Just Like Starting Over: Berlin update, December 2015

Meet Ringo, over there.

He's my puppet alter ego – basically made up of all the pop cultural references that wove together my childhood. He talks much like Terry Jones' Mandy, Brian's mother from Life of Brian, only with a scouse accent, loves curries, and isn't even the best drummer in the Beatles.

Ringo is also my English teaching buddy.

Now, as many who have met me for even a few minutes knows, I really have no time for children. Odd little things with nothing interesting to say. I will very often walk in the polar opposite direction if I suspect that I'm likely to share some kind of public space with one of them. Horrible things. Like Agatha Trunchbull, I'm glad I never was one.

So, it may come as something of a surprise to learn that as of last week I'm teaching English now to small groups of Kindergarten children around Berlin. Well, me and Ringo are.

I had my first class in a Kindertagesstätte (literally, 'children's day place'. Berliners call Kitas what the rest of Germany calls Kindergartens) in deepest east Berlin. My pupils that night: four of these little autonomous people called Jerry, Frija, Davinia and little Lenn, the loon.

I'm working for OskarLearnt Englisch, a really wonderful little company that teaches German children English through play and games. Their teaching methods are so much fun, for both learner and teacher, and the company itself provides brilliant support for its teachers – something I'm learning isn't always the case with language centres. Their teachers meet once a month for a general chat, drink free beer, and provide mutual support, not just in teaching but, as we're mostly recent new arrivals from the old country, about the realities of making a life in Berlin.

I'm also teaching English to an amazing Italian-speaking Swiss chap via Skype twice a week, which never fails to be a learning experience for both of us. Pietro is an innovator and inventor, writes classical music on his piano, and is just an all-round good egg. His current project is creating super-efficient batteries that stores renewably-produced energy. So, obviously, me and him get on just fine.

Just this week I've also been hired by a company called Inlingua, a massive language training organisation with, by all account, 309 centres in 35 countries spread across 5 continents. Which is quite exciting. I met the head of teaching last week – a hippy from America who left the US in 2003 because of George Bush. Given my reasons for leaving the UK, we immediately had something in common :-)

Here's the update, in the proverbial:

As I wrote in an earlier blog, I'm working 30 minimum wage hours a week, from 8.00-14.00 every day, in the Kirondo warehouse. Even though it's minimum wage, this still pays my monthly rent, travel card and phone bill and more, and because I have a job that pays over 500Euros a month, it also pays for my health insurance.

I then have the rest of the afternoon and evening to dedicate to building my teaching career, which in just a few short weeks is showing green shoots of life.

The ambition, of course, is to teach enough through the week that allows me to jettison Kirondo.

To that end, English teaching isn't that lucrative a job in Berlin (seems that every British wonk here, with or without qualifications, is have a crack at it). Also, on top of the aforementioned monthly essentials, without steady employment I would suddenly have to pay my own health insurance, at an eye-watering 180 EUROS a month.

Freelancing

To build an ESL (English as a Second Language) career, one must be a self-employed Freelance teacher. Here's my website, if you're interested. 

You are then hired by various language organisations for a set teaching contract, signed between the customer and the language centre, either in the college itself with students or, more likely, onsite with the company or Kita that provides the students.

The average pay for an ESL teacher in Berlin is about 16 E/h, although Oskar Learnt Englisch pays 20 E/h. An ESL teacher can command more in other German cities; elsewhere in Germany, demand outstrips supply – every bugger wants comes to Berlin.

And, of course, as a freelance you need to pay your own tax, so remember to put away about 23% of everything you earn through teaching to pay the annual tax bill.

Taking all of that into account, I will need to work about 6 hours a day, Mon-Fri, teaching (that's not including traveling, prep and marking time, before you think about breaking out the invisible tiny violins). That's 120 hours of teaching a month, or 30 hours a week. So far, I'm teaching 5 hours a week.

So, you know, getting there.

On top of that I'm also living up to my usual life motto of 'In for a penny...', and have applied to be on the board of the English Language Teachers Association of Berlin and Brandenburg (ELTABB).

Starting over

It's a strange and surreal feeling, after 15 years in one career, to be entirely starting over: new career, new country, new language, new friends, new priorities, new direction – everything unknown and everything terrifying/exciting (funny how those two make such comfortable bedfellows).

In weaker moments, slaving away in the warehouse, I wonder what on earth I'm doing; away from my home and family, away from my friends and everything comfortable and familiar, away from a life and a mildly successful, modestly well-paid career that I'd spent the best part of two decades building, away from my beautiful, brilliant girlfriend...

But then, when I'm sitting on the U-Bahn and a German rock kid is telling me about the best indie clubs in the city, or drinking a beer in the Stadion An der Alter Försterei stands with the 1. FC Union Berlin Englisch crowd, or having adorable German kinders using me as a climbing frame while we're playing games, and I think, actually, 'Ich bin ein Berliner. F*ck yeah! I'm just starting over.'