What’s it like teaching English? What’s it like teaching English in Germany? What’s it like being out of Ben and Jerry’s on a Sunday night and all the stores are closed? These are all very important questions, which I shall answer below.
Teaching basics
My opinion on teaching is this: if you don’t like it, don’t do it. If you’re not the most patient, especially if you need to explain a topic in more than two or three ways, teaching is not for you. I say this because I’ve been around English teachers who are not good at teaching, see English as an easy out to a tropical paradise, and forget that they were hired to help people, not just spend a few hours a week in a class and the rest of the time travel, explore and party. Not that there’s anything wrong with those last three, but if you can’t manage lesson planning and a personal life, something has to give.
This is not a quick paycheck; you can royally screw with someone’s life if you don’t take their education, on whatever topic they’re studying, seriously. Teaching is also not a large paycheck, so your emotional stress (resulting in your students’ emotional stress) is not going to pay off in the end.
If you do like teaching, then let’s continue.
I know I love teaching, and I know this because I was a rowing coach for years. Over 10 of them, to be exact-ish. And outside of rowing I’ve taught and tutored in many other areas, from Bible School with preschoolers to Intercultural Communication and International Negotiation to university students.
I also love language, communication and international/multi-cultural relations. I took years of French, one year of German, some Russian, some Arabic, and a linguistics course for formal instruction. On my own I like to read history books which focus in on small-ish geographical regions or certain time periods, to get a richer sense of what was happening. I have also been known to re-read my international relations textbooks from college. I am attracted to podcasts with episodes like “The Indo-European Discovery” (definitely give this a listen).
All this to say: teaching English abroad was going to be my jam. Not in a “nomad around southeast Asia for a few years” way but definitely going to scratch that itch for passing on knowledge and having discussions on a variety of topics.
Then I had to learn English.
But, you are a native English speaker?
Yes, I definitely am. No, highlighting sentence structure in elementary school doesn’t count as a teaching qualification. Neither does being able to hold a conversation for an hour or two. Teaching should require study in both pedagogical and informational disciplines, in order to be wholly rounded and the best for the students.
There is no international standardized body for testing and certifying English teachers. There are, however, companies and educational institutions which have developed testing and education programs for certifying teachers according to their standards. Whether these companies or educational institutions are legitimate and trustworthy requires research. In my personal research, I found these to be the “best” in terms of education provided and acceptance among language schools around the world.
Certification
While you may have learned in your research that not every language school requires certification, it’s still a good thing to have, since you will have completed some level of training you may use in your career. The most common certifications and courses are:
I have not completed the Cambridge program, though I have been thinking about completing this one day, and I will focus on the TEFL program I did through the company ITTT. There are also certifications available for training students in certain English exams, used for entry into universities or promotions at work.
TEFL
I would say my knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary, compared to other native speakers is “Very Good.” I credit a lot of my knowledge to learning other languages besides English, since I often went back and compared one to the other and learned quite a bit about the structures and forms I use while speaking English.
I chose ITTT for these reasons:
- The cost was right. I’m not saying I won’t pay money for a class, but I did have a limit as I didn’t have very much money to spend on something like this at the time. And, I also did some calculations to see how much I would need to teach before I earned back what I invested. That figure was acceptable to me so I went for it.
- It was entirely online. I wasn’t interested in traveling anywhere, even to Frankfurt, for training.
- There was a mix of video instruction and text to read. I am a visual and tactile learner so I appreciated the mix.
- The assignments were actually helpful for a deeper understanding of the material.
- I liked the pace. The course is designed so you can learn at your own pace, however the company believes one cannot absorb knowledge if they complete a bunch or even all of the modules in one day. Therefore you are limited to two or three a day. It turned out, this was the perfect amount for me and if that limit hadn’t been in place, I might have been tempted to keep going and I doubt I would have learned as much as I did.
- The after certification support and job network was appealing, in case I couldn’t find work in Wiesbaden afterwards.
For an excellent discount on various ITTT courses, use this link and enter my email address (audrey.shankles@gmail.com).
English: learned.
So now it was time to look for jobs. Though honestly, I started looking for jobs before the certification process was finished, and put “expected date: xxx” on my resume and letters to language schools since I had no idea how long the hiring process could be.
At first, I thought teaching online through video was going to be the best option to allow for flexibility in my schedule (as I was still coaching rowing at this point) but in the end, I decided this was not going to be a smart decision. Reasons:
- This would require being on two freelance visas at the same time (the first was for rowing) and I was 99% sure that wasn’t going to happen.
- If I gave up the rowing visa for the teaching visa, I still don’t think I would have made it through because I would be working for non-German companies and thus, not providing any economic benefit to Germany via taxation, health insurance, etc.
