I got fired from my first job in Thailand, and I deserved it!

That’s right – my very first job abroad, they fired me!

Back at university, I was browsing the internet and found an article somewhere that said:

“If you can speak English, you can teach English!”

That REALLY stuck with me!

At this point I had never even heard of a TEFL qualification. Before summer break of that year I went searching online for a teaching job in Thailand – with no experience or qualifications under my belt! Very quickly into my search I got an email reply and a job! I could not believe it! But obviously it was true – schools in Thailand were accepting people like me with no experience teaching English! 2 weeks later (I know, I was super eager to get started!) I arrived in a VERY hot Thailand, ready to start my first job. Meeting everyone at the agency was great! They were all pleased to see me and I felt like I was going to really fit in. I was still adjusting to jet lag and it was REALLY hot, but it was also an adventure! Then the first day of teaching came! I was taken to the school with the Thai director and she showed me how to teach a class for the first hour of the day. After the first hour she turned to me and told me to teach.

Then she LEFT the room! I was TOTALLY SHOCKED! All the training I had received was watching that first class! The next 4 hours were nerve-racking to say the least, but I managed to get through the first day, solo! How did I do it? Each class that came in hour after hour, I copied the exact lesson I had seen in the first hour! The problem was… I couldn’t do this every day. I tried to look online for games and ways to teach kids in Thailand, and I thought I was doing OK… For a few weeks I really did do my best… But then I got a visit at school from the director’s sister! “There is a camera in one of the classrooms, and we got complaints from the school about you” You see for that specific class on that specific day… I had lost the will to live… I mean… I was totally unprepared for kindergarten… it’s like trying to control little monsters… After singing “I can sing a rainbow” 20 times or so… I made them chase me around the room… repeating the vocab on the flashcard. I couldn’t think of anything better! I knew it was crap but I had NOTHING to give! I didn’t have control of that class… some kids were lying down… other kids even looked bored… I mean how can anyone make kindergarten kids bored? It pains me now to think of how terrible at teacher I was! My soul felt destroyed after that class. And then this from the director’s sister: “If you do not improve in a week, we have to ask you to quit!” Can you imagine how I felt? I had travelled thousands of miles on the premise that: “If you can speak English, you can teach English!” Oh how wrong that was! I begged for training from the agency but she said no one was free to do it. So I went back to the internet for help. I tried my very best to improve that week! I really did! But Friday came, and I was asked to quit by the director’s sister! Determined, I said, “well, I’m not going to quit!” And strangely, she didn’t fire me! So I got fired that night by her sister, by phone! Why do I tell you this story? I am now the director of TEFL Heaven – a teacher training and job placement organisation that sends people to 10 different countries worldwide. I am also a qualified TEFL teacher now. I went back to Thailand the next year. This time I got proper TEFL training! This time I worked for a good agency! I would hate for anyone to go through what I went through. I now know that speaking English isn’t good enough to teach English! You need proper training in TEFL – teaching English as a foreign language. And finding good jobs is not easy either. That’s why I now lead an organisation that trains teachers in TEFL and helps them find work abroad. TEFL Heaven offers both face-to-face TEFL training and a guaranteed paid teaching job in over 10 countries now. Hundreds of teachers have come through our program and thousands of students lives have been changed. I get stories of these people in my Facebook news feed regularly. In fact even today I was pleased to see one of our teachers in Thailand posting about her experience. Emily literally just finished teaching in southern Thailand, and with her permission, I have a screenshot of her post:

It’s Facebook statuses like these that REALLY make my day – to know we have been a small part of Emily’s experience!

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