Where To Get Teaching Materials?

[attrayant]

For those of you who either teach privately or don't get textbooks supplied by whatever school or agency you're working for, where do you go for all of your teaching materials and supplies? I've seen many mom & pop school supplies shops selling pens, pencils, pads of paper, etc. But the variety of English teaching materials (IELTS guides and such) is poor. And the largest dry-erase board I've seen was tiny - perhaps a meter wide by a half meter tall. Unsuitable for use in a classroom unless you buy a dozen of them and stick them to the wall like tiles.

I'm thinking there has to be some clearinghouse of teaching supplies and infrastructure - white boards, desks, overhead projectors, etc. I have a dozen or so grammar books that I used in the States for TESOL courses but they are starting to get raggedy and I'd like to get a supply of new(er) looking materials.

I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks.

Edited February 27, 2012 by attrayant

[beachyman]

For those of you who either teach privately or don't get textbooks supplied by whatever school or agency you're working for, where do you go for all of your teaching materials and supplies? I've seen many mom & pop school supplies shops selling pens, pencils, pads of paper, etc. But the variety of English teaching materials (IELTS guides and such) is poor. And the largest dry-erase board I've seen was tiny - perhaps a meter wide by a half meter tall. Unsuitable for use in a classroom unless you buy a dozen of them and stick them to the wall like tiles.

I'm thinking there has to be some clearinghouse of teaching supplies and infrastructure - white boards, desks, overhead projectors, etc. I have a dozen or so grammar books that I used in the States for TESOL courses but they are starting to get raggedy and I'd like to get a supply of new(er) looking materials.

I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks.

My friends who teach get stuff from some bookstore around RCA or print stuff online like ice breaker games.

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[BlackArtemis]

I and my Ex converted our 4 story town house into a tutoring center with 2 floors being classrooms, the bottom being a lobby and living on the fourth. This is what we did:

you will notice that places like Big C, Tesco, Macro, etc etc have tent sales off to the side of their parking lots. They sell wooden furniture. We simply went over there and bought a bunch of tables and stools for each classroom. We then gave them specs for the whiteboards. They delivered everything within a week and mounted the white boards to the wall. We also went to a furniture store and picked up simple "pleather" chairs and love seats for the lobby. I think we might have spent 10-15k on something like 8 large tables and 24ish stools, 2 3x5' white boards, 2 love seats, and 4 chairs.

As for teaching materials, we simply bought the same text books that the students were using at school (95% of the students came from where we worked). We bought a few more supplemental books and then we sat down and read through their books. A lot of the books kids are using fail to go in depth with grammar and really don't do much more than lightly touch on topics. So we would make a list of the grammar points that each unit was addressing and made note of the unit's vocabulary. We then used the books, internet, and self made resources to create our own books that, while following their school books, made up for the lack of grammar. We then photocopied each book and gave each kid one who came to study with us. We charged less per an hour than many places around but we had 5-10 kids per class.

We visited the US on a yearly basis and stocked up on new materials to rotate into our own books. I do agree that this took a lot more effort than simply finding decent books at bookstore, but we ended up with a lot of pleased parents. We ended up having 3 classes M-F, her teaching 2 and I teaching one, and 4 classes on Sat, each of us teaching 2 2hour classes.

I have not bothered looking for an overhead, but I have a feeling that a cheaper projector and a laptop would be a viable choice by now as the technology has been around enough to make it affordable.

Good luck, it might take a bit of work to get it up and running, but the pay off is fantastic.

[attrayant]

Thanks that is inspiring. And your story mirrors what I was thinking of doing because there seem to be a lot of inexpensive vacant buildings available around here and an endless supply of locals walking up to me on the street asking if I could spend a few tutoring hours with their son/daughter.

I've seen those tents in the Makro parking lots, but not Big C. I'll have to check them out more closely next time.

As for teaching materials, we simply bought the same text books that the students were using at school (95% of the students came from where we worked).

Did you buy them directly from the school? If not, where?

[BlackArtemis]

In Chiang Mai we have two local bookstores that stock the books. DK and Suriwong, I don't know about other areas of Thailand.

The only problem is the number one thing you will hear is "I want to learn to speak, I don't care about reading and writing". It's hard to explain the importance since they see many Farang speaking Thai but not reading it. I simple tell them that immersion helps and if they want their child to excel, they need to do it all.