English Language Teaching Assistant Review

I loved my placement. I lived in the South of France teaching in two establishments and although I didn't receive any training until arriving, the experience was absolutely invaluable and the people who I met made the job extremely fun and culturally enriching. I found the work sometimes challenging with the students I was given but this really taught me important life skills, and improved my confidence.

I felt that I was extremely valued by my colleagues in the role that I did. Firstly, my colleagues really made an effort to integrate me into the staff team and we had regular meetings to discuss both my development as a teaching assistant and also the development of the class that I was in charge of. I felt that the job I did was really important to the students in motivating them to learn English and the activities I prepared were greatly appreciated. I was often invited to dinner at my colleagues houses too and they really supported me.

I had regular meetings with my supervisor about my development but a lot of the support was given over email and feedback too. My classes weren't supervised except on two occasions and I didn't have to ever complete formal assessments to be employed, I was simply assigned to a school. The support I received from the British Council as my employer was minimal and other than a training day in Nice at the very beginning, I had no contact with them.

I was not very busy at all with my job. As you are only contracted to work for 12 hours a week I had much free time and spent a lot of my year abroad travelling through both France and Europe. Because of the short working hours, I had the opportunity to only work 3 days a week which was highly convenient. It wasn't uncommon either for lessons to sometimes be cancelled due to illness, public holidays etc.

I was given the responsibility of final year classes at one of the establishments and had to conduct oral exams on a daily basis giving them both marks and feedback on their performance and putting plans in place to improve their abilities and develop their competencies further. I was left alone with classes of up to 15 students which was sometimes quite daunting but there was always support available to me if I asked for it.

The skills I gained, obviously living in France, were my oral French skills. I also was able to appreciate the cultural diversity of France and work with different people from different places which I found invaluable as I really assimilated into the culture and this helped me gain people skills which are highly transferable. I gained confidence in public speaking and found that I took a lot of responsibility and was proactive in my own learning enough to have really learnt something in my year there

I didn't work in an office as such but the school where I worked was always very busy and the other teachers were always asking me to get involved in other aspects of school life whether that were to assist them in afterschool clubs, being on playground duty at lunchtime or sometimes even getting involved in the school plays at the end of the year and teaching English songs for the children to sing.

The work placement was highly unorganised on the part of the British Council which truly reflects how the French operate on a daily basis. Documentation took forever to be sent over and the process wasn't very clear. It took months to hear back about where my school was to be located in the country and I only found out the name of my two schools around 2 months before actually moving abroad which was highly stressful at times as I am very impateint.

I felt that the schools really invested in me because they depended on having a language assistant in their school to support learning from a different cultural perspective and inspire students. I felt that the training was completely insufficient however and we were required to only attend two half day training days of which we travelled 2 hours each way and were not reimbursed for this or paid.

The future prospects with British council are highly unappealing. Although I thoroughly enjoyed my year abroad and the experience, it was not solely because of the job but more embracing the culture and living in a totally different country and gaining that sense of belonging and independence through the improvements of my language learning. I find the British council very unorganised and not a very respectable employer. Pay is also very low at 800 euros per month after tax.

There was the University of Toulon not too far from me and we joined their University group on facebook and managed to make some friends there who we often went out with. It was nice because they wantedd to learn English so spoke to us in English and we would reply in French - it was a very mutual relationship and I still keep in contact with them today, I even keep in contact with some of my older students aged around 22.

The cost of living was very high living in the South of France, especially considering the rent as my apartment was right on the beach and between me and my housemate from Germany we paid just over 1000 euros a month for everything included which I found pretty steep. If you lived in some of the dodgier areas they were cheaper but I wasn't keen on this from a safety perspective

The nightlife was quite quiet actually. Bars only stayed open until around 2am and if you didn't have a car it was very hard to get to nightclubs outside the city and taxi's were extortionate, sometimes totally up to 30 euros for a 10 minute journey. I didn't particularly go out very much, and spirits are horrifically expensive (around 10 euros for a single gin and tonic) but wine on the other hand is extremely cheap.

There were a few opportunities to get involved in activities outside work such as tutoring students and I also was invited by one of my colleagues to salsa classes that he held in a local bar on a weekly basis but otherwise the school itself didn't offer much opportunitity to actually participate in activities. It certainly didn't promote anything to my knowledge.