Job Discussion Forums

[endo]

When you first decided to teach English overseas how did you begin your research?

Search engine, Daveseslcafe , other


And where did you first hear about teaching ESL as an option?



For me, I first began to think about teaching English after talking to my cousin, who was teaching overseas at the time during a trip back home for Christmas.

Most of my early research was spent on Daveseslcafe. To be honest, at first it was quite overwhelming and I spent hundreds of hours doing research before deciding to ultimately come over.

[rtm]

I see you posted this in both the general discussion and newbie forums. You really only need it in one place. I replied in the general forum, but I think it probably fits better here.

[mitsui]

Knew a young woman from Virginia who went to Taiwan and she had a good experience there.
That sold it for me.
Later I went to grad school and got my MA in TESOL.
This was back in 1995 so no Internet then.

I thought that I had wanted to be a teacher before, but where was the question.

[MuscatGary]

My Basque g/f from uni called me and said they needed an English teacher in Bilbao. So off I went...

[Sashadroogie]

I was recruited by my KGB handler on campus. Needed someone to infiltrate EFL and counter the capitalist piggies' propaganda machine, AKA Headway. That was the very first step in my rise to power. Never looked back since...

[grahamb]

Unfortunately you have failed, Sasha, for Headlesschickenway still infests EFL classrooms around the globe. Thanks for trying, anyway.

[Sashadroogie]

Yes, the struggle is not complete. It is true. But we have contained the threat, and not let it go unopposed. The rest is just a matter of time.

History is on our side. The future is ours. It is inevitable.

Just like deciding to be a TEFL teacher.

[grahamb]

Mind you, if the aforementioned book was any good, we'd soon run out of students to teach!

[fluffyhamster]

I first started thinking of teaching English towards my graduation back in 1993 (so not much internet then for me either!). I'd been reading books like Moving Zen, Iron and Silk, and The Early Arrival of Dreams, and TEFLing was and still is the obvious choice for anyone wanting to travel and experience foreign cultures. There was a helpful little booklet on TEFL in the university careers office, but I also bought whatever guides I could lay my hands on. One of the most informative and useful (even in this internet age, when a primer will still help one zero in on true essentials, identify possible grey areas, avoid asking perhaps too-obvious questions, etc etc), and that's still being published and updated regularly, is Susan Griffith's Teaching English Abroad. Of course, things like visa regulations can and do change, and schools may come and go (and one has to be wary with any job offer, as being listed in a book may be no guarantee of legitimacy), but books like Griffith's will help one get a pretty good idea of the various certs and providers, what the job generally entails, what sort of opportunities are available in each country, and what regulations there are in each. You may be able to find a copy in your local library.

[golsa]

I'd always wanted to join the Peace Corps and go spend a year or two in some village no one had ever heard of in a country that few people could find on a map.

I went through the process of joining the Peace Corps, but never completed it because they couldn't guarantee a location. I ended up joining a different Peace Corps type project and was assigned to teach English because I had a TESOL certificate from my university. I got that certificate because my freshman year German TA had spent about 10 years teaching English Austria and then in east Germany just after reunification and had dozens of interesting stories to tell us.

I was a horrible teacher in my first year, but enjoyed teaching and the students loved me. I liked it so much that I resigned my contract to work in the little village in a poor country, but ended up taking an internal transfer to teach professional adults in a small city.

After that, I went to China and worked for a pretty decent language school. There was a lot to be desired in the particular method that school used as students got very little L+1 input and controlled practice before they were expected to produce output, but it was a good company and they treated me well enough. I was there for about six months before something in me was switched on and I decided to become a professional and really started to push the development of my students and myself.

Then I took another job in SE Asia, but bailed a few months into the contract because the school was terrible.

Next, I went to yet another country to do a CELTA course because my university TESOL certificate wasn't recognized by the positions I actually wanted to get. I decided to stay in this country for a bit and went through a few terrible jobs before landing a good job at what is probably the most reputable English language teaching organizations in the world.

I'd like to stay here for about two years, get a DELTA, and then apply for an internal transfer to the Middle East and save some money for a MA TESOL. In a few more years, I hope to become a teacher trainer and ADOS and maybe even make a course book.


