Teach & Travel in South Africa: TEFL Experience

To be honest, just after signing up for my South African internship, I was filled with thoughts of 'what have I done?' and 'why have I done this?'. Although, those worries and qualms couldn't have been more wrong; signing up was the best chance I ever took.

My day to day experience at the school couldn't have gone better. My teacher was extremely welcoming and helpful. She was happy to give me as much help and independence with my teaching that I wanted. I assisted for the first few weeks and then I started to teach 1/2 planned lessons a week. I also often took activities last minute and worked with children one-on-one. However, some teachers at the school did take me out of my class to simply mark their books. I know they are very busy with their heavy work load, but I felt like I could have been doing other activities (like working one-on-one, helping with reading or teaching lessons) that could have been more beneficial for the children. I was told another teacher had asked my class teacher, the majority of my teaching days, if she could borrow me for marking. I felt this was unfair on my class because they were probably the most boisterous in the foundation phase. Therefore working one-on-one with them, especially when one or two had to catch up with the others, helped the teacher immensely. We would also sometimes have to wait an hour-ish for our transport back home from Simonstown School, which was quite problematic if we had plans after school. Overall, my class was amazing and the school was accommodating to allow me to get what I wanted from my South Africa teaching experience.

The city of Cape Town and Fish Hoek village are incredible locations for the internship. I have never been to such a beautiful place! The house was adequate, mostly, for the duration of our stay. However, we did encounter quite a few problems with it. For example, the roof in our room was leaking for the first week (at least) during our trip. This made the room smell, our clothes smell and even ourselves smell. It wasn't pleasant living in damp for at least the first week; especially because it was tipping it down and freezing cold at the time. The TEFL team in England seem great, however the South African TEFL team didn't seem to make this a priority and deal with this quickly. I know that the South African way of life is much more relaxed, but the roof wasn't properly fixed when we arrived, and it wasn't great settling in to a new place that smelled of damp. We also encountered problems with the hot water, which for the duration would only allow 2 hot showers at a time. With 5 girls in our room all attending the same school hours and socialising together, this was tricky to manage. However, faults aside I think the house is suitable for the amount of people in it. The lounge and the pool room are great for socialising.

Probably the biggest highlight of my trip was visiting Hermanus; a cute village about 2 and a half hours from Cape Town. The place was famous for whale spotting and it's beautiful scenery. There was loads to do there and we stayed in an amazing place which wasn't that expensive. I would definitely recommend future interns to check Hermanus out.

I would also recommend warning your future interns more about scamming from ATMs. Some criminals convince you that they are helping you with the machine but then steal your card and your pin number and you don't even know it's happened. It, unfortunately, happened to me and nearly happened to 2 other interns. This seems quite common over there so would recommend emphasizing this as it put a downer on my trip for quite a while.

Overall, not including the ATM scam, my South African internship couldn't have gone better. I learnt so much about South Africa and got a real feel for the place. The township tours and just being part of the local culture was extremely important to get a feel of all walks of life over there. Cape Town is an incredible place and one which I would definitely return to.