Adult Literacy Teacher As A Part-Time Career Can Be Interesting

Adult Literacy Teacher / Remedial Education

As second careers go, it's hard to find a job that's more simple and more rewarding than teaching remedial or adult literacy classes. You'll be able to work only a few hours a week in a relaxed classroom environment, you have a reasonable degree of freedom when it comes to your classroom style and teaching materials, and you'll be doing something rewarding with your time.

What Do You Need To Know?

Before your first class, pick up a few education textbooks or read some articles online about teaching practice. Another excellent technique for building your teaching skills is to take a look at student exercise books and to study how they're written. How do the writers introduce topics? What kind of language do they use, and how do they move from an overview of a topic to the point where students are asked to demonstrate their knowledge or practice a new skill? Keep notes and try to use some of the textbook writer's techniques when planning your own lessons.

Another excellent technique for adult literacy classes in particular is to pick up a foreign language textbook in a language you're not familiar with. If at all possible, try picking up a book on Russian, Greek, Japanese, or any language that uses an unfamiliar alphabet. It's a good way to put yourself into your student's shoes--they have to make the leap from perceiving strange orthographic symbols to "hearing" them as sounds and seeing them as words, after all.

Keep a journal about your experiences--what you're thinking of, what you have difficulty with, when your "moments of epiphany" come--and apply that knowledge to your teaching style in order to better connect with your students.

What Sort Of Classes Are Right For You?

Pick subjects to teach that personally interest you, not just subjects that you think will be easy or "necessary" for students. Younger students tend to treat all subjects as equally abstract and tedious, barring a few favorite classes here and there. Adult students, though, bring much more life experience to the table and tend to think of subjects insofar as they relate to actually using knowledge in the world.

If you're just teaching algebra without any personal connection to it, your students will regard the subject as dry. If you're teaching algebra with a long career as an engineer behind you, you can pepper your classroom talks with anecdotes about how you've actually applied your knowledge, which not only promotes a good rapport with your students but also helps them to understand and use the material.

How To Get Work

Stop by a local community college and see what sort of night classes they offer. Chances are there's a standard course offering that falls within your area of interest. Local nursing homes or senior centers are sometimes good places to find adult literacy classes or other adult education classes, especially if you're interested in teaching more casual, less job-skill related subjects.

City offices or social services offices can also be good leads for adult education jobs, since many larger cities offer vocational training programs or other remedial education options.

You don't have to have a huge amount of classroom experience to be a good adult education teacher. Usually employers will be more interested in two things: you as a person, and what you'd bring to the table as far as a curriculum and approach go.

Before you go to look for a job, it's a good idea to write out a few sample curriculums for yourself in a variety of subjects. Pick a textbook or other set of materials you like and break down a weekly schedule of lessons. It doesn't have to be perfect yet--this is just to give employers an idea of what your approach will be. As a rule, though, put your most critical lessons in the first two thirds of your schedule, leaving the last third for "icing on the cake" classes.

You can't guarantee that your students will grasp the material according to your schedule, and it's far more important to successfully impart a few key pieces information than it is to cram as much as possible into a ten-week schedule. Remember when you were in high school ?

If you can't get your own class right away, it's a good idea to audit classes taught by other people. This will not only give you some good experience in an actual adult classroom, but will give you valuable "face time" with experienced adult education teachers, who'll be willing to vouch for you at the next hiring cycle. Becoming an adult literacy teacher can be interesting and challenging at the same time.

Return to Baby Boomer Educational Services Adult Literacy Teacher