hello welcome back since today is the 15th of October that's how we say the dates mostly in British English 15th of October 15th of October we're celebrating teachers day here in Brazil which is where I'm from and where I live and I thought I would come and share a little bit about how I became an English teacher I have said this so many times before but I know there are new people watching me all the time so why not say it again why not say it again I was 21 years old this is a while
ago I am now 36 almost 37 I was 21 when I got fired from my job so I used to work I used to work this is something that happened in the past it was what I was doing back then I used to work in a shop actually a very fancy Boutique fancy special with expensive items shop um and I was selling clothes and bags and shoes and jewelry and they were all very nice and luxury items I was not happy there that's the truth I was not happy there I was not good at selling
not naturally good at persuading in people making people buy stuff having to call them up and tell them to come and see the new collection just felt really burdensome for me this means it felt really unnatural and it was a burden it was a difficult task for me you know what I mean and so I had not been performing very well at work I had not been I cannot say I have not been because it's not about a situation that's happening now this is something that happened so many years ago so I had not been
performing very well on one day I was called into the office and they said I'm afraid we're going to have to let you go I'm afraid we're going to have to let you go this means I'm kind of sorry not really but a little bit to say that you are fired no more working here for you I left in tears in tears is just another way to say crying not because I like the job I didn't but because it's just so painful to deal with rejection don't you think it's it hurts it's not even about
whether or not you like that boyfriend or whether or not you like that job it's about the fact that when they tell you I no longer want you to be be in it with me you just feel rejected because that's the truth you are in fact being rejected so I was crying walked to the tube station got the Train the underground home this is when I lived in London and decided a couple of weeks later that I was going to put up an ad in a Brazilian magazine saying that I was teaching conversation lessons for
Brazilians who needed to improve their English why and how did I have that idea I don't know I I don't know all I know is I remember noticing you know noticing how native speakers were always complimenting my English they were always saying I spoke so well and I sounded like a native speaker and I thought h i see Brazilians around me really struggling really struggling having a difficult time learning this language so why not teach them in the same way I learned which was learning to listen and repeat listen and repeat and make that a
daily thing so I put the ad up on that magazine tiny very small ad I got a call a couple of days later from a lovely woman called Nubia and she asked more details about my lessons I explained she asked how long I'd been teaching unfortunately I had to do something I don't like to do which is tell a little lie and I told her I had been teaching for 2 years cuz I thought to myself I thought to myself if I tell her she's going to be my very first student in my whole life
she's not GNA trust that I can do anything for her and I knew that I would be able to do this I don't know how I knew I don't have the answer I literally do not know how but all I know is I planned that lesson so well I was going to teach 100% in English from day one yes from day one um and I was going to talk about life and I was going to talk about her and I was going to get her to repeat sentences that were useful and learn vocabulary that could
really make a difference in her life so she came over and I had my first lesson with her 2hour lesson I remember a 2our lesson not to hours 2our lesson because you say lesson you remove the s from hours okay and it was really great she really enjoyed it she paid me20 for those two hours which I really really cherished I cherished I loved it because I had just done something that I I had enjoyed and that I felt and this was the feeling that really changed something within me within inside okay within me I
had done something useful I had used my time to do something that would make a difference for someone else and I did not feel that standing in a shop floor on the shop floor for hours a day trying to sell clothes for people who didn't really care about what they were dying cuz they just had so much money they didn't really care was doing anything good for me as a person I felt like I was just wasting my time most of the time and with Nubia I just felt good so she left and she booked
her next lesson and she became my student my first student I was teaching her and I was teaching her husband as well separately separately and then 7 months later the decided to come back to Brazil and this is before online lessons y all this is before Skype and everything else that came after so I was only teaching face to face that meant that we had to stop our lessons on the last day she came to see me she gave me a box of chocolates and a card and she's setting the card that she had never
had a teacher quite like me and that when I read the card in front of her I just felt deep in my heart look this is the moment I have to tell her the truth she has to know that she was my first student she has to know that I will never forget her so I told her and I said I will never forget you you were my very first student I'm sorry I had to lie to you I knew I would be able to teach you but if I had said it was my first
lesson I don't think you would have trusted me very much much so I told her the truth I came clean told her the truth and never forgot her and that was the beginning of my long long journey and history as a teacher I've never looked back L this expression this means I've never changed my mind about this or decided to do something else or regretted this decision to pursue teaching fulltime and in the last four and a half years teaching has changed so much for me with 100 days so 100 days was a dream come
true because it made my work accessible to so many people from so many different nationalities people that would not know about me otherwise and now they do and now they can learn from me in a way that they feel I'm right there in front of them even though I'm not so why am I recording this video I'm recording this video because sometimes we just don't understand stuff that happens in our life sometimes we just don't understand things that that we go through pain that we go through I I was really hurting when I got sacked
which is the same as fired and I never knew that this would come from that moment I was let go and I felt so rejected if there's something that you just feel you have to do even though you don't know why cuz I didn't know why I was doing that I just felt I had to do it and the moment I had my first lesson with Nubia I knew I was a teacher I was a teacher and from then I started learning lots of things I did not know about grammar about teaching I decided to
not take a traditional teachers training course because I did not want to teach traditionally so I learned Lots about teaching and methodologies so I learned lots and lots of it just by myself and that was amazing because I could really develop my own way of teaching that does not really rely on things people have said once or things that we read in books it's really so much about my own experience as a learner and as a teacher so com I've literally combined these two in order to find my own way of teaching English so I'm
really happy to be recording this now because I know so many of you are going to watch it and will understand a bit more about my work and everything I've been through but just most importantly don't ignore that feeling inside you telling you go this way try this even if it makes no sense and you don't even know why you're doing you do it cuz you never know just how much that can change the course of your lifetime thank you so much for watching and thank you all for being my students see you next time
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