Job Discussion Forums

[Jeff_Nevington]

I have spent the past few days scouring the forums, piecing together information but I still have gaps. I am getting a lot of mixed information from here I think mainly because some people are giving advice aimed at someone who wants a teaching career in china or someone who wants to teach briefly while travelling.

This is me:

I have an engineering degree, am from the UK and have some experience of teaching maths to adults and science to young children (amounting to 4-5 months). I can just about afford to do a 4 week CELTA course this Spring. I like teaching and am looking at a possible future in teaching.

I will leave my current job this summer and will start a UK teaching qualification the following summer in June. This leaves me almost a year to do something with myself.

Because I need to be back in the UK by June I will probably only be able to do a single semester, starting September. Personally I wouldnt employ someone I knew was only going to teach for 1 semester but it seems to be possible.

Basically I still dont have a 'feel' for what my options are, I want to know what the best I can aim for is. I am constantly reading not to go with recruiters and try to find jobs directly / contact schools but I can't see a school employing a 1 semester teacher, whereas a recruiter can probably easily find two people to cover the semesters between them and sell them as one.

I dont care too much about pay as long as I survive, I am very interested in learning to speak the language (I'm not sure how the dialects work or if there is one major one that most understand). My number 1 concern would be the work, I would want that to be enjoyable, anything else after that is a bonus. I would prefer to work in one of the well known, big cities near the coast but I have read that without experience or an eye on a long term career this is unrealistic. So I would be looking to go as big as possible on my terms.

Any advice / feedback will be greatly appriciated

[7969]

[Jeff_Nevington]

Thanks 7969

I would really like to stay for the full two semesters but I assume there are lessons in June and I would have to be gone by then.

I understand the CELTA is probably overkill for one semester but I wouldnt be doing it as a means to getting a job, more to be good at my job. I have never taught english before and I am sceptical about how much I can learn from a �200 online package. Also I hate paying cash for emailed PDFs or whatever they supply. Plus If I enjoy ESL teaching I can always return or go elsewhere after I have finished qualifying in the UK with it under my belt.

[therock]

[TexasHighway]

7969 wrote:

[xiaolongbaolaoxi]

If you are going to be moving into a credential program later on, the CELTA may be helpful in the sense that a lot of the info in the credential program will not be new. An added benefit could be that you are surrounded by other credentialed teachers and get to pick up a lot of "which I knew this when I started" type gossip.

I started my TESL certificate while in the latter stages of my credential program. As my cert was actually part of an administrative process for established teachers to renew their credentials, I was surrounded by teachers, a principal, social workers, and a children's lit expert. So, major tips all over the place. Inside a general education classroom, my TESL cert did me no good whatsoever (but it did give em something to talk about when trying to fill those last 10-30 minutes of the classroom day), but my credential did help me handle some very dense material in the program and make TESL student teaching very easy. For what it is worth, my cert did help my BS detector dramatically; there were a lot of curriculum "coaches" at our school that tended to hide behind jargon, I made it clear that I understood what they were saying, and their advice went from lip service to rolling up their sleeves and actually helping me. Also, jobs and various volunteer opportunities kept popping up all over the place. A major caveat: the expectations of reading instruction in ESL (particularly in China) were dramatically different than what I expected of myself, my colleagues, and my students in general education. To whit, the ability to rattle off two paragraphs in horribly pronounced English while the student is totally freaking out is not comprehension, a 25 word summary of two paragraphs of text that captures the point(s) is.

I would not recommend CELTA, PRC, then credential for the sheer fact that unless you are teaching in a true international school, your experiences in China will probably have very little to do with the reality of your credential program, student teaching, and hopeful employment in a general education classroom (if you are thinking special education, China is definitely not the place to be.) If there is a specific reason for PRC, so be it, but I would really recommend against it in your case.

If you get CELTA or some other TESL qualification that carries some weight, I would recommend trying to hook up with a local school. Very low chance of getting paid, but you go from a volunteer with not a lot of background to a volunteer who is about to become a teacher and at least knows some theory that even established teachers may not know.

Do not forget to mention your background in math(s) and science.... the background (even if shortterm and/or theoretical) of math(s), science, and ESL is pretty hard to come by (and I found that my background teaching math helped me--in terms of thinking and planning step by step minute details--helped me a lot more in ESL than most of my reading instruction and literacy stuff; those courses helped me recognize what was going on, but the math part helped me construct solutions, as it were.)

Hope this helps.

Aloha,

XLB

PS: word problems or "explain why this lab worked the way it did" is a great way to kill off a lot of time in general education and ESL classrooms.

PPS: take photos NOW, particularly of young science learners/labs. great for the portfolio.

[Jeff_Nevington]

Thanks for the advice XLB, I do tend to have a habit of doing things in the wrong order.

Though I think I may be stuck doing things this way around as the starting date of what you call my "credential program" is set in stone... Summer 2012. I was hoping some ESL experience would be useful, but if not its not the end of the world, I would like to go to China for the sake of going to China too which I am factoring in. Taking local volunteer work just wouldn't be the same.

P.S.