What does it look like to teach English?

I work on Wednesday through Friday from 1 pm to 9 pm. I typically have 4-5 classes each night. The other 4-5 hours are spent getting ready for class as well as eating dinner each night. Wednesdays are usually a five class night. Thursdays are a four class night. On Wednesdays I teach two social clubs, which is free range talking about any subject. I usually do one for advanced level students and one for lower level students. My upper level student, Peter, is a joy to teach. He is in his twenties and is trying to figure out life. I have always loved working with the college age students. As I learn more about him, then I can begin teaching him and encouraging him with the truth. It is great to be able to teach classes like "Knowing your Value" or "Believing in a Hope and a Future" which are encouraging and unheard of lessons here. My younger students are more challenging. It mostly feels like glorified day care. I usually have approximately 10 students around the age of 11. We play games where we go over vocabulary of fruits, vegetables, days of the week, etc. It's not my favorite. Some of the children are particularly challenging. 

Outside of my social classes, I have either a private one on one class or a salon class, which has 1-4 students. They are usually intermediate or advanced level speakers. It usually means we are focusing on active vs passive sentences (something I didn't know how to describe until I came here to teach it), present perfect or other tenses (again, knew how to do it not what it was called). I've learned quite a bit about English since I became an English teacher. LOL. I also normally have a beginners class on Wednesdays, in which we learn very basic vocabulary for an hour: calendar, clock, workbook, pencil, etc. Playing 3-4 games that emphasize the same words in different ways. Spelling, reading, pronouncing, etc. 

Thursday and Friday nights are basically the same. 1-2 Social clubs of differing levels, then 1-2 private or salon classes.  Saturday and Sunday, I work from 9 am till 7 pm. These days consist of teaching 6 classes each day, with two hours of prep time and two meal breaks. They are loooooong days. Saturday is consists of four beginner classes and two social clubs. Sundays are three beginner classes, an advanced class and 1-2 social clubs. The Friday night getting off at 9 pm and being at work at 9 am on Saturday is challenging, but I usually am asleep by midnight and can wake up at 8am and get to work in time. 

I have a weekend class with three-eleven year olds that is a lot of fun. They are good kids and we always laugh and have good conversation. Some classes with older students are boring and are about specific business topics like thinking about where to build our next factory and what things we need to consider before we build. I think it's helpful for adults who are already working in business to learn those English terms, but IMO it's not super interesting. 

I am the only full time English teacher at my training center. We have 4 part time teachers who come from England, Ghana, Chicago and Spain. I see them usually one night a week where they teach for 2-3 hours that night. We had another full time teacher from South Africa, but he needs to change his visa to a work visa to be able to continue teaching.

I hope to switch to a new school where I will teach M-F from 8a-4p, have weekends off, make more money and have longer paid holidays. We'll see. That's my job here in a nutshell.