… Trinity, surprisingly. Details from Guardian TEFL here
Including such motivational gems as:
“Once people sit down and look seriously at the time and cost that will be involved, that will focus their minds wonderfully,”
“we can’t say that it is going to help you up the employment ladder.” and
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…)
Hi, I’ve just read your DELTA experiences and wondered if you could advise me on the best course to take. I’ve been teaching for 12 years (PGCE and Degree in English) - 6 years in Comprehensives in the UK and 6 years in France at a Lycée and University. I’m now back in the UK teaching in a Comp and want to get back into TAL or TEFL……which type of course would you recommend? I’ve been told there are 4 possibilities:
RSA Trinity
CELTA
DELTA
MEd TESOL
I’m going to be in the UK for the next 5 years so I would be teaching here rather than abroad.
Thanks,
Diane
———————-
Any advice for Diane anyone?
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?
You really do learn new stuff in TEFL all the time. Only a week ago I wrote an article on The Advantages and Disadvantages of Setting Up a TEFL Course (something I did twice back when I was ambitious), and it never occured to me that one of the disadvantages might be having to spend hours on the internet every day defending your reputation until it drives you nuts (see recent comments on the right for an example).
Should that not have put you off, I have written another one on How to Set Up a TEFL Certificate Course as well.