AchievewithJon

For new students, I will walk through a pretty specific agenda: 

1. introductions - Mainly the student to get an idea of level and what their individual learning/English goals are.

2.  Some examples of my teaching style, tools I use, and possibly some examples of work I've done with other students.

3. Questions and next steps.

I have a BA (honors) in English Literature.  I've been published as a writer both for journalism and literary criticism.  I've got more than 20 years of document and email creation in the corporate environment, from one on one emails to submissions of proposals and statement of work for multi-billion dollar projects.  
I am also strong at teaching general conversation and any type of writing.

I have a CELTA teaching certificate from Univ of Cambridge to teach second language learners.

My typical rate for a 50/60 minute lesson varies from $20 - $40 per hour, depending on the type of lesson and amount of out-of-class review or preparation involved.  

For example, for a conversation or new article-based speaking and vocabluary/idiom lesson, that would be at the low end of my price range.

However if I'm doing document review or creation, that's not usually best done in class time, so I will charge for my time out of lesson and use the lesson time to review my findings and work on improvements.

When I retired from IT in 2009, at 53, I came to Thailand and was too young to get a retirement visa, so I began teaching.  I discovered that I really love it, and have been teaching ever since.

I've worked in large classrooms in my early days, but since then I've mostly done small, adult or older teen lessons, in small groups and one on one.  I'm best working with intermediate students and above, because I'm better at enhancing your abilty than teaching the basics.  I'm also far from the best with young children.  I managed two pre-schools in Nanjing, China for a year and I have massive admiration for teacher of small children, but I'm not one of them.

I'm not sure if this question is English-oriented or not, so I guess I'll answer both ways.  Recently I was helping a student in Taiwan prepare for his online interview with a native English speaker to get into an MBA program.  I coached him quite a bit.  He messaged me that his actual interview was quite brief, which made him nervous.  Turns out he got in and they reallly were impressed enough by his communication that they didn't need to extend the interview.

On a personal note, I would say my work during the most recent election in the US was a very rewarding experience.  I'll leave it at that.

Because I'm not a teacher with a "packaged" approach to teaching, but rather tailor what and how I teach to each student, it's important that you be able to clearly state your goals.  If you want to learn how to manage your tone in an email to be more effective at motivating or informing a team, that's what you should say.  If you want to be better at understanding the culture of another, English speaking country, tell me that.  

I will never hesistate to tell a student when I'm not the suitable teacher for them, but I can't read minds, so I need my students to know what they want to improve. 

I think I answered this one above, but also it's great to discuss things like lesson frequency, what kinds of work you can do, or need me to do between lessons, and, finally, what's a "win" for you in the relationship?