- I could have kept the rowing visa and worked online, without official work permission and never report the income, but that is illegal, so no.
- I wanted to experience working with Germans.
I focused solely on the language schools I could find in Wiesbaden, plus one or two private schools in hopes the teaching certification requirements for these were less strict than the public schools. After many emails sent to people I found via LinkedIn, XING and Googling, I secured an interview with a language school in town, made it through, and started a new visa process.
Another visa?
Yup. If we’re counting the tourist visa, this was #3 for me. If you are hired via a language school, or Sprachschule, you will 99% of the time be a freelancer. The full-time employees tend to only be German or EU citizens as they require less paperwork to employ. If you really wanted to work full time in a language school as a career, you would need to switch to a regular work permit with a statement saying you have unique abilities which the school cannot find in another EU citizen. This is an unlikely scenario for these types of jobs, so we will stick to the freelance process.
When getting a freelance visa specifically for teaching English at a language school, the process is simpler than a generic freelance visa. The visa will be tied to your job at that school, meaning (unless you somehow receive special dispensation) you will only be allowed to work in that position. Your visa is tied to the length of your work contract.
Paperwork you need for the visa
- Anmeldung
- Passport
- Photo (German biometric style*)
- Work contract from the school
- Letter from the school explaining your unique qualifications (generally that you’re a native speaker with some experience in teaching, at least)
- Proof of health insurance
- Bank statements (not always needed but if the salary offered is too low, you need to prove your ability to support yourself without relying on social welfare).
Teaching English in Germany
So you are visa’d up and ready to start. It’s possible, but not super likely, that you will be assigned one type of client during your teaching tenure. This means you get to experience a broad array of language skill abilities, professions, ages and backgrounds, all of which made teaching fun and rewarding for me. My first client was 15 years old and needed a week of tutoring an hour or two a day while he was on fall break. I also had clients who made subject matter expert presentations to international audiences.
You will be provided with textbooks the students are working with, but also realize that these books are not going to be enough, and you will need to do some work on your own to find suitable, interesting and educational material to supplement with. I liked finding my own material and eventually started creating my own. In general I would recommend having the following graphics and charts laminated and on hand at all times:
- The tenses
- Prepositions
- Since vs. For
- Examples of sentence structures
If you have a car, you are likely to be offered more jobs. My clientele area went from the north end of Wiesbaden to the southern suburbs of Mainz. I was very rarely in the office of the school. The more hours you remain available to teach, the more jobs you will be offered as well. Teaching is definitely doable relying only on public transport. I did it this way for about 6 months before switching to driving. My income definitely went up a noticeable amount when I switched.
If you find small talk uncomfortable, this is not the job for you. While lessons and plans are great, ultimately the best way to learn a language is to talk and engage in conversation. The students will expect you to come up with topics, ask probing questions, gently correct mistakes during conversation, and otherwise keep a small group or room of people engaged enough to keep a consistent dialog going.
One of my favorite methods for “conversation-only days” (most of them) was to create my own conversation card decks to have on hand so they could learn to start conversations themselves when prompted with a topic.
Also be aware: teaching a language is also teaching culture. Granted, there are many distinct cultures which all share English, but ultimately you will be teaching your students something of your culture as you speak. It’s important you be able to recognize your biases and speech patterns you’ve developed over the years, so you can minimize them to an extent that they do not interfere with a neutral understanding of English. That being said, your students will love to learn the slang and regional terms you use (“ya’ll” and “yins” come to mind). Part of the allure of the language schools is they generally only hire native speakers to teach their respective languages; embrace this in yourself and speak to them like you would a friend, a boss, a stranger, so they can get a feel for the spectrum of choices available in the language.
Teaching Business English
Something I found a little odd is when my language school would assign a fresh out of college teacher to a business class, when they had never actually worked outside a retail or food service environment before. I’m not quite sure how they were able to teach the necessary vocabulary without experience but I do know that not everyone has to be skilled in the areas they teach in order to be successful at teaching others.
Business English is slightly different from other classes in that the vocabulary is more focused in textbooks, role-playing is much more helpful (phone calls, meetings, etc.) and the students tend to be more motivated and goal oriented. On the other hand, I had some classes which just wanted general, overall improvement in vocabulary so we did lots of conversation hours for that. I did bring and prep material related to their industry though to keep us on topic of improving their English specifically for work.
In order to be successful at teaching Business English, you need to familiarize yourself with your students’ work and industries. Be able to customize lesson plans to help them with presentations (not writing for them!) whether it’s having them practice the speech or a sample Q&A session afterwards. Come up with different phone call scenarios like placing orders, making appointments, listening to customer complaints, etc.
