After four weeks of TEFL classes, two textbooks, some 20 quizzes, three papers, six hour-long lesson plans and teaching demos, and nearly a dozen new friends, I am a certified English teacher! Of course, it took a few other things to get me here–a long-held love of English, its structure (grammar is my math), and the way we use language to communicate. It also took an exceptional grad school professor who made learning about teaching English so fascinating it felt like I was learning a new language, too. So that when it was time to move to Chile, getting a job teaching English wasn’t just something I could do because I didn’t know Spanish, it was the job I wanted here, that could contribute to our home, allow flexible time to write, and take me all around Santiago. Come Tuesday, I’ll be finding my way from the metro to a bus to an office building out by the old airport (yeah, I didn’t even know there was an old airport to be by). And I’ll be teaching.

So what does a person have to learn in order to teach her native language? I’ve gotten this question a few times recently. So in an attempt to answer I will say this: It is not sitting down and just having a conversation. Teaching English is not merely speaking English. As I’ve learned, we try as English teachers not to speak unless it’s necessary, especially with our beginning students. That means simplicity and clarity–always. That means one-word directions when possible, though a gesture is even better. That means no repeating what the student has said if it’s correct, but instead praising and moving on. That means drawing a picture on the board in the hopes they can produce the word or at least know the meaning without a weighty verbal explanation. A picture of a pig is a picture of a pig in any language, after all. That means asking a question the same exact way every time if your student needs clarification. If you say it differently, you just introduce more words they may not understand. And all those extra words have the potential to confuse your student even more. And forget about idioms, expressions, or phrasal verbs. A.k.a., don’t tell your students about prepositions being “the final frontier” of language acquisition even if that comparison made perfect sense to you when your professor put it that way last year.

It takes quite a bit of planning to keep it simple. A 10-page lesson plan in some cases, where we come up with straightforward yet engaging ways to pre-teach the target vocabulary or phrases, practice them again and again, and–if we are successful at our work–the student produces them with close to perfect accuracy by the close of 60 or 90 minutes. Whether that means they can ask the time, tell you about the weather, or understand the contents of a newspaper clipping or an NPR audio clip, you have enabled comprehension. You have pulled back the curtain an inch farther, revealing a corner of English previously inaccessible. Maybe that means they can now conduct business abroad or receive a promotion at work. Maybe that means they have another way to communicate with their significant other. Maybe that means they have accomplished something they’ve always wanted to. Maybe it means they can move abroad with their husband and teach Spanish in California. In any event, you’ve helped them get closer to that goal.

This job means knowing English grammar inside and out without letting on that grammar is what you’re teaching. You are teaching communication and allowing a fluency with everyday, real-life situations: a job interview, making a doctor’s appointment, and eventually carrying on a debate about education reform in Chile.

This means your students will surprise you. They will get frustrated with what they aren’t understanding and you will do nearly anything to help them understand. And when they do, you will feel so proud–of them. So, if that means you have to dance like N’Sync, jump back and forth for two sides of a dialog, or scratch your head with a fork in order to display impolite table manners, you won’t hesitate. No meaning is too small not to be understood. After all, this course reminded me what a phoneme is: the smallest element of sound which is recognized as making a difference in meaning. On a literal level, that might mean the “sh” sound in “fish.” On a practical level, that can mean the difference between being fully understood or not understood at all, and that is always the goal. After all, “nation” has a “sh” sound too with no “s” or “h” in sight. No wonder English is so confusing!

Couldn’t have gotten through this without Kylie and Ashley! Well, I could have, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun.

But there’s something else I found over the last four weeks that doesn’t really have anything to do with lesson plans or phonemes: friends. When you sign up to spend eight hours a day with the same people in the same room, you hope for the best. You realize, at 31, you may be the oldest student of teaching in that small room, but you find everyone is interesting and has a different reason for being here in Chile, whether it’s for love or work or a way to spend the North American summer. So when you all go out to celebrate your certification, you may end up karaoke-ing without a microphone at an Irish Pub in Santiago and realize you’re doing so not only with your new coworkers, but with your new friends, too.

Now, about this bus ride. Since I’ve got English more or less down, I better get back to those Spanish lessons so I don’t board the bus that ends up in the Andes. I’ll check it out and report back.