Job Discussion Forums

[timmo]

Hi Kitten,

Although most of your first questions are very good and pertinent and the answers should help focus you on some of the problems you have to ask yourself, there are a few other questions you need to ask.

What country would you like to start your training in? Every country has its own pitfalls and personality.

It is very commendable to think of plunging yourself into the wild hinterlands in the first instance but just to play devil's advocate for a moment, you might consider easing your way into this field a little more gently.

The first year of most jobs involve a greater application of mental effort than in subsequent years. The same is true of ESL. The first year will see you learning how to teach, learning how YOU teach, building up a library of lessons that work, throwing away ones that don't, building up you voice, and gradually knitting for yourself a comfortable persona in which you can work.

Giving yourself the added obstacles that goes with day-to-day life in the remote areas, communication, hygiene, strange food, and all the other 101 other trials you can't even think of yet might prove to much of a burden straight away. You might be doing yourself a disservice to take all that on at once.

Any good mentor system wants you to succeed. Its not the intention to allow you fail yourself. It is the job of any mentor to impose sufficient tasks on their student to allow them to stretch themselves, learn, and grow, not to break them. It would be the job of your mentor to gauge and govern your enthusiasms to best effect.

There is another way. Try starting your career in a city. A reasonably large and to a certain degree cosmopolitan city. Your culture shock will be less, you will be able to concentrate better on the real task, learning your job. Then after a while when you are stronger and sure that teaching really is for you then armed with your experiences life in the boondocks might be a little easier.

You might consider taking your Tesol certificate in a city. Usually included in the fees will be accommodation for the month. This gives you a little breathing space to acclimatise yourself to your new life.

The other advantage to a Tesol course in the county you intend to teach is that very often the college or school will be able to help you with finding work after the course has finished. You have more chances to build up contacts and meet other teachers than you would in a small village where there may be only two or three foreigners all year passing through.

I suppose the crux of what I am saying is be kind to yourself. Don't give yourself too much to do in the first year. You will have quite enough work learning your new job in a foreign country.

I hope this goes some way to encouraging you to keep asking questions.

Good luck!

[Roger]

Twistie and Guy have answered you much the way I would have answered your questions myself.
My personal observations:
- Requirements: As a non-Usanian I am sometimes amused by this
question and how it gets addressed because teachers of any language
need a good grounding in the subject they are supposed to instruct, and
it will easily become clear to you that not all TEFL/TESL folks here share
this idea. I think the anglophone world takes a less exalted view of
teaching of English than teachers in other areas do. To give you an idea:
I became interested in teaching because my former French common-law
wife was a German teacher; she taught at a Catholic lycee. To get a job
like this she had to study TWO FOREIGN LANGUAGES AT UNIVERSITY
LEVEL. She chose Norwegian (!) and German, and also knew more
than a smattering of English! This is by no means an extraordinary
educational level in Europe; ask any German English teacher and you
will see that their pedagogic and professional qualifications are very
high. Consequently they can do a very demanding job; the social
status of teachers in such countries seems to me to be somewhat
higher than it is in America, South Africa, Britain or Australia.

- Government influence: This is, of course, very strong since the govern-
ment sets standards, elaborates teaching goals and it also has its
sensitivities. You mentioned Christianism; in socialist countries such
as China - where I am based - the authorities remind you in no un-
certain terms what NOT to do as a foreign employee in local schools.

[kitten]

to timmo and Roger i say this.
I thank you for your insite very much. I also want to insure you that i am just a senior in High school I have not even decided which school to go to yet, accepted to many no desicions. I already did know, however, that it would be better to start off teaching in a big city or even a small city then to move up and not to completly emerse myself in a culture. That would not be very good. Also All of the schools i am interested in have a study abroad program which i plan to take advantage of to help me with my huge plans for the future. Thank you once again and please don't hesitate to post more of your ideas here. I can use all the adivce i can get.
-Dani-