Job Discussion Forums

[SWP]

Hello everyone.

I am in something of a bad situation right now, and this forum seems to be full of people who could give me excellent advice. Any help is most welcome.

I'm currently in Cairo on a gap year language study scholarship. I am supposed to be here until late June 2010, living with a host family, taking language classes, and working in a community service project. I won't go into the tawdry details here, but the synopsis is that things are not working out at all between me and the organization administering my program. The language classes are indescribably tedious and inefficient, and despite my having been here well over a month, the organization in question still has not found me a permanent host family placement, and shows no signs of bothering to do so anytime soon. As such, I've been camping out on futons and living out of a suitcase. There are a bunch of other problems too, but I did promise to spare you.

The long and short of it is, I want out of the program. However, I want to stay in Egypt. I love it here, and I imagine I would love it even more if I wasn't spending all my time being angry and frustrated. Arabic is a deeply fascinating language, and I definitely want to find some way to continue my studies here. However, I can't really afford to go off the program. I do have a few thousand in the bank, and I'm happy to spend it, but my family back home is quite working-class, so when that money runs out, I'm pretty much gone. I certainly don't have enough to stay for my whole gap year, which is what I'd like to do.

So, I'm searching for a source of income. And TESL is far and away the best thing I've come up with. Now, before you start throwing stuff, hear me out. I've been reading through the forum, and I realize some of you may find this inquiry stupid and insulting to your profession. I just want you to know, I am no "backpacker drone." I'm a serious student of Arabic here for a very good reason, and the study of languages, and especially of my own mother tongue, has always been one of my greatest passions. Education is another interest of mine; I was homeschooled through elementary school, attended a rather bad public high school, and (please excuse the immodesty) am headed to Yale next year (alhamdulillah). That sort of career inevitably leads to a fascination with educational models. Furthermore, at the community service project I'm currently working at, I'm actually already teaching English. I'm not great at it, but I'm not bad. My students seem to really enjoy the class, and they're learning the material. And I'm really enjoying it myself. The service work was the source of my present inspiration.

I realize I have no shot at getting the sort of work most of you have. And I don't plan on trying to. I have a partner in this endeavor, who's in an identical situation. We're young and hardy, and we're happy to camp out in some little place in Abdin or Bulaq and live off rice, fuul, and ta'amiyya. But even to do that, we need some sort of income.

As far as I can tell, the only CELTA course currently offered in Egypt is the 10,000LE British Council course this upcoming January. That's too far away, and at present, I don't have the funds to both live here and take a course that expensive anyway. If another course exists, and in my frantic Googling I've somehow missed it, please let me know.

Assuming such a course does not exist, here's my plan of action. I would like to tide myself over until January and maybe, just maybe, save up enough to take the CELTA course, by doing whatever sort of work I can get. I intend to take one of those rather questionable distance-learning 150 hour TESOL courses, and to continue working at my community service project (which I will continue to do whether I actually end up with a job or not). I realize, again, that such courses are not popular or respected here. However, in my Googling, I've found a few that seem to have decent materials and accreditation and certification from fairly legitimate auditing bodies. I realize such certification still isn't great, but I can afford it, and it gives me something.

With that in hand, plus my 6'4" American-accented self, and with a lot of help from the fifteen generations of salesman blood that runs in my veins, I hope to find tutoring, substitute, and/or (sorry, Mr. Strunk) fly-by-night language school jobs of some sort or another. Everything I've read and seen here suggests that there's a huge demand for English language education, and I think I could get enough work to get by.

However, I don't know that for sure. Am I completely insane? I would very much prefer to find an alternative to the program I'm on (it's really quite bad), but if the only realistic way I have to stay in Egypt and learn Arabic is to stay on it, then that's what I'll have to do.

Please, before unleashing on me, keep in mind that I've had a pretty bad month already, so at the very least let me down easily and with minimum laceration. Also, all the reading I've done and my experiences at the service center have made me think that I may want to do this sort of work quite a bit in the future as well. It seems as good a way as any to fund my intended post-college life as a nomadic twentysomething aspiring polyglot. Any advice at all is therefore most welcome.

Shukran jiddan one thousand times over,

Sam

[veiledsentiments]

First off, I don't think it is really worth the money to get an online TEFL cert. The whole idea of a cert is that you have had supervised classroom teaching experience. I don't care how many hours and little exercises you do, it doesn't really teach you to teach. Generally speaking, employers consider them worth nothing. As far as I'm concerned, you can go over to the AUC bookstore and buy an EFL methodology text, read it, and learn as much on your own. The only other certificate course that I know of is in Alexandria... can't recall the name of it. But that doesn't help you if you need to stay in Cairo.

So... how do you make some money? It is going to take some hustle. First off, you can apply right now at all those language schools and see if you can get them to hire you. If you are good with kids, you should be able to find some private students... and that is likely your best possibility is to live on tutoring. Both of you...

Just don't ask me where to find the students. By my second year in Cairo, I was making good money from tutoring, but since I was at AUC, people approached me about working with their high school age kids who would be taking the AUC entry test. Test preparation is something that offers you the chance to work with older students.

Good Luck

It will be a fun year if you can just manage to pay your bills.

VS