Job Discussion Forums

[smitch]

I was reading the CLIC Sevilla thread regarding the 'is it better to have a CELTA than nothing?' question. Indeed I do believe it must be better. However, what about the question 'Is it better to have a CELTA than 60,000 hours of classroom experience?'

I ask because that is about how many hours classroom teaching experience I have (15 years) but as I started in 1987 I did not get a CELTA since it was not the norm or necessary back then. Since then I've taught in different language schools around Spain, have prepared students for the different Cambridge exams and have even been a Cambridge PET and KET oral examiner. Then I went to Mexico for several years where I taught in two universities and prepared students for the TOEFL exam.

I have an M.A. in History, which helped me to get those jobs in Mexico and where I was never asked about CELTA.

Now I'm back in Barcelona and I can't get a job because I don't have a CELTA. I see plenty of job ads which say 'No experience needed' but I have not seen one here that says 'No CELTA needed if you have experience' or 'No teaching qualification needed'. This obviously implies that not only is only post-CELTA experience valued but that a CELTA is considered superior to whatever number of classroom hours experience you may have. In my case with 60,000 classroom hours experience it appears I am not employable. Obviously things were different once otherwise it would have been impossible to find work and clock up those hours.

Qualifications and experience together are undoubtedly the best bet. However I would be interested to read what you might think about the apparent devaluing of experience on its own to a point where, in Europe at least, it is practically worthless and certainly considered far inferior to the twenty day CELTA course. Why would this be? Do you think it is correct/justified?

[spiral78]

Interesting.
Most teachers with non-related official qualifications have far less, and less relevant, experience than yours. It does seem that you should be considered a viable candidate, at least, supposing that your CV is being read beyond qualifications. Are you going in person? If not, I would try!

That said:

Spain (and much of Europe) has come to be a market for newbie teachers. The region is so popular, there's no shortage of newbies who want to work there - and this has depressed salaries to the extent that, outside of university and specialist positions, the job doesn't pay enough to support anyone with much higher-than-newbie expectations.

I think the CELTA requirement is simply to weed out the viable newbies from the backpackers.

It shouldn't really apply to someone in your case.
Do you have letters of recommendation from universities and previous employers? I'd try definitely going in person and making sure to emphasize your experience over qualifications.

[john_n_carolina]

60,000 hours....100 / mo or 1200 / yr would be about 50 years of ESL teaching....

i would assume during those 50 years, that teacher would have picked up 1 or 2 books on grammar....or would have been fired...

what else is he going to talk about for 50 years? recipes, ghosts, UFO's?

if the poll said 600 hrs,....i go with CELTA no experience

[Moore]

As Spiral says, it's really a thing that give newbies an edge and proves a lot more dedication with no experience than a backpacker just giving it a blast for a few months. After a couple of years it really makes no difference at all except to the teacher themselves in terms of teaching at places like the British Council or International House who insist on a TEFL.

In terms of new teachers, there a great many people I meet out there who are CELTA qualified but seem almost entirely personality-free. For me a quite significant benchmark of a good teacher is that when you meet the interviewee you would be quite happy to go out for an evening of beers with them: then they'll pass on that feeling of communication, conviviality and humour on to their students who will be the ones who will be obliged to spend many hours with that person.

It's as the saying goes: you can teach a nice person to do anything, but you can't teach everybody to be a nice person. In a business that's so dependant on personal contact and feeling this is crucial. If a teacher is as dull as dishwater and you're inflicting them on a bunch of students for 40 hours then the DOS had better hope they're very enthusiastic students and the teacher knows their teaching inside-out.


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[SirKirby]

I suggest that you alter it to 600 hours -- about six years.

60,000 is an absurd figure if you really want to discuss this idea. A lifetime's experience is so obviously better than a four week course.

[SirKirby]

Smitch, you say "Now I'm back in Barcelona and I can't get a job because I don't have a CELTA".

Can you clarify that? Are schools actually interviewing you and rejecting you? Or are you just supposing that they won't if that's what they say in their ads?

As a former DoS, I would definitely NOT have held the lack of CELTA against your application provided you interviewed well.

[jonniboy]

I'm a little surprised by what you say. I have four years of experience (not counting the current teaching year) but no cert. I applied to about dozen schools in the Barsa metropolitan area last year and got positive feedback from four of them, which is not bad considering I was submitting apps from abroad. Maybe my situation is different - I taught in Valencia, speak Spanish and studied Catalan so had other pluses that I could sell to employers there. I'm just very surprised that any reputable school would reject you, except for places like the British council which absolutely insist on certs.

[SirKirby]

... and, as I understand it, the BC would insist on DELTA, not CELTA...

[smitch]

Sorry everyone, yes you're right it's not 60,000, it couldn't be - it's more like 12,000 classroom hours. That's based on 20 hours a week, 10 months a year, 15 years. I remembered having worked out 60,000 before and didn't bother to work it out again.

Anyway, despite the huge difference between 12000 and 60000, and not trying to excuse my obvious arithmetical flaws, it doesn't seem to change the question in the slightest.

[smitch]

In fact talking of CLIC I remember a few years ago the DoS saying that he really wanted to take me on because he wanted experienced teachers but since CLIC was IH approved he would have to take on a couple of newbies who had just finished the CELTA and he didn't seem very happy about it.

[SirKirby]

[smitch]

Sir Kirby, to clarify, I am not going in with my CV to schools. I'm new here but my impression is that they are too dispersed to make that kind of speculative travel worthwhile in the Internet age. I'm phoning up and sending my CV to schools and responding to specific ads, such as those on TEFL websites and in the local magazine 'Metropolitan', which are asking for teachers - apparently they need teachers, they're spending money to tell us that, but none of them have got back in contact with me.

Of course I can't be sure about why they're not getting back in contact but what I do know is that in every single ad I have seen CELTA is cited as a prerequistite. That in itself puts me off applying and is dispiriting, since I don't have the qual they are specifically asking for, but then I think 'maybe my experience will make up for that, I'll go ahead anyway' but hear nothing back. Even the ads to teach business execs specify 'CELTA trained teachers' and from my experience small business classes is the area where you have least opportunity to use any typical TEFL training or approach.

[smitch]

12000 classroom hours would be fifteen years teaching at twenty hours a week, ten months a year.

[SirKirby]

[spiral78]

SirKirby's right - you need to go in person.

By the way, are you also legally eligible to work within the EU? If not, it's even less surprising that they aren't getting back to you. The laws were significantly different when you were in Europe years ago...