Michael Burland

America

Hello everyone! I am teacher from the USA who is passionate about teaching English as a second language. I always look forward to delivering the best lessons that I can and I always do my best to try and learn from each and every experience.

I graduated from University back in 2013 with a Bachelor's degree in Education. From there I decided I wanted to travel a bit and looked at ways in which I could do that. I came across the idea of teaching English as a second language. I decided to get a CELTA certification because I read about how prestigious is is in the ESL world. In 2014 I received my Pass B CELTA certification and was ready to start teaching.

Currently I am progressing my CELTA certification even further by becoming DELTA certified.

In April of 2015 I finally found a job that I felt comfortable with and decided to go for it! I ended up in Arequipa, Peru thinking I was only going to be here for three months. After leaving over a year later, I knew I had found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It was there that I fell in love with teaching English as a second language.

In Peru, I taught English to mostly young adults; however the age range was anywhere from 10-60+. I was also able to teach all different levels of English from beginners to advanced students. It was really a great first job for me as I received so much experience. I also did a lot of private tutoring in Peru and tutor many different students in conversational English or test preparation (TOEFL, IELTS, etc.)

After Peru I landed a job in South Korea in the summer of 2017. This job is much different than the one I had in Peru as I am teaching mostly young children (6-10 years old). I have been in Korea ever since and continue to find different reasons for loving what I do.

Both of the schools I have worked at have been great in terms of my professional development. I am in charge of creating my own lessons and teaching the subject matter as I see fit. I am growing as a teacher everyday and learning new ways in which to become a better teacher.

In terms of my philosophy, I always try to make learning fun and enjoyable for everyone involved. If you don't love what you are teaching or learning you will not succeed. Since it is a language, to me the best practice is having the learner speak as much as possible. It doesn't make sense for the native speaker to do the majority of the talking because we aren't the one's trying to learn the language!

I also understand that everyone is different, wants to learn English for different reasons and learns better in different ways. I am always willing to listen to what my student wants out of the classes and adjust my classes depending on what that is.

I am incredibly flexible, adaptable and always looking to be a better teacher.

A little bit about myself. I love to travel, have been to around 10 different countries and I am always looking to expand that number. I myself love to learn languages too and understand the difficulties when it comes to learning a new language. I can speak Spanish fairly well and am currently trying to learn Korean.

I have also recently gotten into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I am about 1 year in and I love every minute of it. The challenge of it is very appealing to me and it seems like no matter what, you can always improve.

I hope to meet you soon and look forward to our future classes together!

[Available Language]
Teaches English
Speaks Spanish (Intermediate)