Boniswa KhumaloSouth Africa
The passion was there. Now the skill is too.
Finding the skill to match the passion.
- Now
- Teaching English online, with two job offers received
- Before
- Part-time lecturing, then a first classroom in Saudi Arabia
- Uses
- The flipped classroom, eliciting and prompting, lesson planning
Boniswa had lectured part-time before her first real classroom in Saudi Arabia, where explaining a simple concept could turn into a nightmare and she felt like an imposter. Her students now tell her how easy she makes things, and two job offers followed.
What her students tell her.
The most encouraging thing Boniswa Khumalo has heard recently comes from her students. More and more of them tell her how easy it is to learn something with her. She calls that “just mind-boggling, because it’s something that I’ve struggled with for such a long time.”
“Just as a person in general I don’t think I’m very good at explaining things,” she says. Before the programme, trying to get a simple idea across would cause “a lot of awkwardness in personal conversation and a lot of confusion in the classroom.”
She had not been a teacher for long. Her teaching had always been part-time, and “more lecturing and not really teaching”. Then she had the chance to teach for the first time, in Saudi Arabia. She loved it, and doubted herself all the same. “The passion was there but the skill was missing,” she says.
It was everything I wanted teaching to be and more, but there was still this huge cloud over me.
Students at their point of need.
So she went looking for a programme that would supply the skill she lacked. She also wanted it to address a gap she sees in education, which she describes as “meeting students at their point of need”.
Since joining, she says, “I have been forced to think strategically.” She names effective lesson planning, the flipped classroom, and eliciting and prompting, “things that are so different from your traditional learning”. Those few come up again and again when she talks. “I keep mentioning those few because, man, it’s just made such a huge difference,” she says. “I’m able to communicate so much better.”
A language school leaders understand.
Boniswa recently started a job teaching English online. It does not pay very much, she says, but it is “soul fulfilling, because it has proven to me that one, I can actually do it, and two, applying the right approach will make things so much better.” She had wondered whether she would make the cut so early in the programme and without a teaching qualification. “Would I convince the employer that I can actually do it and start producing some real results?” She has since encouraged her sister to join the same teaching platform.
What she learnt also changed how she presents herself to schools, and she has since received two offers. She is “stoked” about them: “I’m able to balance my love for teaching as well as be able to earn an income that I would like to earn.” It is a role she always wanted but “never really felt like I had it in me”.
With the things that I’ve learnt in a class, I was able to tweak the way I sell myself.