Hmmm about research.... I didn't do a lot in the beginning. My inspiration was a German TA at university and I liked her stories about teaching English in east Germany and Austria so much that I went to my freshman adviser and asked her what I needed to do to teach English overseas. She told me about the TESOL certificate my university offered, but it was the Peace Corps-like project that really got me hooked on teaching English. After I got started in EFL, I learned about Dave's and made a few EFL friends who were more professional than I was at the time. I constantly picked their brains for advice and then used the internet for further information.

I absolutely love teaching EFL and have never had second thoughts about doing it. It's a very rewarding job, but the money isn't exactly good ;) One thing that has helped me is always having clear goals to work towards. Teaching EFL certainly can be a career, but only if you have a clear plan and the drive to follow it.

[MotherF]

[Shroob]

I'm always hesitant posting personal stories on the internet, you never know who's reading them or how they will be used That said, here goes:

I first got the idea of teaching English in the final year of my undergraduate degree. I had long thought I'd be a teacher, I just did not know in what subject. When I went to hand in my dissertation there was a long queue, on the wall next to it was a large poster - I still remember it vividly - which said 'Tiger English! Teach English in China!'. It had a big picture of a tiger imposed on the Great Wall.

After submitting my dissertation I went away and researched the whole TEFL industry, joined forums, read around, etc. This lasted for about two months. I found out about the different qualifications and what employers were looking for and signed up for a CELTA course that started in a few months. In the meantime I also volunteered once a week at a local community centre teaching English to immigrants, to see if I liked it. Now, this is where it gets interesting, I was accepted on the CELTA course and I had an unconditional offer to do a PGCE (state teacher qualification in the UK) for primary schools, I had been working for around 6 months part-time in a local school.

In the end, I decided to do the CELTA and haven't looked back. The desire to travel, and the enjoyment I got teaching adults compared to children sealed it for me. I had come to realise teaching children wasn't for me.

So after the CELTA I started looking for jobs. Initially in Europe as I thought the transition would be easier, as this was would be my first time living abroad and away from home (in uni I stopped with friends/family). However, I quickly found out that finding a job in Europe on the internet wasn't easy, most required 2 years of experience, which I did not have. In the end I decided to try China - I always saw jobs advertised and the demand was high, so off I went. The job I accepted did wasn't pay particularly well, it wasn't in a 'desirable' location BUT the foreign teachers said the nicest things e.g. a trustable FAO, good students, etc. which was important for me for being my first job.

That's how it all started. I've really enjoyed it and long may it continue!

[bansheebeat]

Half way through my undergrad I realized that my major (music) was pretty worthless and I wanted to pursue something else. I had traveled before and knew that I loved it, and the idea of living abroad long-term was very appealing. I had a professor who took a sabbatical to teach abroad and after hearing his stories I was hooked. I did a lot of research here and on countless other forums and blogs. I volunteered at a local community center where I tutored Latin Americans in English. After that it was just a matter of saving money and getting my ducks in a row!

[baa_baa]

my mother was an english teacher. she retired now. In second grade I started going to her class and helping her out in class. It was fun.

I found here like in 2011 maybe? not sure. When I was trying to find information about schools that I had received job offers from.

[esl_prof]

I got into teaching accidentally. One day during college (late 1980s, so Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet), I was walking through the student union building and came across an information table from the local adult literacy program. As we had just been discussing the literacy campaigns in Nicaragua and Cuba in my Latin American history class, I was intrigued, signed up, and completed their training to become a literacy tutor. Once I completed the training, however, there were more tutors than literacy students so I was asked if I'd be willing to tutor a couple of Mexican students for the U.S. citizenship test instead. I said yes and, thus, began a very productive stint as a volunteer tutor. During my senior year, I got special permission from my college's education department (I was not an education major) to take their course in Methods of TESL in order to improve my tutoring/teaching skills. It was not until many, many years later that I became of the existence of certificate programs such as CELTA.

Following college, I applied to do two years of overseas volunteer service through my church and, on the basis of my previous volunteer experience, was assigned to teach English in the Dominican Republic. When I arrived, I was given a blackboard, chalk, and an empty classroom, so I basically developed a community ESL program from scratch.

After the D.R., I pursued an MA degree in TESOL and, for the very first time, had the opportunity to network with classmates who had taught all over the world. It was also then (mid-1990s) that I acquired my first e-mail account, learned how to surf the web, and was introduced to "this great new resource for ESL teachers" known as Dave's ESL Cafe. While I've yet to actually use Dave's to find a job, I've been an occasional lurker over that past two decades and have found this forum a good resource for keeping up with trends in the overseas teaching market.