My Story

My English teaching career began in January 2010. After returning from almost a year in London and unsure of what to do next, I enrolled in a 100 hour in-class TEFL course in Somerset West, South Africa. Once I had received my TEFL certificate I secured my first ESL teaching post with English First, China. At EF I ran classes with children who were as young as 4 all the way up to working adults and across a huge range of proficiency levels from absolute beginner through to high intermediate speakers. I was also responsible for one-on-one private lessons, helping adult students prepare for the IELTS and TOEFL exams. In 2011, I was promoted to Life Club Coordinator where I had to manage the teacher's usage of school materials and function rooms, as well as assist both the Director of Studies and senior teacher with workshops and demo lessons to recruit new students. My time with EF lasted a little more than 2 years.

 

In February 2013 I joined the Spring in-take with EPIK (English Program in Korea). I was employed by the Gyeongbuk Office of education on a 1-year contract as a Native English Teacher. My role was to create and run, fun and engaging conversational English lessons to both Middle School and Elementary School Korean students. In 2014 my wife and I returned to South Africa to see family and get married.

 

We returned to South Korea in 2016 for the EPIK Spring Public School in-take and were placed in Busan working for the Busan Metropolitan Office of Education. My position was to assist Korean English teachers by creating activities that excited the students and encouraged them to speak English. I also hosted weekly broadcasting sessions where I read childhood stories, designed themed camp activities and judged a series of competitions, including the speech contest and yearly Golden Bell Competition. In addition, I worked evenings at a Korean High School, where I ran two 10-week conversational English programs and graded spoken English proficiency tests. We left Busan to see our families in 2018 where we stayed in South Africa a little more than a year.

 

We returned to Korea in 2019 as employees for the Jeollanamdo Office of Education. During my 5-year tenure with JOE, I was the Native English Teacher for both Gwangyeong High School and Korea Port Logistic High School. Gwangyeong High is an academic High school. Here I ran conversational English classes for beginner and intermediate Korean learners, as well as hosted and judged both speech and Kahoot team competitions. It was also my duty to immerse myself and become a valuable member of the faculty, so I joined the lunchtime table tennis club and the staff volleyball team. I also ran one-on-one lessons with students from multi-cultural families or who for those students who had spent time in English speaking countries. During the COVID pandemic I was required to stay home and run online classes. It was during this time that I became familiar with creating online content and operating popular E-learning platforms such as Zoom, EBS and Google Classrooms. 

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In November 2020, our beautiful boy Jude, blessed us with his arrival. Alex decided to stay home with Jude for the first 18 month while I decided to change schools and begin the next 3 years of my life my with Korea Port Logistic High School (KPLH). KPLH is a vocational Meister High school. This school specializes in training students to enter the workforce immediately out of high school. The Meister program assists the students with funding that helps them attain licenses, practical trade skills and experience to help them secure an industrial or public office position once they have graduated high school. While i was here, my job was to run Native English courses that focused on the practical use of the language. I was also required to run night conversational classes to students who wanted to practice speaking English. My duties also included TOEIC test preparation, curriculum design and grading. The most important duty being the biannual Speaking Presentation, where I was to design, create and conduct the speaking test component of the student's English grade. The speaking test constituted 30% of their final English grade and ran for a period of 5 weeks. 

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My time working with the Jeollanamdo Office of Education and especially at KPLH was a wonderful learning experience for me. I got a real chance to develop skills in classroom and time management as well as planning lessons that were fun and engaging. I also learnt to remain sensitive of cultural differences and preferences and tried to understand and meet the needs of my Korean students. I was also able to witness firsthand the inner workings of a Korean Meister High School. As I was at KPLH long enough to watch some classes go from being young freshman kids to graduating adults, I was able to develop real relationships with some of them that went much deeper than the standard teacher student relationship. We became very close friends. I miss them dearly and hope to keep in touch with them as they grow into adulthood.

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In September this year, my family and I decided to move back home to Cape Town, South Africa. We felt it was time for our son to meet his family and to see where his parents were born and grew up. We have enrolled our son into a pre-primary school down the road and have begun the hunt for employment. It is my dream to continue on the ESL educator path.  I am hoping to find regular students who I can run online conversational English classes with on a regular basis. For the past 15 years, my teaching experience has been limited to only Chinese and Korean students in a classroom setting so I am excited at the possibility of not only learning how to teach online, but also about meeting foreign English students from all over the world. 

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I have acquired all equipment necessary for online instruction. As mentioned on my resume, I have an ASUS Zenbook 2023 with a Logi HD camera and Jabra noise cancelling headset. I have a quiet space that has been turned into an office where I will be teaching from. A home battery backup system has also been installed. Between that and the battery life of my laptop as well as some smaller battery banks, there should be no power supply issues. Fiber internet has been installed with ample upload and download speed (< 25mbps.)

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Feel free to contact me, if you would like to work with me or if you would just like some advice on living and teaching in far-east Asia. Also continue and look through the other pages on my profile.

 

To be continued...