Remember also that business culture is different in most cultures. Shaking hands with new clients is acceptable in many places, but not all. In Germany, the hand shake is vital and continues even after the first meeting, with everyone. Business meetings start exactly on time, not five minutes after everyone has walked into the room. Direct criticism is seen as the best way to communicate, instead of talking around issues. Help our students understand that this direct style can be too abrupt in other cultures, especially when everyone involved might be speaking a second or third language, English.
Teaching Administration
As a freelance teacher, expect to take care of some of the employee needs yourself. The school will take charge of finding clients, booking schedules, providing material (sometimes, and plan on supplying your own anyway), and running payroll.
You will be expected to take care of your own insurance, transportation needs and reimbursements, and the big one, taxes.
Payment: in medium to large cities (perhaps with the exception of Berlin) expect to be paid around 30 € per class. What defines a class? A “teaching hour” in Germany is 45 minutes and these are always (I hate that word, but in my experience and in reading this is a true statement) put in pairs, so one class is two teaching hours.
It’s important to know if you will be teaching two teaching hours back to back, since contracts are sold to students on the basis of these hours/units. So if they purchase 40 units, you will teach 20 classes, if indeed your school works on the 90 minutes per class model.
Scheduling: again the more flexible you can be, the more jobs you will get. The school will handle the processing of new student and organizing calendars. You get to say if you will be able to fit in a new contract or not. The secretaries or administrative assistants are the gatekeepers in this respect. It’s a good idea to get to know them and make sure they know your face, otherwise you can quickly become forgotten as an option. Even though I had maybe two clients a month with in-school appointments, I still went in on the weeks I didn’t have work there, to exchange books, drop off and pick up time cards, and to make sure I chatted with the office staff and said hello. Yes my motivation was to not be forgotten, but they were also my colleagues and I wanted to get to know them, for “getting to know them’s” sake as well.
At my peak, I was teaching 30 hours per week, sometimes 5 classes per day. When I first started, I went two months with maybe 20 hours each month. I only said no to one contract due to too much work in my time teaching. I kind of wish I had said no maybe one or two more times, but I was determined to earn as much as possible. And, I enjoyed teaching, so while there were definitely some times I was stressed and burnt out, when I was able to refocus and zero in on the satisfaction I got from watching my students learn, a major course load was doable, in short sprints.
The most frustrating part of teaching for me was a lack of a consistent schedule. Even when I sometimes had several long term contracts lined up, without fail one or two students or groups would cancel the week or even the day before so week to week was never the same for me. While I thought I could thrive in this type of environment, it turns out I couldn’t. I still think I could maybe do it, but I would narrow my travel radius significantly if I ever took another job with a flexible schedule that required travel.
As an example of burnout: I could end up driving to Mainz at 7:30am for a day of business English in a company, teach until 10:00am, drive back to Wiesbaden, maybe get a load of laundry done and another chore, then drive back to Mainz for another class at 3:00pm, because my students during the day had cancelled so there was no reason to stay at their office.
Taxes: the schools is not going to withhold any taxes or pension from your paycheck. This means you will need to figure out what you owe at the end of the year yourself. You also need to make sure you understand what your commitment to the pension fund for teachers and artists is (I never did) and whether or not the health insurance plan you selected is viable year to year (which you should have found out at your visa appointment, but guidelines change).
The school will charge VAT to the students though, so you do not need to worry about making sure you comply with these earnings rules.
Tax-free income is roughly 8500€ per year. Just like in the US, this number has been slowly rising over the years to keep pace with inflation.
To give an example with some real numbers:
My highest income over a year of teaching was roughly 17,500.00 €. I paid taxes of approximately 1,100.00 € in one lump sum the following May (tax filing deadline). This was earned when teaching 20+ classes per week and was fairly exhausting.
Anything Else?
If teaching English is what you want to do, you can do it in Germany. Make sure you follow the rules when applying for paperwork and certifications and it’ll most likely turn out ok. If you are focused on the bigger cities, you will have a more difficult time since they are already inundated with English speakers trying to do the same thing you are.
You won’t make a ton of money doing this, but if you can keep pace you can survive off it (I wouldn’t say long term, but it depends on what lifestyle goals you have for yourself).
Learn to keep a straight face when your student tells you “buildings are made out of semen in Germany.”
If you’re open to it, you will learn a lot about German by teaching English.
You might make some pretty cool friends from among your students even after you stop teaching (was geht ab Julie! 🙂 )
Teaching in so many industries, companies and meeting people just might lead to another job, if you want it to.
Let me know if you have any fabulous teaching stories to share, in Germany or elsewhere!
Resources
Here I’ll add some of my favorite sites and books I was using to teach. Some of these links may be affiliates.
- My own Pinterest board! Hopefully this is a good start for some inspiration for you.
