We’ve Been Working on Our A-Game…

How about you?

It’s been a crazy couple of years, to say the least! Since my last post, I’ve had a baby, bought a house, expanded My English Coaches … oh, and survived the first half of a global pandemic!

Covid-19 upended the familiar and turned routine on its head. I coped, adapted, struggled, and adapted some more. Like many people, the beginning of the pandemic put me in survival mode. And while sometimes it still feels like I’m surviving, I have seen tremendous growth: in myself and my ability to take on challenges, but more importantly in my students.

The pandemic has touched everyone in some way, though for some people it has been more profound than for others. Luckily, most of my students were able to weather the worst of it, but almost all of them were immediately cut off from their families without the ability to return home to see loved ones. In addition, working from home meant many of them now spent the vast part of their days behind a screen; gone were the casual conversations with colleagues; gone were the lunch breaks, the happy hours, the team bonding. What they found instead were endless streams of emails and Slack messages and hour after hour of Zoom meetings. But in all of that chaos, there was little time to actually speak English or even just connect with other human beings.

That’s where we came in. Demand increased greatly for remote lessons where students could hone in on giving remote presentations, where they could practice participating in virtual meetings, or just find a place to speak English and get feedback. We were here for our students when they just needed someone to talk to about what was going on in their hectic lives (and of course, we kept correcting their English).

Luckily, we had already been working remotely before the pandemic struck, so that had given us some time to practice remote learning before many other schools. We had incorporated tools like shared documents and interactive whiteboards to make online learning engaging, and our teachers had been experimenting with group breakout rooms before most people even knew what they were. So when the pandemic hit, we were able to immediately switch to 100% remote lessons.

And you know what? It worked. Despite everything that’s happened in the last 2 years, we’ve seen incredible growth in our students (and teachers, let’s be honest). We’ve seen shy speakers turn into Zoom champions, we’ve seen pronunciation transform, and most importantly, we’ve seen our students not just surviving, but reaching their potential.

Remote learning has made English coaching more accessible; this is a trend we see across the education industry. Paradoxically, while physical movement has been reined in, collaboration across time zones, borders, and cultures has been improved. Now more than ever we understand how essential clear communication really is.

This pandemic is far from over, but it’s already taught us so much about our ability to rise to the occasion. I am immensely proud of what we have accomplished together, and the progress I have been privileged to be a part of. It’s been a crazy year and a half, but we’re still here, and stronger than ever.

If you feel like your English could use a “brush up” or want to dust off those cobwebs before returning to in-person work, send us an email. We’re here to help!