(Spanish music)
- Hi! I'm Rachel Sayer.
I'm 36 years old,
an American originally from Chicago.
I've been teaching English here in Barcelona
for two years, and I did my TEFL course
with the International TEFL Academy in Barcelona.
Before coming here I was a junior high Spanish teacher
in Chicago, but after 12 years I knew
that while I still wanted to teach,
I was looking for something different.
The reason I chose to do my TEFL class
with International TEFL Academy
was because of the positive reviews
that I found online, but also because
being from Chicago I was able to go into the office
and speak with someone face-to-face,
and they took the time to answer
all of the questions that I had, not only at that time
but also following up on the phone and by email.
But what I appreciated most was that at no point
was there ever pressure to sign up.
It was all about helping me
make the best decision for me.
When choosing where to teach I knew
that I wanted to be in a Spanish-speaking country
and I had been in Barcelona a few years back
for a friend's wedding and I just loved it.
I like teaching in Barcelona
because my students are really kind and friendly
and they have great senses of humor,
I have a lot of fun,
and they're really motivated to learn.
Also, there's actually a lot of work
for English teachers in Spain right now
as companies want to stay competitive
and want to get ahead, and parents want their children
to have all of the opportunities
that knowing English will give them.
To find the jobs that I have now,
first I narrowed down the kinds of jobs that I wanted.
Because I wanted a different experience
from the one that I had left in Chicago,
I wasn't looking for a full-time job in a school.
But instead I wanted to look for hourly work
teaching classes at businesses
or teaching private classes at students' homes.
So there's a website here in Spain
that's just like Craigslist and it's called
local.com, and I found classes there
with a couple of different language companies,
and those language companies then send you
to different businesses to give classes.
Then I picked up the private classes
when students responded to an ad
that I placed on another site
where students go to find teachers.
The academic year in Barcelona
is generally from October to the end of June
and during the year there's a week off
at Christmas and Easter
and there're many other holidays in-between.
During the first two weeks of July
I work at an overnight summer camp
in the Pyrenees Mountains close to the French border,
and it's a beautiful area and the perfect place
to escape from Barcelona's summer heat.
In the morning, the kids have an English class
for a couple of hours, but we try to make it
very fun for them by playing games
and learning lyrics to popular songs,
and the classes are really nice and small
and I find it amazing how much the kids are able
to improve their English in just two weeks.
(crowd noise)
My TEFL training has helped me in every aspect
in my current teaching positions,
from planning and knowing which materials to use
to dealing with classroom situations,
like how and when to correct errors,
and even how to evaluate students' progress.
I really enjoyed the TEFL course.
It was really demanding and challenging,
but it left me feeling completely prepared
to teach right away.
I've made a lot of great friends here in Barcelona.
One of the first ways that I've found to meet people
is through meetup groups,
that's from the website meetup.com.
They're really popular here in Barcelona
among Spaniards and expats,
and there is a group for every single interest
that anyone could possibly have.
The ones that I attended a lot
at first were language exchange groups,
and also I got really evolved into paddle tennis,
and not only do we go and play and socialize
but we go to tournaments and have barbecues
and meals together, and it's been
a fun new athletic outlet for me.
It's really hard for me to pick just one
most memorable experience about living here.
There's something new and memorable
every month, every week.
There are so many festivals here,
especially in Barcelona.
Okay, this might be my favorite one.
It's the Castellers.
Those are human Castells where they climb
on top of one another and build human towers
with a little tiny kid at the top wearing a helmet.
It's amazing to watch and I'm fascinated by that.
I'm torn between which I'm fascinated by more,
the Castellers or these giants
that are in the festivals.
They make these heads for characters
that are gigantic, like this big,
and then the people who wear those probably
have to be on stilts as well, or something.
But it's amazing to see and it's fun
and if you come here, you are guaranteed
to have a good time.
(Spanish music)