Commuting to your classes

Many teachers commute and/or spend loads of time on public transport getting to and fro classes. It often feels like wasted time. If you are a TEFL teacher at a school, or some other institution, your commute is a regular trip that you make to and from your home to your place of work. If you are a private TEFL teacher, though, you might find that you spend seemingly countless hours travelling to meet students at cafes, homes, or libraries. So, as a “TEFLee”, how can you use your time productively?

Plan, plan, plan

I don’t want to encourage any last minute, slap-dash lesson planning, but the commute is an ideal time to think about and prepare lessons. If you can take a laptop with you on your journey, you should have access to countless teaching resources. Use the internet and your own experience to create valuable lesson plans. If you haven’t got a laptop or internet connection then use your course books and paper! If you find your mind isn’t quite in full gear during the commute, it can be equally valuable just to review your older lesson plans that you can use again. As teachers, we also have to think about the needs of our students. Finding time to do this can be quite a challenge, so perhaps just use your commute time to think about how your classes are going, and whether there are any needs that you have been ignoring, or any possible improvements you could make to your lessons. I have often used my travelling time to write lists of ideas and ways to improve my teaching.