Part 1: Preparation
Part 2: Preparation 2
Part 3: Culture Shock and Adaptation
Part 4: The DIRT – Work, Scheduling and Pay

This time I’ll get into what you can expect from actually teaching and how to cope with it. The hours, the work and the pay.

The Work:

Teaching English is, for some, quite a difficult task. Yet for others it is a walk in the park. If you are new to teaching you will have many things you need to figure out. Things like how to create your lessons plans, how to get your students motivated, where to find information and materials. Over time you will create a personal library of things that will help you.

But the first couple of months may be quite difficult. Many schools do not offer much in the way of help at times. If you are lucky your school will have a senior teacher whom you can ask for help. But I have seen schools where the senior teacher has only two office hours a week and never had time to talk about something during those two hours. In that case your best course of action is to befriend several other teachers, both English native speakers and people originally from the country you are in. It will give you a unique perspective and two differing views which will be helpful not to mention experienced persons who can help you plan and give you advice. I have found there are small differences in the way that native speakers teach and plan when compared with the way the Czech teachers do things here. It has helped me to understand my students a little better as well.

A full-time work week will generally include twenty to twenty-five teaching hours a week. It sounds like a dream job but there’s more to it than that. You will probably be responsible for your own travel arrangements (bus, metro, tram, car) and you will have to pay those expenses out of your salary though many schools will say it is ‘included in your salary,’ though I beg to differ. In addition you must also take into account travel time. When I was in Prague I had to travel for forty-five minutes to teach one ninety minute lesson, then travel forty-five minutes back to the next lesson. So it was a three hour block of time where I was only paid for half.

My travel time in Prague exceeded ten hours a week when I was working full-time. So let’s say the average is five hours a week so the work week is now up to thirty hours. Ten hours of travel in a week is a little extreme I think.

Lesson planning will be completely different for each person. Lately, I have found I can plan a ninety minute lesson in ten minutes. But it is due to familiarity with the materials I am using and because I have over a year of experience and basically know the drill. In the beginning I was putting in about a half-hour of planning time per lesson. This time included looking through the materials, trying to organize them into a logical series for the class and then researching some of the grammar points in the lessons. But it paid off because my students like me and now I don’t need to prepare as much.

You will find yourself, unless you’ve taken a Master’s Degree program in English, needing to research some of the grammar you will teach. I tell my students ‘no one can possibly know everything about English’ and so at times if they have a question I cannot answer I write it down and tell them I will look into it and tell them next time. BE SURE you tell them the answer next time because they will not forget, they will expect an answer and they will be rather disappointed if you do not have one.

So in the beginning weeks of your career as an English teacher you may find yourself working more than forty hours a week. But I promise it will get better with time. You will eventually find some textbooks you like and will be able to use them over and over again. At that point your lesson planning time will plunge into nothingness because you will open the book and say ‘ah yes, last time I taught this I did…’ and that will be all there is to it.

Schedule:

Your teaching schedule will be terrible at times. Many classes are either before the workday (i.e. 7am-9am) or after the workday (4pm-7pm). If you happen to land a position in a university, high or grammar school then your hours will obviously be more like 9am-3pm Monday through Friday. But from what I am told these are generally a little lower in pay overall.

When I first started teaching I accepted whatever classes I could get because I was concerned about money. Since then I have become more choosey about my classes and I quite like my schedule now (see image). In the beginning I was teaching from 7:30am-9:00am Monday-Thursday and then 16:30-18:00 Monday-Thursday. Some stray classes filled in the other parts of the days but generally you will have major gaps in your schedule, there’s nothing much to be done about it. I chose to not teach on Fridays because it is the day that I write generally. Since part of my reason for changing my career was so that I could focus on my writing career it made sense to me and gives me three straight days where I can write.

The Pay:

Since I began writing these articles several people have asked me about the pay. I have been avoiding the question. But now I feel it is time to answer that question. Here are some things I have found out along the way, things you’re not told beforehand. Many people do not like to talk about pay, but in order to be informative and useful I have decided to include some general numbers here.

Abbreviations used :

• TU – teaching Unit


• CZK – Czech Crown (monetary unit of the country)

Pay is generally per teaching unit (TU). Normally a teaching unit is forty-five minutes or sixty minutes. Most classes are either sixty or ninety minutes. So that would technically be one sixty minute TU or two forty-five minute TUs. On occasion you may find a class that is one-hundred-twenty minutes which sounds long but goes quickly when you get into in and is then two sixty minute TUs.

If you are a native English speaker you will generally be paid more than your foreign counterparts. The pay rate will vary based on area and school. Prague pays slightly more than Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic. Some areas will be desperate for native speakers and as such will pay a comparable rate. Here are some cold hard facts about cold hard cash.

The minimum legal pay rate (minimum wage) in the Czech Republic is around sixty (60) CZK per hour. At the current exchange rate that is about $2.67 an hour. But English teachers are far better paid than that. The average monthly salary in the nation is about ninety-thousand crowns (19,000), roughly $850 a month. The cost of living here is approximately 75% of that in America so one can live on that but I wouldn’t say it is very comfortable. Currently I have about 17.5 hours of teaching a week, 18 forty-five minute TUs and 4 sixty minute TUs. If I teach all my classes in a standard four week month then I should make just over twenty-one-thousand (21,000) CZK, about $953 a month. If I were to work ‘full-time’ I would make slightly more. But scheduling is an issue and I will talk about that after this section.

These numbers are for my standard weekly classes. But there are always other classes available including weekend intensives and once-a-month courses. I teach a one weekend a month course that it nine forty-five minute TUs Thursday to Saturday and then five more on Sunday for a total of thirty-two TUs for the weekend. When I go to that course I generally lose a few classes that I have scheduled on Thursday but it brings the monthly income up considerably so it is worth it.

Pay rates (these are general number and will vary by region and definitely by country):

• 45 minute TU – General or Conversational English – 200-230 CZK (approx $10)
• 60 minute TU – General or Conversational English – 260-300 CZK (approx. $12.50)
• 45 minute TU – Business, Technical, Banking English – 250-270 CZK ($11.50)
• 60 minute TU – Business, Technical, Banking English – 270-350 CZK ($13.75)

I know, the numbers just aren’t logical. You can expect that at times. These are decent wages in the Czech Republic but don’t go expecting you will live like kings and queens. Of course you can always choose to work more but the tradeoff is your free time and stress level.

Summary:

One can make a good living teaching English. Over time you will get more opportunities and there is even some room for advancement to higher level teaching positions and even administration if you are interested. You won’t have all the amenities of home and you won’t be taking many vacations to exotic locations. But it is a good life and few things make me happier than hearing one of my students using a piece of English that I taught them. I have ample free time and enjoy the work. That is more important to me than money. I hated my previous job and never wanted to get out of bed. While some days I don’t want to get out of bed here it’s simply laziness or staying up too late. If you work as much as you like and you like the work you do then you will be infinitely happier. You will learn that you don’t need all those things we sometimes think we need. For example I haven’t a television or radio but I have internet and DVDs and music. I haven’t a vehicle and I do not really require one, though I do want to buy a motorcycle next spring. Purely for the freedom it affords and not for necessity. Honestly I cannot afford to take a trip to America as often as I like. I could if I saved more and worked more, but the plane tickets are so expensive that it has become a once-a-year trip.

This brings this series of articles to a close. If you have any questions feel free to contact me. I will keep track of all enquiries and make an FAQ and update it periodically. In addition I will continue to write other articles about teaching including some lesson planning tips and even some of my lesson plans or other things I have seen that worked for other teachers. I hope you found this informational or useful; after all I’m a teacher!

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