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Teach English in Hukou Zhen - Zhuzhou Shi

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Hukou Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Zhuzhou Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.

My first experience with TEFL was during the Summer season in 1997 while temporarily working in Yellowstone National Park. I was to manage one of Yellowstone Park’s seasonal food service activities. The food service activities were sub-contracted to a company headquartered Irvine, California. I was hired at a meeting in Bozeman, Montana. My soon-to-be crew was recruited in San Diego, California. We were destined to be the cafeteria and catering staff for the Canyon Lodge. I arrived, and opened up the kitchen, on the 2d of May. My crew of eight arrived on the 4th. I had expected only two individuals to arrive that day. Instead I found myself with a crew that consisted of two resident aliens, and six illegal aliens. Subsequently I learned that my resident aliens were making exactly what I was making, but they were splitting their wages with their illegal compatriots. Still, in the end I had a crew eight men with two that spoke English, and six that did not. This posed a problem. How was I supposed to staff a kitchen that was open from 7am to 11pm when I only had three people that were capable of interacting with the non-Spanish speaking wait staff? The only answer I could come up with was that everyone was going to have to learn English before the Summer season went into full swing. I had about three weeks to get everyone close to the same page and by some stroke of luck we were all pretty much able to communicate by the time we had our first major onslaught of park visitors in mid-June. In hindsight, after taking this course, I am amazed at how much we all got right, considering we had no internet service, and the nearest library was 40 miles away. Here is how we did it: • In the first few days we concentrated on basic objects in the kitchen. I had the crew put masking tape labels on everything from the pots and pans to the doors and light switches that identified the objects in Spanish. I would then announce the object in English and put an additional label in English on the object. I did this in a dramatic fashion that led some on the crew to believe that I might be “Loco”, but it worked so I stand by my work. • We then moved onto colors, tastes, and ingredients. I would pick up an item and say, “This is honey. Honey is sweet.” I made sure to have everyone repeat the ingredient back to me. This ritual was repeated hundreds of times in the coming weeks, but the tedium paid off soon my people were bringing me things to identify, and by the time we were in the midst of the season everyone knew how to retrieve most ingredients in both English and Spanish given the fact that the process was rubbing off on me as well. • Interfacing with other departments and individuals was also in the offing so to prepare for this eventuality I borrowed a couple of the wait staff and we demonstrated different actions that they performed for their jobs in addition to identifying parts of their bodies, by pointing and saying, “This is Robert.” “This is Robert’s left hand.” “Robert is wearing his service coat.” Robert is filling water glasses, Etcetera. • Finally, we made the best of what we could find in the media available to us. The guys watched the movies like, Independents Day and Austin Powers while the two English speakers translated, and I was able to get the Spanish version of Sports Illustrated in the mail. I would have the crew try to explain to me what the articles said, this at very least dispelled tension because this exercise reinforced that both sides of the conversation were a challenge for each party. Things sometimes broke down into desperate pantomime. Still, it was lots of fun. In the end we made it through the first weeks without any injuries. I learned that my special new culinary name was Cocinero, which is Spanish for Chef and by the end of the season we had an almost fully functional kitchen Spanglish. The whole experience has made me truly appreciate the new things I have learned in this class.


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