2010 August

August 20, 2010 3 Comments

I decided to quit teaching a few months before I got married and the very reason to that was because my husband’s job doesn’t allow us to stay in one place long enough for me have a steady teaching job. No school director in his or her right mind would like to hire a teacher who disappears every three months. I decided to quit instead of getting short term teaching stints one after the other because of all the hassles and because that will not look good on my CV.

But that doesn’t mean I gave up earning money. I, of course, could but I didn’t want to so I looked for ways to earn money from home. I tried my hands on writing and online tutoring at the same time. I signed up at different websites that have pay-to-blog schemes and at online tutoring websites. Earning money from writing happened first so I focused on it. For years, I’ve been doing it and I’m happy with the results. The online tutoring is a different story. I made teacher profiles in different online tutoring sites but I never got a client. Not one. So, I forgot about it over time.

Last month, I got a nice surprise. Something I badly need to get me through this career crisis. Buddyschool.com sent me an email telling me that a client wants to schedule an online lesson with me. I was immediately thrilled at the idea of teaching online. I have never done it before but how difficult could it be? So I accepted the schedule and prepared for it.

My first online student is a six years old girl from Czech Republic. She can already speak a bit of English and her parents like to help her cultivate her English skills by hiring an online tutor for her. The first lesson went well and it was easy. K is a bright and talkative girl. I showed her stuffed animals I had prepared before the lesson and she told me what she knows about them. I felt that it was not a problem for K to warm up to me because she was also asking me questions. I can just tell that K enjoyed the lesson and I enjoyed it too. A week later, K’s mom scheduled another lesson but I declined because of our holiday plans.

I thought that’s it. I thought that it will just be a onetime thing but when I got another request for a lesson yesterday, I was so thrilled.

Now, this got me thinking… if I get really unhappy with my teaching job I could quit it and focus on online tutoring. What do you think? Go or no go?

crisis

I got my teaching job last summer and I remember quite well how I wished the summer would end soon so I can already start teaching. Haha. That was a year ago. Right now, I wish the summer would stretch longer so I don’t have to go to work soon. I still have a month of vacation and God knows how I savor each day of it whether I spend it somewhere or I spend it at home.

I am still in a crisis. I still don’t know if I want to continue teaching. Thing number 1 is, I need a job and thing number 2 is, it can’t be just any job so more or less, I will just go on with the teaching. Being an immigrant is playing a major part in my crisis and I am slowly getting tired of it.

Why can’t I get a better teaching job? Because I need a nostrification. Why do I need that? Because my degree is not recognized here. Why is that? Because I got it outside of EU. So why not just get a nostrification? Because it is a very complicated and a very long process.

And why can’t you get other jobs like an office job? Because my German is not good enough. And why can’t you get a manual job? Because I am not sure if I want that and my husband definitely doesn’t want that for me.

It all comes down to being a foreigner in this country and the fact that I want to have a baby and be a mother soon doesn’t make things easy for me either. I feel that I am running out of time and my chances are thin. At this point of my life, it is either get a better teaching job or be a mother and that’s unfair because I want both so badly.

But how am I going manage both at the same time?