the traveling teachers series is back and i'm so excited about today's episode because
i'm interviewing my good friend and director of language connection in santa cruz bolivia thanks
for joining me today luke great to be here ollie in today's episode we are talking about luke's
institute language connection how they adapted to moving from a presidential or face-to-face
school to moving to online classes how you can actually get a job with him and the team at
language connection in bolivia and the future of language connection as it looks to expand
within santa cruz and within bolivia more generally so if this is one of the first
episodes that you are watching with this traveling teacher series i'm trying to bring you a unique
first-hand experience of travellers living and working all around the world if you're
interested in being part of this series send me a message and we can get in contact and if you
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new episodes or any of my new videos let's get started with the interview a little bit about
language connection put the merchandise in this front and center so everyone can see it uh yes
lime nation is a english language institute based out of santa cruz bolivia we're independent we're
not part of a chain um the other two directors of language nation founded uh the the site in 2016
and so we've been going for over five years now i joined in 2017 as another director uh and at the
moment we're a completely virtual school but plans to go back into the classroom when it's safe to do
so obviously yeah we want to provide that option for sure and we do a lot of student surveys um
and i pay a lot of attention to what students are saying now we're always going to have a virtual
option for language collection now because whether we're in pandemic or not because um it's taught us
things about how to how to exist um and so we'll be a virtual school have a virtual wing
to language connection forever from this point on the way that we the way that we teach the way
that we've built a community feels personal we try and make a welcoming environment and although we
can do that virtually i want to have the option to also do that presumably but of course it's got to
be done in a safe way so we're investigating it we've got plans to do it for the next
for the upcoming semester i remember we're going back to march 2020 when we found out about like
the fact that language connection was going to go to virtual it was i think it was a thursday or a
wednesday afternoon and we all thought ah it'd be like two or three days and we'll be back in the
class we managed to like well you guys managed to like with we had a meeting on the friday you
guys managed to like get everything together and and start online classes that following monday so
you know proactive great institute i don't think it was just us we could only do that
because our teachers are well trained and know what they're doing and our class sizes are small
the things that make language connection good as a prudential school
helped us become a virtual school on a weekend we wouldn't have been able to switch to a completely
virtual school if we couldn't trust our teachers and it became a complete okay we need to do this
uh we need to we need to be virtual we need to find ways to do i remember that meeting very
well it's like okay here's what we're gonna try and do here's what we've brainstormed but
we're as new to this as everybody else you guys are professional teachers like we want your input
of what's going on and i i remember us going on zoom for the first time um in different rooms all
over language connection and we're all going in and just figuring out what worked um this is back
when we don't know what a breakout room is and it's like well how can i do pair work activities
i don't know how to do it and that was us in in march 2020 and then it's like okay so we're
going to try this um and we told getting all the students online getting them they were so panicky
from like from the administrative side as well the side that the teachers don't see it's like
oh no i can't possibly do virtual classes literally just click a link
get some headphones get a microphone find like a space in your house that is devoid of your brother
playing fifa and and try and focus on on your english class and be open-minded to it but at
the same time um there's transferable skills here like knowing how to conduct yourself in a virtual
meeting is now a skill that has become essential um so if you're taking a teenager for example you
don't have the option of being able to say oh i don't do virtual stuff it's like 20 year olds
who say i don't do technology it's like no it's just you you need the that's not really a good
response anymore it's like you can they it can be tricky it can be daunting it'd be difficult but
you have to practice these things um and yeah and and ride with it like certainly
language connections problems were not the biggest problems that happened during the pandemic like
people are going through much bigger um stuff than a a business having to go virtual
in a weekend so you got to kind of just roll with it and and see what happens and full credit like
the students as well they did a great job in adapting and i mean like the teenagers and
the kids had no problems and you know it was the panic from the parents and like the older
the older students but yeah it was it was it was great and you know as the world starts to open
up and you know more people become vaccinated there might be more of an opportunity for you
know um esl teachers to start looking abroad and i want to kind of talk about like how can
an english teacher who wants or is curious about you know working in bolivia how can they
go about like approaching you um to get a job at language connection because you hire the teachers
right yeah um i really enjoyed the hiring process actually it's it's really lovely
to get to meet people and everyone's on their best behavior and everyone's so nice
and then they're arriving like oh we've got to deal with this australian for the next two years
um but um but no people it's it's it's a real privilege when someone wants to work for your
company um and i've done a fair few interviews now and i try and do how how we do it is you can apply
to just my personal email lukemalkin gmail.com and when we have vacancies we we look for people and
i do an introduction based interview now which is getting to know that person talking through
their cv but not in huge amounts of details i don't like the standard interview questions
um because i i'd rather find out who someone is as a person what i'm looking for actually
when i'm interviewing someone is the feeling that if i was a student seeing this person come in
as a teacher do i think i'm gonna have that immediate connection with them because
so much of language is confidence building so so much of language connection is making sure you're
um comfortable in the room with the teacher itself how quickly can you build rapport and
i mean personalities mean that building rapport in general isn't just a it isn't just a straight
line but can you do i think you could engage students do i think you could engage a student
who's feeling demotivated one day do i think you can motivate different age groups different
uh different levels of english itself and produce professional and interesting lessons am i do you
excite me as a person and do i think you're going to get on with the rest of the team do i think
you're going to contribute to language connection in general we like an international feel
