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Teaching ESL in your home country
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User N. Ame



Joined: 11 Dec 2006
Posts: 222
Location: Kanto

PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 5:07 pm    Post subject: Teaching ESL in your home country Reply with quote

There's been lots of information and discussion about teaching conditions and salaries in Japan, but I'd like to hear from those of you who went from working in Japan to teaching private ESL back in your home country.

If you had experience teaching (ALT and/or privates) in Japan, did you find this greatly improved your ESL job prospects after returning home? By the way, my home nation is Canada, specifically the Vancouver area, which is a hotbed for ESL schools catering to Asian students.

What sort of pay scale can I expect in Vancouver, or other North American locations, if I decide to pick up some ESL teaching work at one of the many private schools?

I taught in Japan for a few years, and haven't been plugged into the Vancouver ESL scene, but I recall before I left for Japan about 5 years ago, the pay was not great, and ESL teaching was not thought of as a highly sought after job. Wondering if conditions have changed in the past 5 years.

If you are doing ESL work in Canada (or USA, especially West Coast USA), feel free to share your views and experiences.

Thanks.
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Gordon



Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 5309
Location: Japan

PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 9:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I highly doubt anything will change in 5 years. I too have been out of the Vancouver ESL scene for some time but I'd say the salary ranges at the language schools will be: $15-25/hr. You WILL need a TEFL certificate; experience and a BA are not enough. The better jobs are at community colleges, but competition is fierce, most will have a masters.
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ripslyme



Joined: 29 Jan 2005
Posts: 481
Location: Japan

PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 10:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Somewhat related, teaching ESL at the junior college/community college level salaries in the USA start around $40-50k annually, some tenure-track positions as well.
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Yawarakaijin



Joined: 20 Jan 2006
Posts: 504
Location: Middle of Nagano

PostPosted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 2:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I taught at one of the larger language schools in Vancouver and we were paid between 20/25$ per hour. I'm not sure about other schools but at mine we only taught 2 classes a day, each broken into two parts. The typical working day would start at 9 and with a 1 hour lunch and two fifteen minute breaks would end at 3:30. There were usually elective classes for the students which offered an extra hour of work for teachers who wanted to make a little extra.

The good: Only having 2 classes really allowed you to get to know the students. I have to say I had much more job satisfaction back in Vancouver than I do here. The days were short! Over before you knew it. There are no shortage of esl students in Vancouver so supplementing your income after school should never be a problem.
There are also quite a few newly arrived immigrant families willing to pay top dollar for tutoring. I personally enjoyed going home and being at the beach by 4:00 but I knew of 3 or 4 teachers at my school tutoring Korean kids at 40-50 dollars per hour. Most ESL schools in Vancouver seem to be running their own in house TEFL programs as well. If you were to get in as a TEFL instructor I do believe the pay is better.

The bad: Obviously it's the salary. Even at 25$ per hour your are only pulling in about 100$ per day. If I recall my monthly income after taxes was only about 1,800$ Not a lot if you are living in Vancouver.
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TokyoLiz



Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 1548
Location: Tokyo, Japan

PostPosted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 4:22 am    Post subject: Going back to the Left Coast Reply with quote

I've been away from Terminal City since 2003. But I stay connected through BCTEAL - http://www.bcteal.org/
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johanne



Joined: 18 Apr 2003
Posts: 189

PostPosted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 12:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I worked at a Vancouver ESL school 5 years ago. I was paid roughly $23 an hour for a 6 hour day (a 3-hour class in the morning and another 3 hour class in the afternoon.) The problem, at first at least, was that I was laid off from Nov-Feb the first year I worked there. That is the hard thing about breaking into the ESL scene in Vancouver. Student numbers signifcantly drop off in the winter and the newest hires get laid-off. Usually by your 2nd or 3rd year you are beyond that, but it's tough at first. Also, as was mentioned you only get paid for the hours you are actually teaching, not for prep. My net monthly salary was about $2,000 and that isn't much for Vancouver, especially if you are living downtown or in Kits as I was. Most of the schools are downtown so you can walk to work if you live there and save on a car, but really it's tough to make a career out of it as salary stays stagnant no matter how long you keep at it unless you get a community collage job, but that requires at least an MA and experience beyond what you get here in Japan.

