TEFL International is not only often quoted as one of the largest TEFL training organisations (see the stats below), it is also almost certainly the one most likely to set off a firestorm by mentioning it on the internet- hence its interest, and the need for these somewhat strict rules on comments: (more…)
Bruce has replied to all the questions below, so thanks to the few people who helped me with those rather than repeating the same old “I have evidence but I’m not going to show it to you” comments. I’m going to ask quite a few back up questions, then the finished interview Part Two will go up in maybe a week. In the meantime, all comments on Bruce V, TEFL International etc will be deleted as all the recent ones have already been answered in the interview and there doesn’t seem to be much point in tackling them twice.
When the interview goes up, there will be a 24 hour period with no comments so that people can write up their detailed and evidence-rich responses on Word at home first, rather than firing off the first things that come into their heads. After that time, you will be allowed to comment only on the things said in the interview. Any other comments will be deleted, and persistent offenders will have all their comments deleted (also in previous posts) in order for it to be technically possible to block them through Wordpress. If you have any other comments or questions about TEFL International, you may of course email me.
Comments are open for this post so that you may, if you wish, comment on the policies described above. Any other comments will be deleted.
As is my role as the navelgazer of TEFL, having had to take a close look at the battleground that is the teflnet recently has made me wonder whether something deeper is going on. Do I hear “class war” as an explanation? I’m never one to rule that out, but my theory is that, as is often the case with these arguments that go on forever, we are actually talking two different languages.
As me and Sandy have been doing more than our fair share of trying to see the TEFL capitalists’ point of view recently, let’s see if I can’t try and explain our particular (and peculiar) culture and viewpoint to them:
- If you are a successful businessman who heads a large company, for many people that is enough to make you the enemy. and there is nothing you can do to change their minds. For example, how many people have admitted they were wrong about Bill Gates’s evil empire just because he has turned into Mother Theresa? That’s right- none! It could be due to a philosophy of class war or other political reasons, it could be bitterness, but it’s usually a version of the tall poppy syndrome. I personally think that the tall poppy syndrome is healthy, and while it suggests an abandonment of logic it’s no worse than the ‘rich and successful = good’ culture of the rest of the world (more…)
This interview was conducted by email over the last week or so, with me submitting the main outline and then asking a few follow up questions when the main answers came back. My questions are in bold, and the follow up questions and answers are in italics.
1. A brief history of your career
This was covered in a recent interview in the BKK Post but here it is again:
I began life in a completely different field—selling industrial equipment and negotiating Joint Ventures in China. When the company I worked for had a problem with our customer in China, I was sent to Hong Kong to resolve it.
When the company went under, I was somewhat abandoned in Hong Kong.
The job market back home was not that good (and my field was very specialized) so I thought I would look for a job in Hong Kong. A friend suggested I teach English to earn some money to pay the rent.
Before long I was teaching full time and loving it! I then started opening small schools around Hong Kong. But after several years I was burned out. Married by then with a small child, we decided to move to Thailand. Soon afterwards I decided to pen up a TESOL course. The main purpose was to find and train qualified teachers for the schools in Hong Kong! But after some initial success I decided to expand.
2. A brief history of TEFL International, the secret of its success and the principles behind it
Started out as a Trinity course. After some differences of opinion with the CE of Trinity at the time, we became independent on 1 Jan 2000. As a small, newly independent school, I decided that the only way we could credibly tell our students that our course was internationally recognized was to be truly international. Thus, the rapid expansion.
3. A list of some of the things that TEFL International does now
· TESOL Courses
· Volunteer Programs
· Guaranteed Jobs programs
· Teacher Training for local teachers (usually through the Thai Ministry of Education)
· Teach/learn language programs
· Teach/Intern programs
4. Can you give some details of TI’s charity/non-profit status and structure
First of all, we do not need to be a non-profit. We could avoid all taxes by moving our base to some offshore tax shelter. And it’s not like I enjoy having all of our accounts (including my salary) available to the public. But we work with universities and universities feel better working with a non profit than a for profit. Plus, we do a lot of things that non profits do like real volunteer work and assistance for the less fortunate.
I do not know a lot about US tax laws (which are extremely complex). But every year we have to hire a special accountant to do our taxes and submit them to the IRS to ensure we continue to meet US non-profit status. (more…)
Here are some questions I need answers to in order to make up my mind once and for all about TEFL International:
1. A brief history of Bruce’s career
2. A brief history of TEFL International, the secret of its success and the principles behind it
3. A list of all the things that TEFL International does now
4. TI’s charity/non-profit status and structure (more…)
I’d love to believe that the collective efforts of TEFL bloggers and website owners were working towards building a tefl internet where a word or two on Google will be worth more than asking people you know for recommendations for TEFL qualifications, schools and countries to work in, and teaching techniques and materials to use. Unfortunately, I think the present and near future reality is not so ideal.
Starting with a simple and practical example, would you be better off spending 20 minutes searching on the Internet for suitable worksheets, or should you spend that time trawling through the teachers’ room bookshelves and asking other teachers? If my own experience and the people who arrive on my blogs looking for something that isn’t there are anything to go by, I’d leave that keyboard alone.
