Chiera’s Summer in Romania
Do you dream of teaching English as a foreign language? Or maybe you have your hopes set on living in Romania. Read Chiera’s story for a little TEFL advice.
4.6 out of 5 based on 9,679 reviews
Introduction
My name is Chiera and I spent three weeks at a summer camp in Romania teaching English.
Where I went and what I did
To say I was nervous about my first TEFL job would be an understatement. It was only when we arrived in Romania and were on the bus to the camp that it hit me. I was here, with ten strangers, for three weeks. What was I doing?
My first night I didn’t sleep. I was a nervous wreck even though I was confident that my lesson plans put me in a pretty good place. That was until I met my kids and realised that they couldn’t really understand anything I was saying.
By the end of the first week, I felt like I had been there a month. I had settled into the teacher role and really became fond of my class. The feeling that I was actually able to teach them something was more gratifying than I expected.
Then the second week came, and along with it a second lot of kids. This week I got the six to seven year olds. If I thought my class before was difficult, I had no idea. The mayhem of excitable younger children and trying to keep their attention was definitely a learning curve. I probably learned more Romanian this week than the three weeks combined. ‘Cerc mare’ will be engrained in my brain forever (big circle).
In my mind, I was a seasoned pro by the third and final week. All the trainers had been sharing classroom and learning activities for the past two weeks so we all had endless resources to pull from. I was finally given the older kids at twelve years old and could use my original lesson plans. They all made a diary which they would fill out every day, wrote and performed a short play, and did some grammar exercises on prepositions and tenses.
After the lessons were over for the day, the rest of the time was made up of fun activities for the kids as well as the trainers. This included hiking, swimming, archery, arts and crafts, drama, even an adventure park. It definitely wasn’t boring!Reflection and future plans
It was an incredible three weeks and I would absolutely do it again!
I’m also glad I took a shorter placement before jumping head first into a yearly contract as I feel I needed to be absolutely sure before I made such a huge life decision. For anyone who is like me, and is nervous about committing to a longer contract, I would definitely recommend a summer camp placement first.
Also, Romania is a beautiful country and the organisation that ran our camp “English Cool Camp” is run by really lovely people. I cannot speak highly enough of them! They run camps every year so if you see their advert next year I would get in there while you can!
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