h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I used my TEFL skills when I was on maternity leave. Climbing the walls and not happy about singing the Wheels on the Bus 24 times an hour and with only one salary coming in, teaching English was a great part-time option for me, as I could do it in the evenings.

Mostly I taught small groups of adults who wanted to improve their skills for work purposes. Occasionally I went into a company for a few weeks and gave lunchtime lessons to the (mostly non-German) staff - in that case it was usually just a matter of getting them all to around the same level of more-or-less competent English so that they could understand each other (something I still do at work now).

But the most fun was when I went to some groups for younger children - some only kindergarten age - where we learned through play. Mostly stories. And singing. It's a lot more fun singing The Wheels on the Bus 24 times in an hour when you get paid for it

I must admit that it is an excellently flexible sort of job for those with smalls. And excellently 'must use my brain and talk to other people, preferably adults' too. Unless you teach kids. But I know what you mean about getting paid...

Sounds like fun, your experience. Nice and varied. When I was abroad I seemed to specialise in teaching teens and exam prep classes at higher levels, which got a bit same old same old towards the end. I used to look at the kids classes quite wistfully.

I spent around 9 months of it going to a family once a week. First I'd teach the mum who had nearly no English skills at all. Then I did coaching for her son, then her daughter (who couldn't be in the same room, apparently but were at the same school with the same English teacher) because their English teacher was off school long-term sick and the school didn't have a replacement.

Their substitute teacher, apparently, used to turn up at the start of a lesson and chuck a photocopied sheet at them all. Or tell them to read 5 chapters of X book and then write a report.

Eventually the lad (who was in his last year, A-level equivalents looming) told one of his mates and shared some materials I'd made for him with the rest of his class, and at the end I had 7 of them in a room twice a week trying to get them through their exams with absolutely no qualifications to be a grammar school teacher here. But they all passed, which was good. I didn't particularly enjoy those sessions, but ... well, the money was good because the parents really had to work hard to persuade me.

We all have our price

We do. Good for you!

The exam classes I taught were for the international qualifications produced mainly by Cambridge ESOL. First Certificate et al. There's a lot of materials out there, and they are pretty well designed exams wasn't too awful, I have to say.

Do you know, Germany as a place to teach rather appeals, but it's one of those places that doesn't actually seem to be recruit that hard in the UK etc. Any advice about getting a TEFL job there? Is it more a case of there's work if you happen to be on the spot?

I think you have to be here, to be honest. I was lucky in that just when I was looking for a job, I saw an ad from a local language school who had lost their English teacher and I was taken on right away. I worked for the school pretty much whenever they asked (it wasn't much) and was careful not to poach their students (or potential students) but as I got to know more people, and they knew I was an active English teacher it just sort of spread.

In fact, I'm seriously considering going back to it - maybe setting up lessons for pre-schoolers - that's really big here.

I'm not surprised. I guess the goal now for many parents is bilingualism not merely competence, and the younger the better for that.

Classes or a full on bilingual nursery school?

classes I think, I don't think I would like the rest of the stuff that goes on around Kindergarten here.