TEFL Finding A TEFL Job
TEFL Job hunting tips from where to find TEFL language schools to how to choose a good one and where to look for jobs teaching English
eslHQ Makeover
eslHQ has a new look. Check out my original review of the site for the basics – and a summary of some of the reasons I think it’s cool – and read on right here for the latest.
One change is that the best discussions from the forums are now featured on the main page, so you don’t have to search through the forums if you want to jump right in with advice or questions of your own. You still have to register, of course, as you do to post on nearly any forum, but this is just a matter of sharing your email and creating a user name and password.
A selection of ESL jobs are featured in a box on the right, and a number of already-made worksheets are easily accessible via a page you can get to via one of the new tabs up top. The board games on offer can come in handy if you need something student-centered to fill ten or fifteen minutes, especially with a lower level.
Date: October 16th, 2007 |
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Can You Trust Online Reviews?
In this day and age where a person is “searchable” verbally and – the author of this article on food critics asserts – visually, a food critic may not be able to remain anonymous long enough to give a fair evaluation. The restaurant will recognize him/her and alter its service.
Putting aside what I think are a number of pitfalls with this food critic argument, it’s interesting to consider how blogs and online forums and the like can impact TEFL in a similarly murky way.
Certainly they open up the possibility for average people to share their experience of particular employers or schools; you don’t have to be a guidebook writer (or whatever the TEFL equivalent of that is) to have your say. Obviously, though, those with a certain platform are likely to be given more credibility than others.
The Internet also leaves open the possibility of concealing your identity. And when the Internet is known as such a powerful tool in TEFL – and it is – I personally would put very very little stock in online reviews (or at least not rely on them as a main source of information) because you have no idea where they are coming from.
Date: October 1st, 2007 |
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Questions To Ask About The Curriculum, Or, Spotting A Scam Part 2
It came up in a post on spotting scams that sometimes “scam schools” don’t even care what their teachers teach (or even know what they should teach) – they just want students to enroll and pay. So asking questions might give you some insight as to whether or not a potential school is on the ball. As with the other questions to ask at an interview, I don’t mean to imply there is one correct answer to all of these, or that a school that can’t answer some of them is necessarily bad. But an academic director should be able to give some reasonable answer to these…and just the fact that you ask them may tip them off that you’re not the best person to take advantage of and try to trick.
Also check out Guy Courchesne’s post with other resources for spotting a scam. [It is also Guy Courchesne who found this perfect picture which I have appropriated!]
Do the students follow a book? Which one? [Keep in mind that while setting your own curriculum may sound interesting and challenging, and perhaps even less work, for a new teacher and one without a lot of support it would probably soon become difficult – I wouldn’t say this is necessarily a sign of a “scam school”, but in my experience it is pretty rare for a new teacher to have this responsibility.]
How many hours do they have to finish the book? Is that in real hours or teaching hours of 45 minutes each?
Is there a test at the end of the term? What is on the test (ie grammar and vocabulary only, or are skills like reading, writing, listening and speaking assessed too)?
Date: September 13th, 2007 |
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“The Secret To Looking For Work Abroad” From Brave New Traveler
“In my experience, it seems that simply standing upright and speaking several relatively coherent sentences in English is sufficient to land the job.”
Perhaps a bit of a colorful exaggeration, but the point is that EFL work is probably the easiest and most widely available kind of work for native English speakers to find overseas. But what if you don’t want to teach English?
In The Secret to Looking for Work Abroad at Brave New Traveler, author Josh Lew shares his insight on finding other kinds of work abroad.
He mentions tourism as one possibility; not doing routine jobs like waiting tables, but specifically for sports-oriented instructor positions. Competition is stiff, he acknowledges, but my intuition also tells me that aiming for this type of job is a better bet than cleaning rooms or busing tables.
Writing for or editing a newspaper also comes up. I have to say that this strikes me as work a lot of native speakers would like to have – but my instinct is that it is harder than it appears. I do recall interviewing one English teacher who found work with a paper in Japan. This kind of work may, however, have the added benefit of being work that a company can logically require a native speaker for, which will mean a work permit is possible.
Date: September 9th, 2007 |
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Five Ways To Avoid Being Overworked, From Yahoo’s Penelope Trunk
I’m becoming a fan of the career advice of Yahoo’s Penelope Trunk. Her advice seems to draw a great deal of angry criticism as comments, which may just be par for the course when lots of people read it and have the opportunity to post comments. Or it may be because her advice often challenges commonly held beliefs.
So how can you avoid being overworked? According to Penelope:
1. Force your boss to prioritize by explaining that you can’t do all that. Unique TEFL challenge: guess who has the advantage in getting inexperienced people to sign contracts committing themselves to a certain number of hours a week. Partial solution: get informed by learning about norms and getting a TEFL certificate before signing a contract. When you’re more aware of what goes into planning a lesson, 30 contact hours a week may not seem like such great deal after all.
2. If your boss won’t prioritize, do it yourself. Basically - cut corners because you are in a no-win situation anyway. Somewhat unique TEFL challenge: whereas in a typical work situation, you may not deal directly with those affected by your work, in TEFL, your students are the ones most impacted by this. And you deal with those students regularly, and probably feel an obligation to them, so cutting corners is easier said than done. Partial solution: read number 3.
