Both of us LA’s have been keen to organise extracurricular activities at our school, and the other foreign teachers have followed suit. We now have an English Corner, guitar club, debating club, environment club and tennis club. Most of these are English speaking environments where the students get free tuition and speaking/listening practice.

I personally feel that I also benefit by organising the tennis club and English Corner. Skills like event organisation, personal tuition, directing large groups, willingness to donate free-time will go straight onto my CV. Besides this it’s fun, and a good chance to chat to students outside the classroom (I find that all of a sudden they discover English they’ll never show in lessons).

In this way LA’s bring something to the school that local’s can’t: expertise that are unusual locally (tennis and guitar). We are also a much-used resource for the teachers to check grammar points and incidentals.

Although our school is so used to having foreign teachers I think some of the staff get a little tired of us coming and going and so don’t make a huge amount of effort to include us in social activities or inform us of teaching issues (dates of exams etc).

Over all I feel that we are valued members of staff, and are appreciated for the contributions we make, which is rewarding as we have worked quite hard (over and above our meagre 14 hours a week.