Six Famous People Who Once Taught English as a Foreign Language

If you’re thinking of entering the TEFL world and taking a CELTA course to start teaching English as a foreign language, you’re probably wondering what’s ahead: the countries you’ll visit, the things you’ll learn, and the students you’ll inspire. There have been countless ELT teachers who have gone on to make a significant mark in the development of TEFL teaching, be it through writing grammar books, creating innovative podcasts or setting up prestigious language schools. However, the role of a humble English language teacher could also be the starting block for a career of fame for an entirely different reason – such as a writer or a rock star. Want to know how? Well, just look at the some of these star names that once taught English as a Foreign Language…

J.K Rowling

The worldwide best-selling author spent a stint teaching English in Porto, Portugal before she wrote the first of her famous Harry Potter books. She taught night-time classes and wrote during the day, while listening to Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. A marriage, a new-born daughter, a divorce and a few years later, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was born. Today, she is widely thought to be the richest author in the world, with a net worth of close to £1 billion!

Bob Geldof

Rumour has it that music mogul and philanthropist Bob Geldof spent some time teaching English as Foreign Language in Murcia, Spain. The standards for qualifications were a little different in those days, recalls Geldof: “The sole qualification for being able to teach [English] in the school was that you knew no Spanish”. Looking for a change of scenery, he soon took off to Canada and began editing an underground newspaper, before returning to his home country of Ireland and starting the now-famous band, The Boomtown Rats.

Benedict Cumberbatch

After finishing boarding school in England, Cumberbatch took a gap year, and spent five months teach English in Darjeeling, in the far north of India (not a million miles from Mount Everest!) at a Tibetan monastery. He taught 12 monks that spanned in age from 8 to 40 years old. He lived in the basement of the monastery as their teacher ‘on site’. Not only did the 19-year-old Cumberbatch spend time teaching, he also learned all about Buddhism and the monks’ way of life. Without any proper training in English language teaching, he said that it was “a lot more like a cultural exchange” and that the he learned a lot more than the monks did!

Edward Norton

Film star Norton moved to Osaka, Japan after graduating from Yale College, where he earned a BA in History (and he also studied Japanese). While working for his grandfather’s company in Osaka (and perhaps inspired by his mother who was an English teacher), he spent a little bit of his spare time teaching English as a foreign language. Norton even featured in an EFL textbook used by Nova, one of the major English language schools in Japan at the time.

Wilfred Owen

Famed for his poem Dulce et Decorum Est, Owen was an English soldier and influential poet, well-known from the period of the First World War. Before he joined the army, in 1913, he worked as a private tutor teaching English and French at a School of Languages in Bordeaux, France and he also taught private lessons. Tragically, he was killed in France in November 1918, just a few days before the armistice was signed.

Charlotte Bronte

In the mid-1800s, Charlotte and her fellow author sister Emily travelled to Brussels, Belgium to attend boarding school. In return for their tuition, Emily taught music and Charlotte taught English. They both returned to England shortly afterwards, due to the death of their mother. But, just a year later, Charlotte went back to Brussels to continue teaching. Her second stint was not a happy one: she was homesick and had a strange attachment to the school’s married owner, Constantin Heger. Eventually, she moved back to England, where she wrote The Professor – some of its events inspired by her time teaching English.