this time around. Whether it was the added wisdom of age, the undergraduate degree that I had acquired in the interim, or the more manageable teaching conditions, I began to enjoy some modest success as a teacher. This encouraged me to strive to further improve my craft. I sought out literature on teaching and second language acquisition. I completed a master’s degree in education. I started deriving satisfaction from my new career, and this spurred me on to share my passion with others. In addition to the 15 articles I have published in Modern English Teacher and English Teaching Professional, I have also published many articles in refereed journals, spoken at international conferences and facilitated teacher workshops. For the last four years I have been awarded with an ‘exemplary’ designation from the Taiwan Ministry of Education for my work at National Taitung Senior High School.
I am now a student again, working on a master’s degree in English linguistics at the University of Graz, in Austria, but I want to say to all the teachers out there who sometimes question whether they are in the right field, not everybody is born with a passion for teaching, but you can develop it along the way.