And now to the more complex question of trying to find out something about, for example, training with and/or working with TEFL International in Thailand. What are the chances that an Internet search will give you the information you need? The answer is clear… (more…)
“Our profession is notorious for exploiting its most valuable asset – language teachers – for financial gain. I remember a teacher recalling taking a summer job where he and his fellow teachers struggled to teach competently in a school with sub-standard facilities and scant resources. He had a vivid memory of the owner arriving in a Rolls Royce and announcing that further cost-cutting measures were necessary. I think that says it all.”
Sounds like TEFLtrade is back on the case… (more…)
Noticing that two of my three nominations for TEFL bad boy of the century have been involved in selling 4 week TEFL courses of limited career worth has made me wonder whether the whole non-CELTA non-Trinity lot of them have been nothing but another nail in the coffin of TEFL being taken seriously. I have motivations for wanting to think otherwise as I did send 100 or so people out into the world to end up cursing themselves, me or the course provider when some of them were inevitably told “We don’t care what your training consisted of, we only accept Cambridge Certs.”
The other disadvantages of the plethora of “equivalent” courses individually are well known, and can probably best be understood as the TEFL equivalent of knock off DVDs-usually cheaper, usually inferior quality to some extent, sometimes nothing like what you thought you were getting. Like pirate DVDs, though, collectively their effect on the whole industry is mainly to stop the “legitimate” providers getting up themselves and charging what they like.
Here some examples of the ways I have seen the changes in the market as a positive response to a bit of law of the jungle capitalist competition:
-More CELTA and Trinity courses available in cheaper countries,something that was lead by other course providers-and in fact quite a few of the ones which are Trinity now started off as such
-More additional services like airport pickup, lifetime job seeking help, accommodation etc
-Advertising in more unconvential places, ie not just the Guardian
- A healthy scepticism about 4 week courses in general-mainly prompted by the seedier, but also keeping C and T on their toes and always having to justify the quality of their courses
-Cambridge has been forced to keep the CELTA as a stand alone practical teaching qualification, whereas their own professional and commercial logic might have allowed them to jump on every trendy methodology or convert the CELTA into an intro to the DELTA
- The fact that the majority of course providers have settled on 4 weeks as the standard (hugely better than two weeks, at which point trainees have usually improved their standard of lessons little if at all, and not much worse than even 8 weeks, at which point trainees have long passed saturation point ). This has provided the idea of a month practical teaching course as an alternative to an (often impractical) 1 year MA with a legitimacy it wouldn’t have had if it was C and T
- The fact that C and T can point at being better than certain dodgy operators takes away the emphasis on being worse than a PGCE
It occurs to me that I’m having it both ways a bit here, but what are blogs for if not thinking aloud… Any other answers to the original question to help me sort my logic out anyone?
“In order to teach English in a private language school you need to be able to speak English fluently and have a certificate from either Trinity or RSA CELTA. These courses are around 4 weeks long and can even be completed online.”
You can’t do much reading about TEFL on the Net without coming across stories of dodgy geezers and their nasty little business schemes, and then you can’t read much more without coming across the nasty little TEFL teachers with their dodgy feuds- and then all kinds of mental confusion breaks out. Who can you believe in the TEFL world? The answer is simple- me!
Joking aside, I’ve been trawling through hundreds of posts about TEFL ripoffs and DoSs with personality problems over the last 12 months and although I remain sceptical about most of the claims made on such forums, there are three people/ organisations that I get a particularly bad vibe about. As what I’m doing is trying to judge someone’s personality through the internet, it is obviously subjective- and if you don’t trust my opinion on most things, then of course please ignore me here too. Still, here is my opinion for what it is worth. If it was me, I would avoid these three:
Paul Lowe’s Windsor TEFL/ Windsor Schools
Mark Smith’s Smith Schools of English Japan
Bruce Veldhuisen’s TEFL International
My criteria for inclusion is simple and beyond reproach, I think you will find. The evidence I have on their business dealings is limited but they strike me as three examples of the less pleasant kinds of people that TEFL occassionally attracts. I’ve met a few unpleasant characters, and the usual pattern is that if you catch them on a good day and they need something from you, you might be charmed. If you have no dealings with them and a good person who has got trapped in their web is the person you deal with you might have a good experience. Get on the wrong side of them, though, and you will find yourself a victim of every vindicitve and manipulative tactic known to man, with the idea that there is a line they shouldn’t step over in order to get their way not popping into their heads. Paul has shown on this site that he is exactly like that. People who have had direct communications with Mark Smith that I trust have told me that he is even worse. I don’t know how involved Bruce is in the day to day running of TEFL International, but someone’s ambition is making them step over the line of what I would call gentlemanly business practices.
Which leads me onto my philosophy of TEFL life. The system to have a good time in TEFL and not give more influence to the bad guys is simple- find nice people, avoid nasty ones. It’s worked for me- made me choose Spain, Italy, and Japan rather than Austria and Switzerland (though my nicest students ever were from Columbia, where I haven’t been yet), made me get out of DoSing and teacher training and back into the classroom, etc etc. So far, it’s worked- or not worked, depending on whether not being bitter is turning into a TEFL blogger handicap or not…
As I said, take several large salt mines when reading about any TEFL dodgy dealings, especially as many people have been known to place false information (both good and, for some strange reason, bad) about themselves on such sites, but here are some links anyway:
The TEFLtradesman on TEFL International
The TEFL Blacklist on Smith’s School of English
Usingenglish on Smith’s School of English