At home in the classroom: A journey from student to teacher
Born in Canada but raised in Germany, Temina was the only native English speaker in her English classes, and she decided early on that she wanted to help other people learn this language and travel the world teaching English. While COVID has thrown a wrench in her travel plans, Temina discovered CCI-LEX, where she has been volunteering in the LEX program teaching beginner ESL students since September 2021. Having recently graduated, Temina has found this experience to be a great transition from student to teacher.
While she was initially nervous, Temina has grown more comfortable and increasingly confident being in front of a class. She finds it helpful that there are existing teaching plans and other resources, which have proven useful as she gets better at putting together her own plans and learns what works and doesn’t work for her. She also finds that teaching mature students allows for more room to make mistakes, as her students are very understanding and contribute to a respectful and supportive classroom environment. For Temina, it’s been incredibly rewarding seeing her students retain things they’ve learned in previous classes and improve their English in such a short amount of time.
Many students go through university unsure of what to do or whether they will want to continue in their area of study. This was the case for Temina as she was pursuing a Bachelor of Education to become a teacher, constantly “thinking about whether this is the right thing to do”. Now that she’s teaching at CCI-LEX and responsible for her class, it feels right. “That feeling when I’m in front of the class… it’s almost like you’re at home, like you belong there.”