Date: August 28th, 2007 |
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How To Scope Out A Potential Teachers’ Room
If a school has answered a variety of questions to your satisfaction, you may proceed to the step of visiting. On that occasion, you’ll probably have the chance to view the teachers’ room, which is one more thing you can use to assess a school.
The teachers room is like a secret lair – it’s off limits to a large portion of the population, it swarms with important activity at times and is dead silent at others. There is mystery surrounding it. Well, there is if you make up exciting and suspenseful stories to tell you classes about what goes on in there.
But how to know what to expect? What’s does a “good” teachers’ room look like?
There are a lot of papers (stacks), including scraps of cut up papers. An especially together teachers room may even have these collected in one place so people can share and save themselves the trouble of cutting up more paper (this is rare though and not a deal-breaker in my book).
Tons of dulled pencils abound, but no pencil sharpeners.
Several shiny, heavy, weapon-like staplers and rows of staple refills scattered throughout the room.
At least one scary guillotine, ideally without any blood, severed fingers, or rust.
Some well-organized resources on the shelves and some on desks, both hidden under papers and hiding important things themselves. All kidding aside, look for a variety of resources and not just sets of the same textbook. Page through several if you can – if it’s a language school you are bound to need activities which appear fun (and ideally which actually are fun and useful both).
Date: October 6th, 2007 |
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Top 10 TEFL Fears - Addressed!
1. I’ll set off without a job arranged and I won’t find a job. You probably will; do research before you go to see how your qualifications stack up and what the market is like in the place you intend to go. Don’t automatically assume you need an agency or course provider to guarantee you a job.
2. I won’t get paid. This happens much less frequently than people worry about it. You may get paid late; you may get paid less than you expected; but it is rarely to a school’s benefit not to pay teachers at all.
3. I’ll get arrested. Use common sense, stay out of trouble and you probably won’t. Keep in mind what your embassy can and can’t do to help you.
4. I’ll wake up in a bathtub handcuffed to the faucett with a kidney missing and my wallet gone. You never know about recruiters these days, but I think this is more about visiting the wrong prostitute, and that’s another logue completely.
5. I’ll get lost. This is actually a realistic fear, especially if you are like me and have no sense of direction. You will learn to deal with it and come to appreciate the opportunity it gives you to interact with locals.
Date: September 27th, 2007 |
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Can You Spot A Scam?
TESall.com is one of my regular sources for EFL news, and whenever I venture into the message boards (which is unfortunately not as frequently as I should), I come across even more useful stuff. Most recently I stumbled upon a link to a detailed post on how to spot a scam, based on one apparently concrete example from China.
I would frame this as a good example of a particular scam, rather than a guide to spotting each and every scam. The truth is, not all scams will look alike, and it is precisely that which makes them hard to spot. However, extrapolating from this case I identified a few things to look out for:
Inconsistencies within the ad itself (such as Mr. John Smith becoming Mr. Joe Smith near the end of the ad, or the same or similar ads posted with slightly different details)
Too-good-to-be-true claims (“live free in the best part of Shanghai!”)
Information that just don’t make sense (“the school’s area is 660,000 square meters” – this is more than the downtown area of the average city)
An abundance of vague terms (teacher’s duties are to “accept reasonable requests” and “finish tasks”)
Date: September 11th, 2007 |
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Breaking A Contract - Right Or Wrong?
Debating right and wrong in absolute terms is usually a recipe for disaster, perhaps nowhere more so than when it comes to TEFL. Alright, TEFL may not be the best example, but a debate got going some time ago at Dave’s ESL Café when one member raised the topic of “breaking a contract – right or wrong?”
The logical answer to me, especially in a field like the private language school industry, where students are adult clients and the teacher’s role not so different from a customer service one, is that it depends.
There are teachers who work with young people preparing for exams they need for their university entrance, and teachers who spend five or six hours a day with children who come to rely on them. Then there are teachers who see their adult students one or two hours a week, and face canceled lessons without pay more or less at the student’s whim. There are employers who pay late or otherwise shirk their part of the deal.
Date: September 5th, 2007 |
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Spotlight On France
Paris. The only bad thing about it, aside from the labyrinth-like Gare du Nord, is that a certain hotelier decided that his “colorful” daughter would share its name. Really, I cannot speak French to save my life (anymore) and my bank account would be empty after a day or two there, but everyone loves Paris. And the rest of France is nothing to scoff at either.
It is probably cruel of me to post about yet another country where my North American readers are unlikely to be able to work legally in EFL. And, according to a Times Online article TEFLtastic recently shared, it looks like gaining French certification can give you a hard time too (I learned from the comments that apparently the author of the article does have French citizenship).
But.
If you are from the US, between the ages of 20 and 34, and either have a degree or are enrolled in a degree program, you may be able to teach in France as an assistant. Basic proficiency – apparently three semesters will do – is another requirement, and know that you could end up anywhere in France. For housing in Paris, Craigslist seems active, and the usual suspects for jobs (for those who can legally work) also apply – TEFL.com, ESL Cafe and esljobfeed.
Date: August 19th, 2007 |
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