Archive for the ‘becoming a teacher trainer’ Category

Doesn’t last of course, especially the initial thrill of being in the chaos of a third world city or in the chaos left for you by the last person who had that DoS job, but if having some kind of career plan gets you out of the bed in the morning with more motivation than I had six months ago, wth- got to be a good thing!

Whether your next plan is/ will be how to become a teacher trainer, an ELT author, a better teacher or just someone who is making an active effort to fight the boredom, we at TEFLtastic have the article for you on our totally updated page right here.

“My first two years in Japan were spent teaching English… The students… studied English- or should I say, English was taught in their presence. Nothing ever seemed to sink in. Years of classes and endless tests and still they couldn’t master the intricacies of a simple ‘How are you?’ When I tried to have the most elemental of English conversations with them they looked at me with blank expressions, shrugged their shoulders, and said ‘Wakaranai’ (’Huh?’) They did this, I believe, just to annoy me. Don’t get me wrong, these teenagers were polite and studious and well-mannered, but they were still teenagers, and teenagers are pretty well insufferable anywhere you go on this planet.” (more…)

Maybe because it is the most obvious next step for an experienced and ambitious teacher who still wants to do something related to teaching rather than stepping into management, over the years I must have met 20 times as many teachers who wanted to be teacher trainers as people who ever managed to find a full time job doing it. That demand and the lack of a standard qualification for teacher trainers means that it can be very difficult to break into teacher training, and many of the teacher trainers I know relied somewhat on luck to do so. As such, none of the suggestions below are guaranteed to work- but all of them are guaranteed to improve your chances over sitting and waiting, or over taking one of the very dubious online qualifications for teacher trainers: (more…)