Job Discussion Forums

[mrohrbough]

Some information about me:
I have 11 years of experience as a credentialed teacher in the state of California, USA. One of the subjects my adult credential authorizes me to teach is ESL. However, I have limited ESL classroom experience. I also hold a Master of Education degree. I want to teach English in a Spanish speaking country for at least 12 months to become fluent in the language.

Questions:
1) Will a TEFL certification help me obtain employment abroad?
2) How does an American get a work visa in Spain?

[naturegirl321]

1. It'll help get you a TEFL job. If you want to continue in the intl school sector, try tes.co.uk or ibo.org or internationalschoolreviews.com

You might try going to intl school job fairs, the Iowa one is pretty famous.

2. It's going to be pretty hard to teach in Spain. How about Latin America? In order to get a work visa for Spain it has to be shown that you can do a job no Spaniard, or EUer can do. See the Spain forum for more info.

What are you licensed in anyways?

I personally believe that if you want to become fluent in the language, you should take a year off and study. If you TEFL abroad, rather than go to an intl school, you're going to take a huge cut in pay. At least if you go to Spanish speaking countries. The ME or Asia is different.

[tttompatz]

[The Internationalist]

What are you certified in?

[Sashadroogie]

As other posters have said, you probably don't need a TEFL cert to get a job abroad, though this depends on the country. (But Spain is going to be next to impossible for you, sorry.)

However, you may find doing a cert course helpful in learning how to do the job properly once you get it. While it may not be true for you in your situation, all too often an MA in Education, or any other previous teaching experience, provides next to no support for a new TEFL teacher. Different types of teaching. I've seen it happen countless times where teachers with extensive previous experience in other areas of education crashed and burned in a TEFL classroom where the students only had very basic language skills. As I said earlier, this may not be so in your particular case, but it is worth bearing in mind.

Good luck!

[spiral78]

Ditto the information about Spain being off the table; you can find tons of discussion on this on the Spain forum below.

I can also second what Sasha has said regarding certification: working with students in their native language on core subjects bears very little relation to EFL. Even ESL classrooms in Anglophone countries are quite different to teaching pure EFL in a foreign country. In my 14+ years in the field, I've seen quite a few teachers from other disciplines try to cross over to EFL: I can assure you that specific training is really useful.

[mrohrbough]

My credential authorizes me to teach Elementary and Secondary Basic Skills, English as a Second Language, Social Sciences, and Fine Arts.

[mrohrbough]

Thank you for the resources. I haven�t considered the international school avenue. I will look into it. And yes, I am open to Latin America.