Foreign Language Assistant Review

I really enjoyed working with the kids and it showed me that I really do want to become a teacher, which is what I'm now in the process of applying for.

I know they appreciated me being there and helping out but sometimes they could have included me more.

I didn't necessarily get that much support from the staff at the school, although I'm not sure I needed a huge amount. The British Council did provide a lot of information though and great training sessions.

It was only 12 hours a week so I did that over 2 or 3 days (depending on the term) but that did give me the chance to explore the new city and do lots of exciting things.

Initially I was just like a living dictionary but after a while I could participate more and I taught a few lessons myself, as well as being in charge of an extra curricular group in which we recorded a radio play for a competition.

I learnt and developed lots of new a pre-existing skills which are all valuable, especially as I want to get into teaching. It gave me great insights into teaching and school life from that point of view.

It was just a staff room so not a huge amount happened but there were a few people who were friendly and used to talk to me between lessons.

It was very easy on my part, I applied to BC and they gave me a placement and provided me with dates etc. The training then took place the week before we started which also helped us to meet other assistants who would be near us. Once I arrived at the school my timetable was up to me and I was free to approach any of the English teachers to ask if I could participate in their classes.

There wasn't really any input from the BC or the school as such, although I often got feedback and advice from the various teachers I worked with which about how I did in class.

It's not really something that I could do. They run placements for students on normally a one or two year basis. I couldn't permanently work for the BC at schools. I'm also not really interested in going into the admin side of it so it's quite unlikely that I'd approach them looking for a job.

We went out most weekends along the Reeperbahn or Sternschanze and also had different social outings to museums or parks or the cinema. I got on with them really well and it was a lot of fun!

Luckily I ended up staying with the family of one of my Abitur students so only paid 50€ a month for rent/bills/food. That helped out a lot as the second part of my year was in Paris (so expensive!!). There were plenty of places to go out that were affordable so we went out a lot.

The Reeperbahn is internationally renowned so I don't think I really need to describe it. It was fantastic. The Hamburg transport system is wonderful so everything was so quick and easy to get to so it didn't really matter where we were going.

I went on a week's trip with my mentor's class to Cente rParcs which was nice. As far as I can remember there wasn't anything else associated with work but as I mentioned before, I had plenty of free time to explore the city and get to know my surroundings.