Interview with TEFL Horizons Co-Founder, Lauren Harrington
Show Notes
This is a special episode of Expand Your Horizons, because the interview is with one of our co-founders! Shannon interviews Lauren all about her teaching experience in Romania, how she fell in love with the TEFL field, and that one time she was invited to do a "small training" in Brazil that ended up being a massive, nationally televised presentation! Tune in for the inside scoop on Ms. Harrington herself.
In this Episode
How Lauren got into the TEFL field- what inspired her to start teaching
Her spontaneous decision to move to Romania
What teaching was like for her without a certification or any experience
What her life in Romania was like- her work and the day-to-day
Her tips for teaching (very) young learners
Why she recommends getting at least preliminary training before starting to teach
What kept her in Romania for six years
How her career evolved- what caused her to take the next step
How she found her first teaching job in the United States
How she found out about the CELTA course and learned the value of good training
What her job at EF language school in Boston was like- and how to succeed in a private language school in the US
What inspired her to pursue a DELTA certification
How she got through a (surprise!) massive presentation in Brazil that she’d been told would be a small private training
How she became a CELTA trainer
How being a trainer affects her teaching now
What life as a CELTA trainer is like
What she still loves about teaching
Her advice for anyone who wants to become a CELTA trainer
Her advice for prospective teachers
What she’d do differently before moving abroad if she could go back in time
How she got into materials writing
Her favorite travel destinations
Interested in learning more about lesson frameworks? Check out our blog post all about them, or sign up for our newsletter for teaching tips and guidance delivered straight to your inbox every Wednesday.
“I love when you see that moment of clarity on (your students’ or trainees’) faces. ”
“One of the things that I’m grateful for and one of the things I really push in training is using frameworks as approaches to teaching a lesson. I’m a really creative teacher, so I can bring a lot of different elements into the classroom. But I found earlier in my career that it could be really hard to structure all of those ideas (. . .) what was the end goal? Without a framework I found it hard to measure my students’ achievement of their goals.”