Featured Teacher - George Chilton

I’m originally from Woking in the UK and I’ve been teaching English for just over 8 years. I started off in a city called Wonju in South Korea. I then moved to Barcelona in Spain where I lived for 6 years, and now I live in Medellín, Colombia.

 

What is your most memorable experience overseas?

It’s tough to decide on one moment in 8 years. I suppose getting married in Cartagena de Indias was quite memorable (!) - but that’s very recent. Really there are too many memories to pick just one- the whole experience of travelling with friends, and meeting so many excellent people from all over the world is irreplaceable for me. It’s been well worth the financial hardships and occasional tropical sickness! It’s just not something I’d be able to do if I’d stayed in the UK.

 

Maybe one memory does stick out though. It was my first day in Wonju and I decided to take a walk in what I thought was the direction of the school. However, it turned out I was wrong and I got completely lost in the back streets. I was a little stuck with the two words of Korean I knew; “Where” and “I don’t know.” I did the only thing I could do and I hailed a taxi anyway and pointed to my address. “Where? I don’t know!” was apparently enough to get me back. I’ve since learned to pay more attention in new cities!

 

Why did you decide to go overseas?

I decided to get on a plane after a good friend of mine sent me a cryptic MySpace message asking me to rescue him from South Korea. We started chatting and it turned out that there was a job on offer in his school. He said I might like to come - and I said yes without hesitation. I’m not sure what made me do it, but I thought it sounded like an adventure (and it has been!).

 

Tell us about your website.

www.designerlessons.org was established in December 2011. The blog shares free ESL materials - mostly lesson plans. Teachers can find ready-prepared multimedia lesson plans for most levels. They can contact me via the site contact form, though I’m more easily reachable on Twitter. The blog won a British Council blog post award. I run Designer Lessons alongside my good friend and colleague, Neil McMillan.

 

Do you have any advice for first time teachers?

I think the one thing I’d say to new teachers is don’t overplan. That might seem strange from someone who runs a lesson plan website, but the key for me is to be flexible, to be able to explore language and help students when they need it. If we stick rigidly to the outline we prepared, we sometimes miss learning opportunities and classes can become less dynamic. On the same point, sometimes lessons just don’t work very well, so it’s always good to have some tricks up your sleeve.

 

What are your future goals?

After starting Designer Lessons, I almost immediately began working as an ELT editor for a big publisher. I’ve since done a fair bit of materials writing for various publishers. I founded a language services cooperative in Barcelona with Neil McMillan, Alan Ritchie, and Irene Almazán - Serveis Linguistics de Barcelona - and that’s something I plan on developing further with my fellow cooperative members.

 

For now, I’m working in the media industry in Colombia as a public relations writer. I also write freelance didactic materials and teach a little on the side. My main goals are to push further into writing and hopefully produce a novel at some point - but as my past has taught me, it’s impossible to predict the future!

 

Check out DesignerLessons.org

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