Job Discussion Forums

[nomad soul]

[dragonpiwo]

My take on it is this: When I left uni, I went to work as a trader for an investment bank in the City. It bored me shitless and quite honestly, I wasn't ready to work my ass off at 23. I had a mate in Mexiico, who had quit his maths degree to travel and on the way he picked up a CTEFLA. I got a postcard from him once describing a very chilled out existence and thought it sounded good, so I did a CTEFLA and off I went.

Partied my way through Eastern Europe in the mid-90s. Drank a lot of beer, did many shots and dated girls way out of my league. Never took any of my jobs seriously but then again, I don't consider language school gigs or uni gigs as serious jobs. Yep, I worked in a university department early on and was a Cambridge Assessor. I got cheated out of money at some point by every employer I had in Eastern Europe.

Son came along, life got real had to earn money. Applied for a job at QP on a whim in Doha and that lead to the chain of events that saw me spend 19 years in the oil and gas industry, in which I became a very accomplished Technical English teacher and materials writer. I just fell into it. The first couple of oil gigs were not challenging, so I developed myself in the oil and gas content field. I'm excellent at my job and pretty rare in my skill set. Financially, I'm safe until I die and I'm a few years under 50. No credit,, several dwellings, no worries and a happy, healthy family, second time round .

Knowing what I know now and seeing what I've seen and experienced personally, I wouldn't choose this line of work if I could live my life again. Yeah, I lived free as a bird in my 20s when my uni pals were working their asses off but I think it's a pretty shit career option: Wages are crap for most people, it's a relationship killer, loneliness is apparent in most TEFLers you meet over a certain age, some just become hopeless piss heads or shameful sociopaths and when you go back home, no-one gives a shit about your endless tales of travel and your selfies. Meanwhile, you disconnect from people you really care about and eventually as you age, your priorities change and you reflect on your old employers and how you really could have done so much better careerwise. There are very few employers out there who respect TEFL teachers. Even the students have cottoned onto the fact that the locals teach you stuff and the native speakers are fun but teach you less.

TEFL as a career is a rudderless ship and is getting harder and harder to make a living in. As my Dad used to say;'It's a holiday job son. When you gonna grow up?'

[sammysez]

As my Dad used to say;'It's a holiday job son. When you gonna grow up?

I gotta remember that.

Thanks for the responses and of course, with any line of work you get a range of opinions and experiences.

[sammysez]

And most of it ends up PART-TIME employment as one employer described to me with "no benefits, no insurance benefits, no holiday pay, no sick pay, no prep time and no possibility of full-time employment."

And that was the document contract we had to sign for employment.

On top of this, the schools take the student's word over yours if you ask the students politely to stop talking or stay off their cellphones. I'm just expressing what I have experienced.

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

To make a career in English as a Second Language (in an English-speaking nation), most people want to teach in universities or colleges. For that you almost always need overseas experience and a masters degree in Applied Linguistics or TESOL.

If you have those things and cannot find a decent university or college ESL teaching job, then I think the most sensible thing to do (other than going into another line of work) is to go overseas and try to get a university job in an EFL environment. I've met people with PhDs in unrelated areas teaching at universities in Japan because they can't get a job in their field in their home country. Graduate degrees in liberal arts areas often don't pay off, financially. There just aren't that many tenured posts for people with PhDs in Art History or English Literature etc.

The opportunity cost of spending a long time in TEFL (or TESL for that matter) if you don't actually consider it your career can be steep if you want to go into another area. But that can be the same pretty much with anything.

For people here who have said they wouldn't do it again, what would you do instead? Are there jobs for people with a BA in a liberal arts area and nothing much else where you're from? There aren't where I'm from. The jobs available at that level seem to involve wearing a golf shirt and name tag.

[scot47]

Train to be a driver on the subway. Or a plumber. Or anything.

Accept that your prospects of travel will be limited to whet you can pay for out of your earnings at home. Go abroad on vacations to places like Benidorm or Tijuana. Forget any opportunities to immerse yourselves in the life and culture of foreign lands. Learn to be ordinary.

i am glad that I lived the way I did and made all the mistakes that i made. Sometimes I got it right ! errare humanum est. I know no others who have lived and worked in Germany, the Land of the Bemba, Saudi, Bulgaria and now I am seeing life out on the island of St Blane. "i did it my way" as that corny old crooner sang.

i appreciate that opportunities may not be so great as they were in my youth which coincided with a growth in demand for educated native speakres to teach English, often in exotic locales.

[Yanklonigan]

I was a Lecturer at an American University when I decided to go over to Japan for a one-year hitch. I was thirty-two years old and recently divorced so I wasn't ready to settle down. I thought a short jaunt was what the doctor ordered. My 'gap year' mutated into a decade long detour from reality and responsibilities. Now, 28 years later, I am an Associate Professor at a community college. I would have stayed the course in 1989 and focused exclusively upon my teaching life in my home country. I was the classic example of a 'run away.' This is all retrospective thinking of a 63 year old man. My worldview was radically different all those years ago. I don't believe I would have missed out on much if my rambles In Egypt, India, Argentina, Saudi Arabia or South Korea were deleted from my memory banks.

[suphanburi]

Here, here!!

TEFL today is not what it was 20 years (or more) ago.

Back then you needed the guts to leave home and take the road less traveled, the ability to roll with it all and willingness to do without a lot of things (but what an adventure).

Today it is either one of: (1) a gap year exercise or (2) get professional and make an honest career out of it.

IF you are looking for the big bucks... then teaching has NEVER been the way to go. Get an MBA and cubicle on Wall Street if getting rich is the game plan.

IF you want a comfortable life with options then it is possible in TEFL but not on the bottom rung of the ladder. Move up or move out. Pick one.

.

[papuadn]

MOD EDIT TEFL today is not what it was 20 years (or more) ago. Thirty years ago (when I first started reading the ads at the back of TESOL Quarterly) the options were far fewer, and 10-20 years beyond that it was a cottage industry for Ivies because higher education was only available to an elite. Is anything the same 20 years ago? Ironically, not much has evolved in terms of method since 1990. Its enterprise has expanded and improved in many ways, outpaced only by how such improvement is touted.

[scot47]

deleted

[papuadn]

MOD EDIT

I could not agree more with what

[scot47]

A couple of years ago my daughter was unemployed. I suggested that she go and get a job in Starbucks or similar. "That is not the sort of place where I want a job," was her riposte.

I should have pointed out that Saudi Arabia was not my dream location but I worked there for years to support her and her sister.

[Nicky_McG]

Luckily, it led to some other teaching in my field but I wouldn't recommend it for more than two years and, even then, only if you're going to either learn another language or make some serious money (I don't even know if that's possible now).

I'd only recommend staying longer if you have a real passion for it which I never had. It still takes up about 30% of my professional life but I only do it for the money (it pays quite well where I am) and I'm seriously considering doing some further study in my field to get out of it.

[scot47]

"Serious money" is not there much. maybe a few residual jobs in the ME and some well-paying one in China.

Mainstream teaching in the Anglosphere pays better, but there is a terrible price to pay for that. It could be the road to insanity !

[sammysez]

Part-time, no benefits, no "possibility" of full-time employment, no healthcare, no sick time, no prep time etc.. and on and on the contract went.....

Just posting the contents of the contract...