WHO TEACHES FOR CHRIS POLATCH?
A NATIONWIDE NETWORK OF PROFESSIONALS.
We love our teachers! Over the years we have built up what we believe to be an unrivalled network of language experts, who have been carefully assessed by us.
This process is overseen by our Course Coordinator Clare Pay.
What we look for in our teachers is
- a great love of the language or languages they teach
- a professional attitude
- a friendly manner and great people skills
- a high level of general education
We don’t have a rule that all of our teachers should be native speakers, but we do require them to be totally fluent. We are looking for great language teachers and not all of these are native speakers. However, if you feel you would only like to work with a native-speaker teacher, we are happy to oblige. Just tell us.
TEACHER SELECTION AND SUPPORT
Clare Pay, our Course Coordinator, explains...
We are fortunate to have on our books a wide range of excellent teachers, some of whom have been teaching for us for very many years. Our teachers come from a variety of different backgrounds and their qualifications and experience vary but they have one thing in common – a love of teaching. This love of teaching will always come through in interview as it will in lessons and for our teachers, there is nothing more satisfying than to see students develop their linguistic skills as the weeks go by.
When screening a new teacher, we try to establish what kind of person the applicant is as this can be just as important as his or her academic background. An ability to communicate well is crucial and as in all walks of life, a sense of humour is always an asset! Our teachers need to be reliable, committed and methodical in order to teach a course succesfully so these are other qualities we look for.
Where possible, we try to match students’ interests with those of their teacher. A mutual love of music, for example, crops up quite frequently and it is always gratifying to be able to put opera-lovers or jazz fans together. Where children are concerned, a teacher with a shared interest in sport or drama can be a great ice-breaker.
Whilst it is not a pre-requisite of teaching for us, the majority of our teachers are native speakers of the language they teach. This is particularly important for more advanced learners who want to improve their idiomatic grasp of the target language and to work on their accent. For children working towards exams, it is useful for a teacher to have a knowledge of the exam syllabus – although this is something we can always help with and often do.
Finally, whilst we make every effort to allocate the right teacher, we always contact our students after the first lesson to check that all went well – this way, a student is never left with a teacher they are not happy with. Happily, this is a very rare occurrence!