Diary of a Freelance Teacher

Dear Diary,

I haven’t written much on here for the last few months.  The two main reasons for this are a lack of time and  inspiration.

The lack of time is never going to change, and I suspect this is the same for most people no matter what job they do, how big or small their family is or what hobbies they have.  There just aren’t enough ours in the day to everything we would like to.

The lack of inspiration, though, is something that we can work at.  Inspiration can be found in the most unlikely of places, and often when we aren’t even looking for it.  This failure to come up with something to write about had even crept into my teaching as I felt I was merely rehashing and regurgitating ideas and material I’ve been working with for ages.

Or maybe it was just a reaction to a pretty bad 2016.

Perhaps it was the fear of boredom setting in, or it could just be a natural cycle of being creative, but in the last month I have started to have ideas again.  I have managed to create some new classes for my students and blogging projects have sprung up in my mind.

I am shortly about to launch a blog of my own called Greene Languages.  On that site I will be writing about whatever comes to mind form equality in ELT to other possible jobs for jaded teachers.  I want to keep writing on this site, though, as I enjoy reading the other contributors and I know that when I stop writing I stop reading.

So my new project on RichmondShare is going to be writing about my life as a freelance teacher.  I hope to look at some of the good and not-so-good sides of shaking off the shackles of the boss and DoS.  I’ll be sharing some of the tips I have picked up from my 8 years of working for myself and one or two almost unbelievable stories.

If you are a self-employed teacher, or if you are thinking about becoming one soon, I would love to have your feedback, ideas and questions.  I have a few posts in mind already, but we never know when we will need more inspiration.