Job Discussion Forums

[Lenn88]

Hello
I was wondering if someone might be able to help me find a job in Poland? I am have a college degree and I have dual citizenship. (Canadian & American)
Thank you

[spiral78]

Neither Canadian nor U.S. citizenship will help you in Europe. You can get legal working papers for Poland, still, but it's a bit of a hassle.

To compete on the job market, you will need a certificate to teach. It's not enough to be a native speaker.

A basic cert course is best taken in the country where you want to teach. This gives you a chance to get your feet wet in the country while you still have a support system (most training centres will arrange housing for the course period and give you some orientation). Your practice teaching students will really represent the people you'll be working with when you start, and you can make useful local contacts who can help you when you need to negotiation contracts and arrange for housing later on.

A basic cert for Europe, including Poland, is 30 days ON-SITE, with practice teaching on REAL STUDENTS, not peer teachers, and feedback from experienced teacher trainers. You can find such courses in Poland, and Prague's a mecca for them, turning out literally hundreds of newbies every few months.

I'm emphasizing the 'on-site' issue because there are a lot of courses advertised in North America that are less than the standard for Europe, including Central/Eastern Europe. Courses that are on-line or weekend, or make you 'practice-teach' on your peer trainees are considered generally substandard here. Not that you might not find someone here and there working successfully with such a cert, but MOST newbies have the kind I've described, so if you really want to compete, that's what you need.

Finally, I want to say that jobs are best found from inside the country. There are lots of newbie teachers in the region, and a school that's hiring from abroad is likely to be dodgy - new teachers here may well have good reasons for not wanting to work there.

Another reason for your next step to be to research 100+ hour on-site training courses in the region.

[joscothewalrus]

avoid millenium services whatever you do