I wasn't that interested in teaching adults in the first place - too hard to motivate in my opinion and much harder and less fun to teach than kids, so I went and got a teaching degree to teach elementary school instead and although the hours are longer and the workload much higher, I find it more gratifying and I have to admit I love the 2 month summer holiday. However, when I did ESL there were several people there in their 40s and 50s who had made a career out of it. Good luck whatever you do.
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womblingfree



Joined: 04 Mar 2006
Posts: 826

PostPosted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 11:39 pm    Post subject: Re: Teaching ESL in your home country Reply with quote

User N. Ame wrote:
What sort of pay scale can I expect in Vancouver, or other North American locations


No idea about America but in the UK to teach at a private language school you'll need at least a TEFL/CELTA and the money is cruddy.

For colleges you'll need some serious teaching qualifications (in the UK). This means a government recognised teaching licence Bed/PGCE which specialises in ESOL. A DELTA might do it but you'd need to do quite a few extension modules to bring it in line with government requirements. Needless to say the money for colleges is much better. I think in America/Canada the requirement is an MA in TEFL/AL as there is no actual government teaching licence for ESOL/EFL.

You could get work teaching at a university language centre as well, pay varies A LOT, typically colleges pay more as university language centres are often just souped up private schools.

Lastly if you have professional teacher status you may be able to get a job as an ESOL/EFL teacher in a high school. Many schools have at least one position, but you need to be seriously qualified and dedicated. In fact if you have professional teacher status then there's no reason that you could not teach subjects other than ESOL, same applies for colleges.

I work at a college in London and teach I.T., science and Citizenship alongside ESOL. But I had to spend 2 years doing a PGCE: ESOL, Certificate for ESOL/EFL Subject Specialists Level 4. & an MA in Applied Linguistics before I felt comfortable that it was a viable career and that I had all the bases covered.

The most important thing is to check with the government agencies in your country to see what the standard qualifications for recognised teachers are. There's no point undertaking an MA in Applied Linguistics if you can't get a teaching job with it, and in the UK you 100% can't!

Not that it isn't valuable to language centre's but without a fundamental practicum it's useless. With one, it'll mean a higher salary.

Likewise there is no need to waste thousands of $'s on CELTA's & DELTA's if they are insufficient to work where you want to work.

There are hundreds of ESOL & EFL qualifications out there all after your money. If you wish to pursue it as a career you must be very focused on the requirements for the place you want to teach. Answers on a forum are insufficient.

Get on the phone!!!


Last edited by womblingfree on Tue Jan 23, 2007 2:36 am; edited 3 times in total
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TokyoLiz



Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 1548
Location: Tokyo, Japan

PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 12:55 am    Post subject: Nostalgia Reply with quote

Joanne reminded me of all the tough parts of teaching ESL in Vancouver, or anywhere in Canada, for that matter. Come November and December, the numbers of students returning home for holidays and entrance exams reduce class sizes and result in layoffs. If you're a lucky survivor on the teacher roster, classes are low energy because the students who remain are less motivated and may be homesick since they're away from family over the holidays. Tough all around.

The hourly wage is okay, but you max out at 6 hours a day. I worked at an international ESL school during the days, part time at a non-profit on Saturday morning, and biked to work. It was a busy schedule with a lot of job satisfaction but not a great monetary return.
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craven



Joined: 17 Dec 2004
Posts: 130

PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 1:17 am    Post subject: part time teaching Reply with quote

A TESL/TEFL degree is necessary? I'm thinking of moving to Vancouver either this year or the year after, and I'm wondering if I'll be able to find part time work after school teaching eikaiwa classes. Any thoughts?
I have no TESL, but I have a masters degree and 6 years experience teaching in eikaiwa and public schools.
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womblingfree



Joined: 04 Mar 2006
Posts: 826

PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 2:11 am    Post subject: Re: part time teaching Reply with quote

craven wrote:
A TESL/TEFL degree is necessary? I'm thinking of moving to Vancouver either this year or the year after, and I'm wondering if I'll be able to find part time work after school teaching eikaiwa classes. Any thoughts?
I have no TESL, but I have a masters degree and 6 years experience teaching in eikaiwa and public schools.


A TEFL certificate is necessary for teaching at private schools. As the jobs get better so do the qualification and experience requirements.

