As a profession, teaching is one of the more mysterious ones out there. Everyone has had teachers. Everyone sort of understands what a teacher does. Everyone has teachers they didn’t like, and teachers they remember twenty years later. But what makes a teacher special? Is it their expertise, their experience? Their willingness to work with sometimes intractable students and miserably low pay? How do you know if a student has learnt anything?

Around the world, ministries and departements of education have tried to quantify learning. Tests and data abound. Every few years curricula change and standards are renewed or tossed whole cloth. And teachers must completely change how they teach once more. And students have to change how they learn. Sometimes it’s very frustrating not being able to build a plan that suits every need. Micro-management is a problem everywhere.

I am by no means an expert. I have teaching experience, and I know that there have been some students who liked what I did. Here in N Macedonia all I hope is that I bring a real life connection to an escoteric subject that is so very necessary in the world today. Peace Corps has always sent native English speakers around the world to bring real life experiences to their students. I know I’m part of the process. Language learning is still a mysterious science. We understand why some people learn language faster than others, but there’s no way to tell who will be a polyglot and who will struggle.