No prior experience teaching English is required. If you're willing to get people talking, and if you are a good listener and coach, you will do splendidly. We all help each other, share hints and encouragement, and learn together as we go.
A special note to teachers who have previous classroom experience or ESL certification: Our classes don’t operate as traditional classes do. They are drop-in style, informal, and change from week to week. If you let go of expectations about teaching and jump into our learning community, you may be pleasantly surprised!
We work in small groups where tutors take turns working with different students at different ability levels each week. Class materials are provided, but we welcome any ideas and activities volunteers may have. Since we all have particular skills to share, it helps if we all take joint responsibility for the learning of students at all levels. It’s fun to get to know everyone and to help other teachers track the progress of individual students.
Our Webform volunteer application is currently experiencing issues. You can download our volunteer application as a Word document here and email the completed application to Brigid at bpigott@somervillema.gov.