15 Jul Teaching English In Thailand: How My TEFL Life Began

There I was, 21, recent graduate, TEFL course under my belt, unemployed. Imagine being so young that those were  the most exciting days.

Each day I basked in my newfound freedom, the endless opportunities running constantly through my head, defiantly ignoring my dwindling bank balance. Each day I dreamt of the many (thousands!) of grateful students I would meet, whose lives I would change for the better, one phrasal verb at a time. Each day I went to the bookshop (yes, this was a long time ago) and looked at all the pretty travel guides.

Where to go, where to go? While I may have thought there were countless countries for me to grace with my presence, financial and visa issues soon made me realise there was only one really good option: Thailand.

At that time, I could apply for a work visa from Cape Town without a job in sight and they welcomed me with open arms and promises of pad thai. These days I’m sure there are a few more hurdles to jump over to get there (as there are for most countries) but in the good old days of 2003, Thailand was my oyster.

I enlisted the companionship of two adventurous friends, spent all my savings on a ticket and said my goodbyes to anyone who cared. We don’t need to say goodbye, I told them, I’ll be back in a year.

Thankfully, I was wrong yet again.

When you step off that plane, Thailand hits you like a wet blanket, the wet heat a slap in the face. When you breathe, you breathe in the heavy air of humidity and when you breathe out, you sweat. It’s awesome. I am a natural lizard and as soon as I arrived I felt like I had found my natural habitat.

The smells, on the other hand, a street stench made all the powerful by the rising heat, did not sit well with my stomach contents and there were many a retching moment as I walked the streets of Bangkok those first few days. But besides that, the food, the colours, the language, all a very welcome assault on the senses.

I could easily imagine myself spending the rest of my days roaming around temples, taking boat trips across the river, drinking cocktails out of a bucket, eating mountains of noodles and rice, but every once in a while I had to stop to remind myself: I am not a traveller, nor an adventurer. I am unemployed and homeless.

And so the fun began.

The three of us stayed in a little hole in the wall on Khao San Road (read: loud and chaotic), with a shared bathroom and a single big bed. We sweated awake each morning and made our way to the internet café downstairs to check http://www.ajarn.com for the latest job listings.

Not knowing anything about the education system or the TEFL industry of Thailand, we applied for anything and everything, and the interviews rolled in. Many days were spent on hot, local buses in itchy business suits trying to find schools whose name we could not even read, let alone pronounce. It was tough but it was an invaluable experience getting to know the area as well as the school system.

The interviews were interesting, to say the least. Many times the principal (our interviewer) could’ve benefitted from English lessons herself; other times we were coerced into attending the incomprehensible school assembly which seemed to last forever and which ended with our photos being taken on the stage with random learners. That would be a no, then.

Finally, around the time we realised we were sharing our room with an extended family of ants, we found The One. That rare blend of friendly, well-resourced, not-weird school. A school with a principal named Pink. How could we say no to that?

I kid you not: the English classes we were teaching were part of the Fun Language programme.

A private primary and high school in a small village 45 minutes north of Bangkok. We living in a ten-story block of flats on the river, very inappropriately called Charming Mansions. Every morning we walked around the corner to the line of motorbike taxis waiting to take commuters to work, jumped on the bike at the front of the queue and hoped we were giving the right directions in our broken Thai.

At school we taught between 22 and 30 hours a week in our Fun Language uniforms. Our classrooms had no tables and chairs, but multi-coloured padded flooring. We were not to teach lessons, but rather play games. The English department in the school seemed to be divided into two parts: the “serious” English lessons which were taught by the Thai teachers, and the “fun” lessons which were taught by the foreign teachers.

Not so much fun, though, when you have to play Ladders for 6 hours of your day.

So you see, teaching jobs in Thailand come in a variety of disguises. This first job was a great way for me to get some teaching experience under my belt. The school was very relaxed, we each had a teaching assistant, and management generally left you alone if you were respectful at all the right times and didn’t come to school drunk or hungover. The school even helped us find our accommodation and made sure we felt comfortable in our new environment, which went over and above what we were expecting.

My friend, however, soon became bored with the Fun and games and left for a job at a nearby government high school. Completely different story. No assistant. No materials (she had to source or make her own). Not even a curriculum. She was basically left to her own devices to teach whatever she wanted however she wanted. Fewer hours, zero paperwork or extra-curricular commitment, but less pay.

And we were both happy. We would come home every day, buy dinner from the take-away lady on the ground floor of the building, and we would sit on our balcony and laugh at our students and moan about the other teachers chat about our day.

And then we would do it all over again the next day.

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