Job Discussion Forums

[nighthawk]

Hello. I�m an American living in the states now wanting to teach English in Mexico. I have a B.A. but no TESL Certificate. I have heard several teachers say that in order to get the best teaching jobs -- the ones with the highest pay and the least commuting, namely the ones at universities -- one must have a Masters Degree in TESOL. In the city I live in in the US, there is a university that offers a Masters in TESOL, but you have to get a TESL Certificate first, and getting a TESL Certificate through them requires 21 credit hours of graduate work, and then the Masters Degree is another 16 credit hours including a thesis for a total of 37 credit hours. This would take me at least two years of stressful work. Is this the way that those of you who have a Masters went about getting one? Are there better ways? Would it be better to get one of those 4 week intensive TESL program certificates instead of the 21 credit hour program offered by my local university, and then try to get into a Masters Program? Will simply going down to Mexico and getting a year or twos worth of teaching experience likely qualify me to get into a Masters Degree program? Are there ways for me to get a Masters in TESOL cheaper than spending another 2 to 3 years in college in America? Because I�m very tired and irritated with the American educational system because I and my father have already given it so much money, and from what I understand, plenty of the material taught in graduate school isn't even necessarily practical when it comes to what I'll need to know to teach! In general, for you that have a Masters in TESOL, how did you go about that, and what do you recommend for my situation? Any useful response(s) will be much appreciated. Thank you.

[M@tt]

Word. I was in your place about three years ago. At the time, I was more interested in Brazil than Mexico, but that's not very important.
School is expen$ive in the states, but the good thing about grad school is that you can get paid to work your way through it. I applied to an MA program, got an assistantship in the international admissions office the first year (paid all my tuition, health care, and a living stipend for 20 hours/week of work), spent a lot of time hanging around my academic department (TESOL) and letting them know that I was interested in switching to an AIship (a teaching position in the IEP program they run) for my second year, and got the position. It also paid tuition, health insurance, and a stipend for 10 hours of teaching/week. The best part is that I got a year of teaching experience in a US university as well as a Masters while _earning_ money.

First decide if you want the MA now or later. If you do it now, with no teaching experience, you are probably unlikely to get an AIship in your department's IEP. I got mine by helping with lots of activities. That was before September 11, and my old IEP is no longer in the position to hand out AIships mid-degree to people already enrolled. This is rather rare, in fact. Most departments use the AI position to attract potential graduate students that they want.

Anyway, the second and probably better option is to do a one-month certificate to get some basic knowledge, go somewhere awful (or wonderful) and get a couple years' experience, and then apply for a US MA if you're still interested in teaching. Assuming you are intelligent, have good recommendations, and didn't get bad grades as an undergrad, they may accept you to their program and offer you an AIship which should cover everything. Then you can go back to Mexico and work for ITESM or whomever.

By the way, if money is your main deterrent, don't even bother doing an MA where there is no IEP attached, because that's where your teaching is going to happen! If there is no IEP, there are probably no AIships to be had. Internet sites are the best info for each university. I don't know where you are, so I can't make suggestions other than somewhere like USC, UCLA, or UCSD. I did mine at Indiana University in Bloomington, because I live there and fell into it. All in all I'm happy with the experience, and would never say that I "got nothing" from my MA program, though there were moments when I wondered what was going on. I should also say that I am unwilling to work for crappy private language schools and that's why I did an MA.

My caveat for this post is that IEP's in the US are currently dying because many students can't get visas to come here. The economic recession doesn't help. Maybe if you leave for a few years, things will all be better in 2005. Check with any university you are interested, they can tell you whether they plan to offer AIships to incoming graduates.

Hope this helped. Email me with any other specific questions or comments if you feel like it--or maybe we'll meet up in Mexico next year...
Matt
[email protected]

[Ben Round de Bloc]

Matt has given a good, comprehensive answer to your question.

Most MA programs offered at U.S. universities take at least 2 years to complete as a full-time student. However, there are MA programs in various other countries that can be completed in half that time (the UK, for example,) and they're equally recognized in Mexico.