we hire loads of british people but it's not by i mean i'll i'll keep hiring british people
i'm british i shouldn't do down my own my own origins um it just seems like a a lot of our
teachers have been british but we have accepted from australia united states india we have south
african teacher on staff now um we've never had a canadian or a new zealander yet what is
the requirement what do people need because you know i know that you need to have a celta or an
equivalent right or equivalent or equivalent so i take like the tefl level fives at apple level six
it has to have a so what's great about the celta is i'm familiar with it we are all mostly familiar
with it it's a gold standard entry isn't it it's not a i mean the qualification doesn't take a year
to do like a master's in education it takes a lot longer than a celta that's all it takes
in just over a month and you learn a lot and it's intensive but what makes it really good and useful
for for us as directors of of an english institute is you get that feedback on your classes people in
general of can be very bad at judging their own abilities at times you need someone who is who
knows what they're doing in english teaching world to have watched your classes and given
you valuable feedback whether that is positive feedback negative feedback here you work on this
and that whether that person has listened and followed from that feedback and produced a
better lesson teaching can happen in isolation and your students can love a not very productive class
um and so these 120 hour theoretical only based qualifications that you see and that a lot of
people apply to doing um it it isn't enough for me to to trust that i can let you be in a classroom
with some of our uh students and that you will produce the the standard that we're we're looking
for because we are based on quality our teachers need to be quality um from their from the outset
yeah i'm joking i'm joking i like everything i say about language quality it's just like
oh yeah and i fit this bill look at me i don't work there anymore but i just want to say like
if you do get a job at language connection there's ongoing training joe the other director is amazing
and i the thing that i really loved about language connection was like the support
that we got from like not only the directors like both at work and outside of work because you know
uh if you don't speak spanish it's like difficult navigating life um but there's also a really
strong community of teachers there and i think that's one of the things that i love like i have
friends for life that i gained there you know i lived with them i worked with them um and you know
i i've got friends for life and i think that's a that's a really special thing about the school
that i really enjoyed podcasts with them you have bridges different countries around the world
and and where they've moved on to it's really nice to see i i love seeing that you've like
kept up and not just yourself like with everyone else's friendships and you kind of feel like okay
yeah they were part of the story for a while um but it's also fun to bring in new people and
and and uh and get to do the same thing for them building communities is fun it's really worthwhile
it's probably the most rewarding part of my job as a director is being able to provide a
service not just for the students but it's really nice to be able to hire someone and go yeah they
you be here for a while use this as your like as a stepping stone for going around the world the
case in point view was incredibly satisfying for me that like you could enjoy two years here and
then move on to something else having done a great job for us and it was win-win and i really really
appreciate that that's that's something that isn't actually that easy to find but is very rewarding
to have so speaking of the future of language connection what is the future like do you want to
um because you're you're in santa cruz bolivia at the moment like the the hot sunny tropical santa
cruz but if people don't know or if people don't know anything about bolivia there are other cities
yeah yeah i mean groundbreaking point
so ridiculous is there an opportunity for expansion within santa cruz or
within the country yeah we're looking at expanding in santa cruz right now um so the main expansion
that we've done is virtual and we'll forever have that virtual part as i was mentioning but we want
a presence in in the north of the city as well now uh and that would be where we go from from now on
a lot of what we can do as far like our aim is to provide quality english classes to whoever need
whoever needs or wants them right so if there's always a demand for more people to learn english
and the capacity of people who would benefit from from learning english is huge it like
it's many more than we actually teach we think we have in business terms of very good and very
relevant and very useful in demand product then there's potential for us to grow yeah because
we grew really well um because we were the only kind of school at our quality and price range
uh in in santa cruz over the the period of growth that we've had over the past five years there were
loads of institutes in santa cruz but they there are loads of restaurants in santa cruz there are
different price points you can definitely learn at these other institutes i don't want to talk badly
of them by any means but there's a certain but we invest more in our teachers than anybody else does
by far of course we charge more for our classes um as a result but it's it's not it's
not uh we don't charge too much that it's kind of unavailable for a vast majority of bolivians to do
and it's an investment you're more likely to have promotion opportunities and higher job prospects
and higher paying jobs if you have a strong level of english so it is an investment and
we do have scholarship schemes and we have uh various like routes to access for people from
from lower income families we do have that um so the future is dictated by demand a lot of the time
um so could i see us going into a different city at some other point
potentially if we had the had the right people who wanted to to set themselves
up in open directions in different countries in south america potentially um but it's very it's
very it feels for me at least it feels very out or a little bit too far away yes we're expanding
within santa cruz but to go any further than that right now is dreaming and dreaming's fun but like
you got to do things step by step you've got you've got to go the right way through these
through these plans to make sure that you're that you don't abandon the students you have you don't
stretch yourself too far you don't start lowering the quality of your service these are all concerns
so there's always a balancing act there's loads of things in balance and i'm i'm excited to watch
from afar because like after the parasitico in november 2019 and then this pandemic that seems to
last forever i'm excited to like get out of this and and and see language connection expand and
flower and flourish as it is right now but see it back back in the classroom so if you are an esl
teacher watching and ever thought oh maybe bolivia make sure you get in contact with luke i'll leave
his uh email in the description and i'll also leave links to your website and your social media
uh it's at language connection on instagram on instagram yeah we got we got language connection
before anybody else stole language connection um we didn't get facebook we didn't get language
connection from it's language connection bolivia um well thanks so much thank you