Project Life
Teaching English in Ecuador

Volunteers need to fly into Quito on the first Saturday of each month, where they will be met by the GVI project manager and shown to their hotel in Quito to spend one night. After breakfast the next day, you will visit the ‘Mitad del Mundo’, a monument marking the Equator, where you will take a tour of the outdoor museum, marvel at the experiments you carry out to prove you really are on the exact centre of the earth, and get a taste of the different cultures that are present in Ecuador. From here you will head up to Otavalo, stopping for a welcome lunch at a typical Ecuadorian restaurant on the way, arriving late afternoon to be introduced to your host family.

For the next two days you will undergo TEFL training which will help you prepare for the classroom. The course is intensive as there is a lot of material to go through. When the course is complete you will start teaching at the schools. Days start with eating breakfast with the host family before meeting up with the other volunteers to catch the bus to the project site, arriving to start classes at about 8am. Volunteers will work on their project from Monday to Friday (apart from the first week when you take the TEFL course). There is a break mid-morning and classes then continue to 1pm. Volunteers will head back to town for lunch and spend the afternoons planning next day’s classes and learn basic Spanish phrases to help conduct the lessons.

Depending on group size and dynamics you may be planning lessons in the morning and teaching in the afternoons.

No formal teacher-training is required as each volunteer will be supported by GVI TEFL teachers, project managers or existing volunteers for the first few days. Teaching manuals, resource books, the Guatemalan curriculum and many other teacher resource books are available for the volunteers’ use. A weekly meeting is held in the communities to discuss structure, swap ideas and to work on the following week’s classes.