My name is Juan and this has been my journey in education
Hello!
My name is Juan Rivera. I was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia. My career as a foreign language instructor began about 9 years ago upon graduating from a BA in Modern Languages.
My first teaching internship took place at a private international school in Bogota when I was just 23 years old and it involved assisting one of the English instructors for 4th grade students. The experience of working at this private school was quite challenging from a classroom management perspective, but also very fulfilling as it allowed to practice and apply the knowledge I had gained at university.
Prior to this first teaching experience, I had the opportunity to travel to China to complete a language exchange program in Beijing. I studied Chinese Mandarin for a year and became interested in learning about other cultures and languages quite quickly.
Thanks to my Chinese studies, I was able to apply for a teaching position at a small private company in Bogota. The program had already launched level 1 materials and I was given the task to develop levels 2 and 3 courses for the Chinese language programs. This opportunity gave me a lot of freedom and autonomy in the development of the course, the activities, and the teaching itself. I was also very satisfied to work with smaller groups and adults.
After working for a year at this company, I applied for a similar teaching position in a bigger and more international language school in Bogota. I began my career within this company as a junior language instructor whose main responsibility was the delivery of English, French, Chinese and Spanish language lessons to adult individuals and groups working for international companies.
Working for this company was the beginning of a 8-year career path that has taken me to where I currently stand at this point.
I returned to China in 2013 and continued my job as a language instructor within the same company. Then, in 2016, I became more involved in instructor training and shortly after this I was promoted to Manager of Instruction.
This job helped me become more familiar with team leadership, recruitment, training, career development and administration. It was truly a much more challenging, but also more fulfilling experience in my career. As a young and inexperienced manager, I was faced with the task of rebuilding an instructional team whose morale was dramatically low. During my first year as a manager of instruction, our team had already lost nearly half of its instructors, so we were faced with the difficult task to we develop a recruitment strategy that would target overseas candidates.
I was then involved in the recruitment and hiring of an international team of instructors coming from all over world. Consequently, we were able to significantly reduce our turnover rate, and until today, one of my biggest career achievements has been to supervise and lead a team of 35 instructors coming from more than 15 nationalities. Working with this team has certainly been a rewarding experience. I have not only become more aware and critical of my own cultural beliefs, values and expectations but also have been exposed to others’ cultural perspectives.
Nevertheless, I have witnessed firsthand that part of my responsibilities in this job has not only fallen into helping instructors build on their teaching skills, but also in helping them understand what working in a cross-cultural environment entails. Our Chinese team and foreign instructors frequently express an interest in cultural differences, perceptions, ways of thinking, work approaches, communication styles and how they influence communication at work.
However, to many of us, these differences seem to be quite challenging as they become obstacles for communication at. For this reason, I strongly believe there is still room for improvement as language instructors in multicultural contexts like the one in China. I feel that incorporating intercultural communication skills into our instructor training and development programs could potentially improve our communication and reduce cultural shock at work.
That is why I am currently pursuing a Master Program in Education and Globalization. I find it to be a perfect match for my career as it addresses a lot of the situations and challenges I have encountered while working in this field.
I understand that the program focuses on how globalization impacts different sectors of education and how multicultural differences can be seen as a source of learning. Therefore, I would like to be able to implement my learning throughout the program into the training program and development of foreign language instructors working for Berlitz China.
My name is Juan Rivera. I was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia. My career as a foreign language instructor began about 9 years ago upon graduating from a BA in Modern Languages.
My first teaching internship took place at a private international school in Bogota when I was just 23 years old and it involved assisting one of the English instructors for 4th grade students. The experience of working at this private school was quite challenging from a classroom management perspective, but also very fulfilling as it allowed to practice and apply the knowledge I had gained at university.
Prior to this first teaching experience, I had the opportunity to travel to China to complete a language exchange program in Beijing. I studied Chinese Mandarin for a year and became interested in learning about other cultures and languages quite quickly.
Thanks to my Chinese studies, I was able to apply for a teaching position at a small private company in Bogota. The program had already launched level 1 materials and I was given the task to develop levels 2 and 3 courses for the Chinese language programs. This opportunity gave me a lot of freedom and autonomy in the development of the course, the activities, and the teaching itself. I was also very satisfied to work with smaller groups and adults.
After working for a year at this company, I applied for a similar teaching position in a bigger and more international language school in Bogota. I began my career within this company as a junior language instructor whose main responsibility was the delivery of English, French, Chinese and Spanish language lessons to adult individuals and groups working for international companies.
Working for this company was the beginning of a 8-year career path that has taken me to where I currently stand at this point.
I returned to China in 2013 and continued my job as a language instructor within the same company. Then, in 2016, I became more involved in instructor training and shortly after this I was promoted to Manager of Instruction.
This job helped me become more familiar with team leadership, recruitment, training, career development and administration. It was truly a much more challenging, but also more fulfilling experience in my career. As a young and inexperienced manager, I was faced with the task of rebuilding an instructional team whose morale was dramatically low. During my first year as a manager of instruction, our team had already lost nearly half of its instructors, so we were faced with the difficult task to we develop a recruitment strategy that would target overseas candidates.
I was then involved in the recruitment and hiring of an international team of instructors coming from all over world. Consequently, we were able to significantly reduce our turnover rate, and until today, one of my biggest career achievements has been to supervise and lead a team of 35 instructors coming from more than 15 nationalities. Working with this team has certainly been a rewarding experience. I have not only become more aware and critical of my own cultural beliefs, values and expectations but also have been exposed to others’ cultural perspectives.
Nevertheless, I have witnessed firsthand that part of my responsibilities in this job has not only fallen into helping instructors build on their teaching skills, but also in helping them understand what working in a cross-cultural environment entails. Our Chinese team and foreign instructors frequently express an interest in cultural differences, perceptions, ways of thinking, work approaches, communication styles and how they influence communication at work.
However, to many of us, these differences seem to be quite challenging as they become obstacles for communication at. For this reason, I strongly believe there is still room for improvement as language instructors in multicultural contexts like the one in China. I feel that incorporating intercultural communication skills into our instructor training and development programs could potentially improve our communication and reduce cultural shock at work.
That is why I am currently pursuing a Master Program in Education and Globalization. I find it to be a perfect match for my career as it addresses a lot of the situations and challenges I have encountered while working in this field.
I understand that the program focuses on how globalization impacts different sectors of education and how multicultural differences can be seen as a source of learning. Therefore, I would like to be able to implement my learning throughout the program into the training program and development of foreign language instructors working for Berlitz China.
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