Teaching English in the Philippines

Life as a teacher here is completely different to anything I've experienced during almost 25 years working in a language classroom in Europe. Having grown accustomed to receiving a timetable on the first day of term with a schedule incorporating 5 or 6 classes of between 20 and 30 pupils in size, it was a bit of shock to arrive here and find that I'd be responsible for teaching a total of 8 pupils. This number has since grown to a class comprising of 11 children and I am gradually learning how best to support these pupils in the course of their school days when I'm not working as a mainstream teacher for almost 90% of my working week.

I see my cohort of 11 ESL learners for precisely one-eighth of my entire timetable and the work we cover is very flexible. Each of my pupils belongs to 1 of 4 Homebase classes (or tutor groups) and depending on which of the 4 Homebase classes they belong to, they have different lessons at any one time. Their timetable is divided up into 5 blocks (or lessons) each day, with each block lasting a total of 1 hour and 10 minutes. They have what are known as 4 Core subjects - English & Social Studies (taught in tandem for 2 blocks by the same teacher) and Maths & Science (also taught in tandem in exactly the same way). These 4 subjects account for almost two-thirds of pupils' timetables. The remaining third is divided up between various Encore lessons - PE, music, drama, etc. including ESL (or EAP as it is known here - English for Academic Purposes.) The pupils in my EAP class come from a variety of countries including Indonesia, Japan, Korea, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Norway and Argentina.

This teaching model is commonly referred to as 'inclusion' and my role in this system is to spend most of my time supporting these pupils in their 4 Core subjects. Since 5 of my 11 pupils are members of the same Homebase group, this is the class that I tend to spend most of my time with. I am also an advisory Homebase teacher with the same class, which means that I also see them during Homebase time at the end of the day on 2 occasions a week. There are 20 pupils in all in the class, and their official Homebase teacher is my North American colleague Teresa who has been a tremendous help in enabling me to adapt and settle in here. She is pictured here with the kids as they proudly hold aloft the much-coveted Grade 5 Shaw Cup which they won during the Modified Handball tournament during 2 days of Classroom Without Walls.