eClass English

Early August I began working for another school in Santiago by the name of eClass English. It's a much larger school than Bridge and I was hired as a teacher for their Corfo Program: a 4 month intensive program sponsored by the Chilean Government with the main objective being to improve scores on the TOEIC(Test of English for International Communications) exam.My students ranged from young professionals: engineers, small business owners, government employees, and students in the process of getting their master's degree at the university. I would be a teacher of 2 sections: #1 Mon,Wed,Fri evenings from 6:30-10PM and #2 Tues,Thurs at 6:30-10PM and Sat. from 10AM-1:30PM. Each class has 12-15 students so the class sizes are very large compared to what I've been used to. The pay would be twice what I was receiving at my other institute. So I have been juggling work at 2 different schools and since early August, I have been VERY busy! Too busy, in fact. I had forgotten what it felt like to get up in the morning and still be tired! I have 2 alarms set to go off in the morning in case I don't hear 1 of them! I really can't complain with all the work though and I'm glad to have so many job opportunities.

Some of my students at the local Irish Pub; our class this night went to watch the Chileans play Uruguay in soccer. When there were soccer games on, we had class at the Pub! Aren't they a good looking bunch...?! And so much fun.

Outside the eClass bldg with some of my students from my other group during their break. It was very hot this day!

At our celebration for the end of the class on 11/29.

In December I received the results of my students' test scores after they took their TOEIC exam and it was very rewarding to know that 50% of them improved by at least 20%. And the most impressive result was from Nicholas(standing next to me on the right) who received 910 points out of 990! He began the class with 675!

Looking back on my teaching these classes at eClass, I would say that my biggest issue with the students was some of their "preoccupation" with their mobile phone devices. Those that were distracted a lot naturall  did not improve as much on their test scores as those that had paid attention!