Job Discussion Forums

czechchick123 · Joined: 24 Apr 2006 Posts: 5

I am attempting to find a job in Prague, but keep hitting dead-ends in my search. I have tried links from this site, as well as others, but only come across Caledonian schools. Does anyone have a list of schools in Prague that I can contact directly? Also, as I do not have teaching experience or a 4 week certificate, is this an impossible mission? All advice will be greatly appreciated.

zewd · Joined: 16 Feb 2005 Posts: 42 Location: Lynchburg, VA, USA

The schools that recruit via the internet, what few there are, are not really the ones you'd want to work for- schools want a face-to-face interview. You're really best off going to Prague and then job hunting. If you have a degree in English, then you won't need a TEFL certificate for most schools. Otherwise, schools are really looking for either a degree in Education, or any degree + TEFL certificate, or any degree + English teaching experience. The days of waltzing into Prague with no qualifications and landing a teaching job are long gone. Keep in mind that there are over 30,000 North Americans in Prague, so you're not as much of a commodity as you would have been 10 or 15 years ago.

Arab Strap · Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 246 Location: under your bed

'I do not have teaching experience or a 4 week certificate'

Might I suggest you get yourself some qualifications and experience before thinking about coming to CZ.

It is those fly-by-night/happy-go-lucky backpacker types who have given those of us who have bothered to get the qualifiactions a bad name (and taken our jobs).

I have spent the last 12 years teaching in CZ and I find it hard to make ends meet, so much so that I've had to up root my family and move to the Middle East.

I hate to think of the opportunities I've lost due to the great unwashed and unqualified who swan into CZ and think that all they need to do is speak English in order to get a job (those days are long gone by the way). This is my chosen career not a hobby or a brief interlude when I 'do Europe' .

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

Without a four-week course at minimum, you really can't compete in Prague anymore. The city features at least five or six + training courses and there are literally hundreds of teachers with at least basic qualifications hitting the streets every couple of months looking for work. This has obviously not had much positive benefits for teacher salaries, but at least students are getting mostly people who have the first clue about what they are doing in terms of teaching language.

OzBurn · Joined: 03 May 2004 Posts: 199

People who take a CELTA have a clue? You could have fooled me. CELTA students are not required to know any English grammar or phonetics before they start the course, and they don't learn any on the course. Also, the methods of teaching vocabulary recommended by the CELTA course are not supported by research on vocabulary acquisition. So let's see, after taking a CELTA, you're a newly qualified English teacher, except that you don't know any grammar or phonetics and you don't know how to teach vocabulary. So what exactly is it that the CELTA grad has learned? I know: how to drag your students through a "communicative" activity.

OzBurn

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

I wasn't referring specifically to CELTA. And knowing how to 'drag your students through a communicative activity' is better than knowing nothing.

Frizzie Lizzie · Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 2:38 pm Post subject:

Too bad for CELTA if they don't teach grammar or phonology.
Choose Trinity - they do both.

zewd · Joined: 16 Feb 2005 Posts: 42 Location: Lynchburg, VA, USA

TEFL/CELTA courses don't teach you English, they teach you how to teach English. The problem, in my opinion, is that there are too many people trying to teach English who don't really know the language. Too many times I have heard a student asking a teacher "Why do you say _________?" and the teacher replies with "I don't know why, that's just how it is! It's my native language, I can't explain it." (That was a direct quote from a former coworker.) If you're not willing to research the why's and wherefore's of the English language, you can expect to be one of those native speakers who isn't allowed to teach grammar lessons, Cambridge test courses, or any lessons with real meat to them. Teaching, like anything else, is whatever you want to make of it. I don't think anyone is saying that having a certificate will make you a good teacher, but it certainly makes getting a job easier- how well the teacher performs once they get said job is up to them.

Chris Westergaard · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 215 Location: Prague

We do both too.

OzBurn · Joined: 03 May 2004 Posts: 199

I'm glad that someone out there is doing something different from the joke course, the CELTA. But the CELTA doesn't teach you how to teach English, because knowing how to teach a language requires knowing something about the language beyond knowing how to speak it--which, believe me, the majority of my ninth-graders can do much better than the average CELTA trainee.