A guest post by newish TEFL blogger and TEFL.net reviews volunteer Jo Cummins:

“About two years ago, when pregnant with my son, I gave up my teaching job and moved countries and haven’t (for reasons to lengthy too get into) gone back to teaching yet. Although being a stay-at-home Mum is the best job in the world, I do miss teaching. However, I have found a number of ways to engage with the TEFL world without toiling away at the coal-face.  Here are a few of the ways I am keeping in touch with TEFL, and I hope it is useful for people who find themselves in a situation like mine and for those currently teaching too.

1) Materials Writing

If, like me, you find after years of teaching you have folders and hard-drives stuffed full of worksheets and materials, now might be a good chance to think about doing something with them. I’ve submitted resources to Teachitworld for a number of years, and in return they send me a royalties cheque every 6 months. It’s not much, but it’s more than I get for them in my folder! And they also edit your resources and make them look pretty and professional for when you use them next. Because I enjoy writing materials, I am also now starting to write materials for publishers and language schools. It is great, flexible work to fit around other commitments, and this is now my part-time job, and I love it! If you are interested in writing materials, a good place to start is the ELT Teacher 2 Writer website.

2) Tutoring

Tutoring is a lot easier to fit around when you are available than teaching. I tutored a young lady for a while in exchange for childcare, a skills swap that worked well for both of us. I found this arrangement through Gumtree (ask and you may receive!). Often just placing adverts in local shops or cafes can work well in finding students though. I’ve also done Skype tutoring, found online through the website UK Tutors. The problem with tutoring I find though is that there are often many unqualified people offering their services at prices much lower than I would be prepared to work for! A possible solution to this is to offer exam preparation classes (IELTS, FCE, etc) which people often seem willing to pay more for.

3) Examining

I must admit, I haven’t done any examining since having my son (largely due to losing my examining centre when I moved) but I know other mums who have continued to examine through maternity leave as a way of keeping engaged. Often exams take place on the weekend when there is more likely to be family and friends available for childcare duties. If you aren’t an examiner, it may be worth looking at getting qualified. Look up examining centres near you and email them to see if they are recruiting. There are even possibilities to be an online assessor (though be warned, I was turned down for one of these roles as I wasn’t currently teaching –grrr!).

4) Seminars/Webinars/Conferences

If you want to keep up-to-date with latest practice, and keep your brain ticking over there are a number of seminars and conferences you can attend. The British Council hold free seminars all over the UK, many of which are recorded to watch at a later date. There are also many webinars happening, held by organisations and publishers. A good calendar of ELT events can be found here. Many of the major conferences, such as IATEFL, also have significant online coverage so you can follow proceedings from wherever you are.

5) Studying

I think have a break from teaching gives you an opportunity to think about where you want your career to go and then you can investigate ways you can get there.  There are lots of opportunities for online study these days, including the distance DELTA which I am hoping to start soon (not sure how I’m going to do Module 2 yet, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it…) and other online certificates available. There are even many Masters qualifications that can be studied online by distance these days, or part-time to fit around other arrangements.

6) Twitter

Now, I admit, I was very cynical about joining Twitter. I thought it was all people talking about what they ate for breakfast. It turns out there is a busy ELT community on Twitter that are all sharing interesting ideas, links, blog posts, upcoming events and seminars and generally being enthusiastic about their work  in teaching from wherever they happen to be in the world. I also sometimes participate in the lively #eltchats that happen every Wednesday, sharing and discussing different topics. So if you aren’t on Twitter yet, why not give it a try? I don’t have a staffroom to bounce ideas around in anymore, so Twitter has taken on this role for me. It also gave me the confidence and idea to start blogging, which is point number 7….

7) Blogging

Until I joined Twitter I had no idea how many great blogs there were out there – many of which have such great teaching ideas that I wish I had a class to use them with! Others are full of interesting reflections and ponderings on teaching and life as an EFL teacher. I wanted to join in! Because I didn’t have a class I couldn’t write a blog about what was happening in my classroom but what I do love is writing lesson plans and ideas. And my big passion is using creative writing in ELT (driven by an MA in Creative Writing). After a quick dig round to check no one else was writing a great blog on the subject, I started my blog Creativities, for ‘Creative Writing ideas and activities’. It is a great way of engaging with the online ELT community and I love sharing my ideas. So my advice for anyone wanting to start a blog is to choose a subject you are interested in, and then just start writing!

If anyone else has any ideas for ways to TEFL without the teaching part, then let me know! Although, as you can see I’m keeping myself busy (not to mention my toddler keeping me busy…) and I hope when I do return to teaching I will be newly enthused and full of ideas.”

Many thanks to Jo for a perfect guest post! Follow the Guest writers tag below for many more guest pieces, and please leave a comment on any post if you’d like to join in the fun.