As a native German speaker who had spent a lot of years growing up in the United Kingdom, teaching German is relatively easy for me to do. I work privately as a tutor and teach mainly English and American students. A lot of my work is for the children of middle and upper class families who have emigrated to Germany, however I also teach a lot of exchange students who have come to Munich for a semester or two on a kind of intellectual European adventure. Although the actual method of teaching the language is the same day in and day out, my job does provide me with a degree of freedom and variety.
This variety is often due to the locations that I teach; because I am a private tutor who is not linked to a college of language school I often go to people’s houses and apartments to give them their lessons. A couple of times I have even been called to a hotel because a student has required a lesson while only being here in Germany for a few days. This can be a novel experience as it is certainly not the standard location for a German lesson to take place.
A couple of days ago I was called to a Hotel Munich (Hotel München) in order to teach a German lesson to a student of mine. This student is a 14 year old English boy who is part of a rather wealthy and famous family, although I wont drop any names as I am much too professional. He doesn’t seem particularly interested in learning German himself, however his mother spent a lot of time in Hamburg while growing up and the family still do a lot of business within Germany. For this reason, every time they are in Munich the mother insists on me giving a private German lesson to her son despite his complete lack of interest in it. She never seems to know when they are coming to Munich, and I normally only get a phone call a day or two in advance. However I am compensated well for this instability and it does give my life a certain level of excitement and stops me from becoming easily bored.
Teaching German in a Hotel Munich (Hotel in München) was an interesting way to spend an afternoon, especially with this particular family. They actually have a home in Munich, which is where I normally do these lessons. This huge opulent house was being renovated this week however and so they were staying in a luxury hotel instead. Visiting this hotel was a fantastic experience, and a rare chance for me on my teaching budget to see how the other half lives. The boy though was as distant as ever, and the natural passion I have for teaching languages was hard to sustain. Overall though it was a good experience and one that I probably wont be having again any time soon. I would never give this up for a regular job that would trap me inside the same classroom day after day.
