A commenter asked a while ago I if was happy teaching English.
The short answer is yes, and the longer answer is a qualified yes. There are two issues in terms of being happy in the job, I think.
1. Do you enjoy doing it day to day?
2. What are the long term prospects for it?
Looking at the first question, I think a lot depends on the kind of teaching job you have. I’m currently (touch wood) very happy with my situation. I split my time between teaching classes of adults exam preparation English and conversation English, and doing to one to one classes with students who generally have a very high ability level. I find the advanced level stuff the most satisfying, as it lets me build relationships with a large number of well educated, very interesting Taiwanese people, involves a lot of teaching that isn’t purely based on my native speaking (for example I coach people to give speeches or pass job interviews, or explain the occasional bit of economic theory) and, with a few exceptions, I don’t need to deal with students’ parents. I also work at a school that I really like.
I’m teaching about thirty hours a week at the moment, and work six days a week. About a month ago, I was doing something closer to 35 teaching hours, and have been doing seven day weeks for a while now (my first day off in about two months comes tomorrow). I am still trying to reduce my hours a little, but I enjoy being busy. I don’t find teaching to be that tiring (I love talking) and the kind of classes I do often don’t require very long preparation. In my school, the classes are pretty modular, and I’ve taught a lot of them two times already; the challenge is to work out how to do them better, rather than to examine the material again. Some one to one classes require a lot more prep time, but still, it’s a manageable schedule. I feel a lot more energised at the end of a day than when I was working in a bank.
The issue with it, and with teaching adults in general, is that your weekends and weekday evenings are always busy – as that’s when everyone is free to study. It’s a good lifestyle if you want the weekday mornings free to write or take kung fu classes in, or if you want to go out clubbing or sit in bars with friends till late (then sleep in), but less good if you want a “normal” social life, want to explore lots of places in Taiwan, or can’t live without the two day weekend.
Generally, teaching is a great job for the number of hours you have to work each week, however, it’s draining in ways that a normal job isn’t. You have to get up and perform, so being exhausted when the lesson starts is terrible. Three to four hours a day is nice; six is pushing it; eight and you are a mess by the end. Even a conversation one to one class with someone you know well is not just chatting, and the more free flowing the class, often the more demanding I find it.
It’s well paid. At entry level, you’re on around 550 NT an hour, which is still an ok salary, but if say you get to around 750 or higher and work fairly hard, you can save a vast amount. I live in a small, very central, beautiful flat by myself (and have a garden), go to bars when friends call, take taxis when I’m having a busy day, never cook my own food, go for a massage from time to time, and can buy books whenever I want – and I still can save more than most career people in London can. I’d guess saving around US$1000 a month would not be a problem for a lot of teachers in Taiwan, and more is definitely possible (I’ve only been here nine months).
But, would I recommend that someone back in England fly out and start doing this incredible sounding job? I’m not sure.
There are many “hidden” costs to teaching English in Taiwan (actually, not very hidden). Your contract may not give you the kind of protection that you may be used to, your status in Taiwan as a foreigner is not completely secure (stories circulate of overly hasty exits and peculiar deportations, though perhaps they are just stories), and you will probably dip more than a toe into illegal work.
There’s also no pension plan for teachers. All indications are that it’s hard to do much with English teaching long term, and a large part of the job’s nature is repetitive. And if, right now, I can save a lot, that’s because my expenditure is relatively low. If in ten years I’m on a similar salary to this, and am raising a child or two, the package will no longer seem so rosy (though maybe that’s true of a lot of jobs). You could become a University teacher, which is a more secure, higher status job, and where pure English teaching becomes a less central part of your day, or you can open up your own school, or try to become one of the uber-expensive Taipei teachers I hear about. But even the last of those three is not really a solution to the things Mark talks about in this post, and the first two don’t appeal to me at present. As far as I can see, teaching English is something to do while you want to do other things than working with your life. I want to write, and live in strange places, and keep learning another language (slowly) while re-building my savings. I can do that here, and after another ten months, I’ll have saved up a lot. What I do next, I’m not sure.
Am I destroying my chances of a career by teaching English? I don’t feel like I am, and I feel like I’ve developed a lot of new skills so far (and the first six months here were an unparelled learning experience in some of the nastier things in life). My impression, when I left the UK, was that the people destroying their careers were the ones staying in jobs they didn’t want to do, and losing their drive for work. Perhaps that’s self deluding drivel, but I remember feeling certain that if I stayed in my job for another four years, and did little that excited me, I’d have a non-existent chance of getting into Goldman Sachs anyway, so I might as well go and keep some of the spark in my eye.
And given that my dream is to become a full time writer, I might as well get used to poverty and struggle now, I suppose.
Perhaps the thing to do with the rest of my time teaching in Taiwan is to do a few fewer hours a week, try to learn more about how to do it well (I am doubtful if I am really that good at it yet), and think more seriously about how to shift to a writing based job when I leave here.
Wish me luck
Daniel
