I love teaching. I also love not teaching. It’s my cycle.
After more than 10 years as an ESL/EFL teacher–a role I love, I gradually transitioned into world of private language school management. In this DoS role, I decreased my time in the classroom itself and devoted more time to program development, teacher training workshops and administrative duties over the next year. Finally, after 6 months of complete absence from the classroom, I decided to leave this position.
For the next 10 months, I lived in a dream. I was surrounded by the most amazing books–ELT books, of course–and a greatly inspiring environment, English Central. I’d never realised the volume of resources available, nor paid much attention to the differences between various publishers. I hadn’t been familiar with authors’ names, let alone worked together with them on conferences and webinars. My deepest gratitude goes to English Central for these opportunities. The irony though was that despite all this new familiarity with ELT resources and their creators, I didn’t have a teaching context in which to use them.
This time last year, I started my professional development project, Coursetree. I also returned to teaching non-native speakers in the higher ed sector, both areas I love devoting my time to. Now, I spend my weekdays teaching and my Saturdays the heaven at English Central.
So I’ve come full-circle. Exploring different aspects of our industry has affirmed my love of being inside as well as outside the classroom. It’s demonstrated to me with a crisp clarity that I love working with students, but I also love collaborating with other teachers. It all looks like a great balance, but is it? This leads me to my next post about Shelly Terrell’s Goal 19: Avoid Burn-Out. Stay tuned.
You found your “balance”!!! How enviable!
I’m really glad fo you that you can have the combination of both things! I’m sure its both invigorating and productive!
Enjoy!
Naomi
I may have found some balance within the ELT industry by having my hand in various roles (and love everything that comes from them), but sometimes I also feel I have too many irons in the ELT pot and not enough anywhere else. I’m not so sure I’m really the epitome of life balance.
[…] with the hours I spend collaborating with other teachers, blogging and at English Central (see previous post). A great balance of nearly 50/50. You have a well-balanced ELT time, Tyson. Congrats! Well […]
I love being a classroom teacher, being a teacher trainer, and the social media work I do. However, I find myself missing the creative writing and art projects that used to control my life. I’ve found sometime this year to dedicate to this but not enough. My Posterous with my writings still not updated after months and even though I recently found a way to work with art I have only dedicated less than 1% of my time to this. Often, I wonder how the Renaissance folks balanced it all?
They’d just come off of the Black Death. What else did they have to do with their time but clean up the mess and make art? The Enlightenment was decades away.
Loved the video Ty! I think you’re doing a great job at finding yourself and your interests, your projects outside the classroom and English Central – would love to have something like that around here! They may all be connected to ELT, but if they amke you happy, what’s wrong with it?
Glad you enjoyed the “tour”. =) So, what’s wrong with them? See my next post. Oh wait, you have. I’ll go there.