After studying German at university, Rachael Smith wanted to be the one teaching a language with the same amount of passion as she experienced during her own studies. She got her CELTA qualification at IH London, moved to Italy, and since then has been focused on professional development and spends her time supporting and training teachers.
How did your TEFL story begin?
When I was at high school doing A-levels, our German teacher was German. And I thought I’d love to do what she was doing – living abroad and sharing her passion for the language with learners. My degree was in German and Linguistics at Manchester University, and I opted to work as a language assistant on my year out. This confirmed what I wanted to do in the future, so after graduating I signed up to do CELTA at IH London. Then I moved to Italy and started teaching adults in a small language school just outside Florence.
Where did a career in TEFL take you?
I settled down, got married and had two children in fairly quick succession, so teaching on evening courses allowed me to balance work and family life. As the boys started nursery, I did some teaching in local state schools. And then I saw a job advertisement on tefl.com for Business English teachers, which took me on a direct path to the school in Arezzo where I currently work as a Director of Studies.
How did you progress in your career?
The position for Senior Teacher came up, I applied and took on the role in September 2008. This saw me running CPD sessions for our teachers, so I decided to do the Delta. It was extremely challenging, but fulfilling! Now I regularly do workshops and seminars for state school teachers as well as for our internal staff, and last year I presented at the IH YL conference in Reggio Calabria.
Tell us what you love and enjoy about teaching!
I love the fact that I can help make a difference, and I really try to share my enthusiasm and passion for language and people – now I spend most of my time supporting our teachers and training them, rather than teaching learners of English, but when I do get into the classroom I come home feeling energised - my family always notice and tell me ‘you’ve been a teacher today!’
What advice would you give to someone who has successfully gained their initial teaching qualification and is ready to go on their own TEFL journey?
Use the coursebooks, use the teachers’ books – don’t feel you need to spend hours designing your own materials and writing CELTA style lesson plans. Experts have written books to help teachers like yourself, so use them and learn from them!
Try to give yourself time limits when planning. Don’t spend all weekend in the staffroom!
Be realistic – aim to do ‘good’ lessons with all of your learners, but try to do a really good lesson with a different class every week.