A Master's in TESOL/Linguistics can get you a university job in Mexico but maybe not right away. You may have to pay your dues working for language schools in the location of your choice before you find openings at university level in that area, and often those university jobs are quite part-time to start out with.

Also, keep in mind that even though most university jobs are much better (wages, working conditions, benefits, etc.) than language schools, they often aren't that much better, even ITESM or UNAM. You still have to put in lots of hard hours, often in an extremely political environment, to earn enough to make ends meet. Unless you get some type of assistantship, as Matt suggested, to pay for your MA studies in the U.S., it would take you forever teaching in Mexico to recuperate your investment.

In answer to another of your questions, I returned to university as a full-time student after 20 years of teaching in public schools in the U.S., completed my MA in a little over two years, and paid for it without any assistantships or scholarships. I began teaching in Mexico in a language school, then applied for and got a part-time job at a state university while still teaching at language schools to earn enough to live on, and after a couple of years managed to add enough university teaching hours to give up language-school hours. I could live just on what I earn teaching 27 hours of classes a week at the university, but it would mean living extremely conservatively. Fortunately, I do have some supplemental income and live quite conservatively but not extremely so.

[nighthawk]

Thank you both for the info. You're both helping me think this through. I'll keep you posted on what I end up doing. Gracias.

[nighthawk]

Thank you for responding to my post.

I hope you don't mind, but I still have some questions. You [Ben Around de Bloc] mentioned that there are places outside of the U.S. where I could get an M.A. in TESOL. What schools/programs would you recommend for this? I�m considering the following regarding an M.A. in TESOL program: 1) quality of the program 2) cost of the program and 3) the amount of stress that would go along with the program.

1) Obviously I want the M.A. to carry it's weight once I'm looking for work. 2) And obviously I want to avoid any more thousands of dollars spent on student loans. 3) I want to be in a program where I don't feel overwhelmed, and if I have to take a little longer than most do, then that's better than getting burnt out in my book. I did take a graduate TESL class here. Almost all of the students in it were in there as a means to getting a TESL Certificate. Well, it was a lot of work for one class. We had one test (a midterm), a 20 minute presentation with a partner (10 minutes a piece) due at the end of the semester, and a 20 page paper on an unrelated topic also due at the end of the semester. On top of all that we weren�t tested on any of the reading for the second half of the class, but we were still expected to do it, which was at least a chapter a week, and it�s what we talked about for the second half of the class. (I did fine the first half of the class when it was text based with the midterm and class discussions based on the reading, but I had more trouble with the second half. Writing a 20 page paper on the side, getting a presentation on a separate topic from the paper ready, and talking about things in class that we weren�t even going to be tested on I had a hard time with). This is the sort of absurdity I�d like to avoid, but I know I probably won�t be able to, so I at least want to figure out how to get ready for it. If I were teaching ten hours a week as part of being in and paying for an M.A. program, and if I were taking two classes like the one I took, then I think I would get burnt out pretty fast. So here�s the question I�m getting at. What book(s) would you recommend that I get to help me along and to make getting a TESL Certificate and later an M.A. less stressful? Oh, and on an unrelated note, how do I go about getting my diploma apostilled? Thanks again.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[M@tt]

Nighthawk just told me that the Indiana Secy of State told HIM that an apostille will take 10 months. !!!?!?!?!?!?!?
Is that ridiculous or is it me?
Does anyone have a more realistic picture of what an apostille involves? I'm kind of worried since I live in Indiana and may need one soon...
Thanks

[nighthawk]

Actually, it wasn't the Indiana Secretary Of State Office that told me an apostille would take 10 months. What I said (or meant to say) was that a lady at the registrar's office at the university where I graduated, who's been working there for thirty years, told me that the last time a graduate from my alma mater got his diploma apostilled, it took 10 months for the whole process. She also mentioned that this graduate was going to Italy. I don't know if that had anything to do with why it took so long.

[M@tt]

sorry about that, looks like i goofed.
i've had the flu all week and it has made me a bit delirious. thanks for the correction--i wouldn't want to mislead anyone on legal matters.

happy Easter everyone!