Unless your MA is in an ELT related area I'm not sure it will be much use as a language teacher. Also I'm afraid that non-qualified experience really doesn't count for much.

Couldn't you teach your MA subject at a community college?

Everyone should really do a CELTA/TEFL before going to Japan. Not that it will help your teaching a great deal but post certificate experience is very valuable if you choose ELT as a career. Shame to waste all those years.
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TokyoLiz



Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 1548
Location: Tokyo, Japan

PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 5:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
I have no TESL, but I have a masters degree and 6 years experience teaching in eikaiwa and public schools.


I second what womblingfree said about TESOL certification. Even teachers with experience and either a bachelor of education or PDP need a TESOL qualification to teach in reputable ESL schools.

Also check out http://www.tesl.ca/ for their certification guideline for TESL teachers.
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womblingfree



Joined: 04 Mar 2006
Posts: 826

PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 5:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

All this talk of teaching qualifications is encouraging considering that 99.9% of EFL teachers in Japan don't have any.

Maybe it's time for eikaiwa to be forced into hiring only minimally qualified EFL teachers? Or at least offering courses for their teachers in EFL rather than a weeks training in drill cards and marketing. Rolling Eyes

Anyone want to draft a letter & petition to the minister of education? It'd be worth it just to see the looks on the eikaiwa trainers faces Laughing
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johanne



Joined: 18 Apr 2003
Posts: 189

PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 2:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I got my first ESL job in Vancouver without a TESL certificate after teaching in Japan for 4 years. It was the super busy summer season so they were hiring anyone who could concievably teach a class without huge complaints of incompetance coming from the students. By the way, I found that students who shell out thousands of dollars to fly over and stay in a foreign country before they even start paying for the lessons themselves are much more demanding in what kind of teaching they will accept. In Japan I found if the class was relatively fun and they learned a couple of new words everyone was happy. This was not the case in Vancouver (and elsewhere I imagine) where the students are expecting real lessons, feedback and improvement.
Anyway, once November came around I was laid off and told if I wanted to be rehired again in March when students started coming back I would need to get a TESl certificate. Everyone at this school had one or was getting one and most schools advertise that their teachers are TESL-certified.
I'm not sure if a teaching qualification would replace the TESL. They are 2 quite different things, but after I received my teaching license I returned to teach ESL for a couple of summers and recieved about $4 more an hour because of it. I'm not sure if this is the case at all schools. There were several people at my school who were certified teachers and could have taught for more money in the public system but they said they were tired of the large classes, discipline problems and report card writing. In elementary school you write 3 very detailed report cards per year and since they take about 2 hours per student it really increases your work load.
If you do want to work in Vancouver it's probably best to arrive in the summer since that's when most schools are in real need of teachers. Even though you will most likely get laid off once winter comes, you will be known to the school and they will hire you back first before getting anyone else and then perhaps the second year you won't be laid off until January or so and then who knows, maybe after 4 years you'll make it through a whole calendar year. It's a tough gig. I'm not sure it's worth it, but I was working with people who had been at it for over 20 years and were very happy.
One plus of all the lay offs is that once you are above the cut-off line so to speak because you've been there long enough you can take huge chunks of time off in the winter since there are plenty of laid-off teachers who are happy to take over your classes. Several of my co-workers at the ESL school would travel for the whole month of January or February to nice warm places and get it at a decent price since it was often the low season for plane fares. That school gave 4 weeks of paid vacation once you had been there 5 years. It also closed for two weeks at Christmas, so all and all it wasn't a bad deal.
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womblingfree



Joined: 04 Mar 2006
Posts: 826

PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 4:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

johanne wrote:
I'm not sure if a teaching qualification would replace the TESL.


Usually not but there are national teaching qualifications that specialise in ESOL/EFL in some countries.

Otherwise you'd need whatever relevant EFL qualification was required by a particular institution to supplement your teaching qualification.
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craven



Joined: 17 Dec 2004
Posts: 130

PostPosted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 1:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey, thanks for the link...that's a great source of info. I hand't really looked into getting a ton of certification, because I'm not really looking to make a career out of Vancouver's eikaiwa's schools. Rather, I want to have a part time job while at university that doesn't involve breaking rocks with heavier rocks.
Way back when I actually did a 2 month in-house TESL course in Thailand while teaching for a school called AUA, but I can't find the certificate anywhere. Too bad...
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