A day in the life of a TEFL student

We sat down with Erika, a student on our current course, to get an idea of a typical day in the life of a TEFL student.

“I usually wake up at 8am or 9am, depending on how much stuff I want to look over before class – well tomorrow I actually have a job interview before class, as it’s my last week. But on a normal day, sometimes I look over grammar, and sometimes lesson plans, to get an idea of what I want to prepare for the afternoon. 

I leave my apartment around 10am and I walk to school, which takes me about half an hour. I’m staying in an apartment in El Born, arranged by TEFL Iberia. It’s a nice walk to school through the old part of the city. I get here around 10.30am, and we have a lesson in the morning, which prepares us for teaching in the afternoon. 

At 12.00pm we have a short break – a coffee, a biscuit, we hang out for 15 minutes – and then we go on to our lesson preparation for the afternoon.

How long the lesson prep takes really depends – I’m getting faster now that we’re almost at the end of the course. I feel like lesson planning is coming to me really naturally now. We’re assigned topics, depending on the class level, and there are grammar points which we have to follow, but there’s still room for creativity, which is nice.

We have lunch at 1.30pm. We usually bring lunch, or grab a sandwich somewhere nearby. There’s a lovely courtyard across the street, and it’s nice to have lunch there and get some sun for half an hour or so.

Class is at 4-6pm. We observe each other and take notes, and then get feedback afterwards and usually finish at about 6.30pm 

I don’t tend to go out much during the week, but I’m living with another TEFL student on the course which has worked out really nicely – in fact we’re now looking for a flat together! In the evenings we sometimes compare notes on the day, which is nice. Towards the end of the week we usually go out and have a few drinks.”

Contact us for more information on teaching English in Barcelona.