Job Discussion Forums

stillnosheep · Joined: 01 Mar 2004 Posts: 2068 Location: eslcafe

I very much agree with you Justin.

If you really feel that you are losing applicants to other courses tell them that such guarantees are worthless as they either 'guarantee a job' with themselves (i.e. the course is wothless and just a means of parting new employees from their cash) or for way below market wages (i.e. they guarantee what is in effect a voluntary position).

You on the the hand you can point to the 100 (or near 100) % success rate of your ex-students in obtaining proper paid employment in their chosen field - which must be worth much more than a guarantee of a very badly paying job with a dodgy employer.

Justin Trullinger · Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 7:39 pm Post subject:

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

SIT has the reputation of being the best place in the World to do the Masters in together with the Monterey Institute.

What the short TESOL certificate is like I don't know, but if it has SIT behind it it should be good.

The question is whether your students know that or not.

But one way of thinking about it is that students who only want to do the course to get a job immediately afterwards aren't the students you want on the course anyway.

natsume · Joined: 24 Apr 2006 Posts: 409 Location: Chongqing, China

Although I know about the reputation of SIT and the Mont. schools, I'm interested in first hand opinions. Does anybody here have some direct experience with either? I know Denise went to Monterey.

Why would I choose these admittedly pricey schools over a much cheaper state option, for me probably SF State, which itself has a quite good reputation?

I'm asking specifically about the masters.

Justin Trullinger · Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 8:23 pm Post subject:

Thanks for that, Stephen.

I haven't done the SIT masters, but it has a great rep- and I'm familiar with a lot of the content, as the TESOL certificate is actually based on the "kernel" of the MAT degree.

I qualified as a TESOL trainer with SIT late last year, and found the experience extremely demanding, but extremely rewarding.

As to whether my students know about this- frankly, most do not. I still spend a fair amount of time in correspondence explaining what the course is, what SIT is, and why we chose to offer this course instead of the CELTA to prospective participants. I feel like the SIT course is gaining a good reputation amongst people who know- but a lot of people who are starting out, certificate level, really don't know much about the various qualifications on the market.

On our last course, a young woman told me that she was surprised how demanding the course was, as a friend of hers had done "the same thing" on line...sigh. (Her friend, I discovered, did the i to i course.)

All the best,
Justin

DNK · Joined: 22 Jan 2007 Posts: 236 Location: the South

I took the SIT certification course, not the masters, and I think "demanding" definitely sums it up pretty well. I'm not aware of many of the other options, save CELTA and some of the online/weekend courses, but a couple of the people I took the course with apparently had heard of it before, and the opinions were fairly positive (they were teachers already, and were taken back by how much they learned despite years of experience in non-TESOL). Personally, I took it because it was the only 120-hr in-class course offered in Chicago at the time.

I think they pretty much crammed as much as possible into those four weeks, and I probably averaged 5 hours of sleep a night. I think once I actually start teaching I'll be able to respond better as to how it prepared me, but the experience was definitely positive and intensive. I couldn't imagine what it would be like going into Japan with no such experience, now that I've done it. For the four week course, the objective seemed to give us a strong starting point to begin teaching and the skills to develop ourselves after that, along with some basics of the profession. It's no masters, but I'd call it the bare minimum preparation for any prospective TESOL teacher. To say the least, I couldn't imagine getting even half as much out of an online or weekend course. The trainer was top-notch as well (and I've heard the quality controls are such that this would be the norm).

Now, I haven't looked into CELTA that much, but from what I've heard it's a bit different in how they approach TESOL.

So perhaps this isn't so useful to the conversation at hand, but I felt like throwing in my two cents for anyone searching the forums on SIT in the future. Perhaps some more assistance with job hunting would be nice, but otherwise I have no real negatives.

dreadnought · Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 82 Location: Sofia, Bulgaria

Hi Justin, fellow SIT trainer here (David).

Yeah, had exactly the same problem in the past with applicants expecting to be guaranteed a job after the course. Ultimately impossible to do this as each country has their own qualification requirements. I mean, someone may want to go to Korea but if they have no BA, they won't be accepted regardless of what TESOL/TEFL certificate they have.

The best you can do I think is outline in detail exactly what job assistance you can provide them (references, on-course sessions on finding jobs). One thing i found helpful to do with them on the course - assuming you have time of course! - is to print out some ads from the job listing on Dave's ESL Cafe and analyse them in some depth. Get some obviously dodgy ones, some decent ones and some middling ones and then help them spot the red flags, good points. Participants have always been very positive about this afterwards as it's not something they had ever thought about before. They often assume that every job is reputable...

Justin Trullinger · Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 3:06 pm Post subject:

Jetgirly · Joined: 17 Jul 2004 Posts: 741

As a student, I would be concerned if the school where I had done my teacher training offered guaranteed job placement. From my perspective, I would expect that course to be full of people who felt that they probably couldn't find a job on their own. Those definitely aren't the sort of people I would want to team-teach with! I'm now halfway through my BEd and my university doesn't offer guaranteed job placement- why should any other school do so?

Justin Trullinger · Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 10:44 pm Post subject:

Thanks for that, JetGirly.

I guess we just have to keep pushing the idea that it's a two way street. We can do our part, as trainers and course providers, but to do well in this field, people have to do their part as well.

I've had a trainee on a course who was astounded when we had to have a "conference" about whether that person was passing the course. ("But, I've paid for this?! You mean I might not get the cert...)

ANd I guess that if we're really losing participants to outfits with the fake guarantee, maybe it's all for the best.

Another question from a potential applicant:

"Do you provide lifetime job guidance and placement?"

Er, no.

Best,
Justin