TEFL Volunteer Teachers are Needed in Chile

TEACH ENGLISH AND IMMERSE YOURSELF IN THE COASTAL COMMUNITY OF PICHILEMU, CHILE  

THE SCHOOL

We are a small language school in the coast of central Chile offering full language immersion experiences to both travellers and locals. Our school has a community program offering English as a second language to people in Pichilemu. Our students are kids, teens and adults. Their levels of English are from true beginners to advanced. We are looking for someone who can teach and collaborate with others to offer the best English classes to our amazing students.  

The school started more than ten years ago, but the current management restarted the project back in 2017. The goal in the past years has been to strengthen the curriculum and make sure students learning English have an opportunity to progress and develop all their skills while gaining confidence speaking. We organize many different activities so that our school is also a safe space to practice without fear of embarrassment.  

We really care about giving back to Pichilemu. During the year, we have travellers learning Spanish and friends who speak English and live here, so we create events for people to get to know each other. In our school, it is important to foster cultural exchanges and a friendly and safe space to allow people from Pichilemu to also benefit from the multiculturalism the town has been experiencing in the last decade because of surfing and tourism.  

THE EXPERIENCE

The teacher will be able to gain professional experience from teaching in a small school. Because of the small size of classes, they will be able to get to know their students who are locals of our town and learn from the diversity of their stories. This will impact and inform their teaching. Depending on the experience teaching ESL classes, they will be able to gain professional experience collaborating with another teacher. This role involves a lot of communication and team work with others, so it is a great opportunity to develop those skills in a very close knit community and team.  

All of our previous teachers will also say that after working and being part of our school, they felt part of a family. We hope this continues and it also part of the experience of our new team member.  

RESPONSIBILITIES

If you are a resourceful, proactive, creative individual who is great at listening and loves facilitating learning while getting to know their students, this role is for you.

We need support for the second semester of our ESL lessons (August to November, 2019 - some flexibility in the starting and ending dates). We pay need support in summer depending on demand for classes.

The teacher will be in class teaching two days a week (most likely Thursdays and Fridays) for a total of 11 lessons of 60 minutes each, plus doing preparation work and school organizing. Total of 17 hours weekly. We organize events on Thursday or Friday twice a month adding 3 to 4 hours of support.

The person needs to be able to successfully teach true beginners and advanced learners. Being a fluent speaker is not a must. You need to be able to teach through an immersion and communicative method using only English.

Knowing Spanish can help at times, specially when speaking to parents and providing more specific feedback to adults, but we encourage the use of English at all times since our students have very limited time to practice outside of school.    

ACCOMMODATION

Our volunteer teacher will have access to a private room with breakfast, shared bathroom, access to kitchen, internet, cable tv and access to laundry machine. You will get to stay with a local family that owns a homestay/hostel and works with us. Their home is 5-7 minutes walking distance from downtown, the beach, our school and everything in Pichilemu.