Six things to do as soon as you finish your TEFL course
A bit of that SixThings magic on TEFLtastic with a guest piece from the author of that blog, Lindsay Clandfield:
“1. Celebrate and decompress
Especially true if you’ve done an intensive course in English language teaching. It’s probably been a stressful time recently, and if you’ve got through the whole thing in one piece and passed then you deserve a little break. I trained teachers for years in Barcelona and I always felt sorry for those who had to leave right after their course finished. During the course they didn’t really have any time to see the city or do anything fun. Those who did spend most of their time having fun probably didn’t pass the course, so had no cause to celebrate.
2. Remember this moment
I’m serious about this. Take a piece of paper and write down how you feel now that you are qualified. What does it mean to you to be a teacher? What kind of teacher do you hope you’ll be? What kind of teacher do you never want to become? Teachers are most susceptible to burnout in their first two to five years of practice and it’s very, very easy for cynicism to set in. When you feel that happening, remember why you got into this in the first place.
3. Be careful about your first job
If you’ve gone to the trouble and expense of getting yourself properly qualified, be discerning about your first job. Do your homework about any school you are intending to work for. Know your rights, and remember that if you have a bad feeling about a school at the interview stage then perhaps it’s best to walk away. Goodness knows teaching English has enough dishonest characters in it and some really awful private schools. Don’t be a victim.
4. Don’t undercut yourself (and everyone else)
Some teachers start offering private classes as soon as they are qualified. They may do this at ridiculously low rates. Remember that you are now initiated into a new profession and you are (hopefully) taking yourself a bit more seriously. If you don’t want to be mistaken for an uneducated backpacker who speaks English but knows nothing about teaching then don’t charge like one. Find the local rates.
5. Get yourself a couple of books for teachers (or favourite websites)
Many novice teachers just follow the coursebook when they start teaching. This is fine to a point, but it’s important to start trying other things. There are numerous excellent books for teachers with suggestions for different kinds of activity. It’s a good place to start developing. Can’t find any where you are, or can’t afford them? Try browsing the numerous websites for teachers out there then and find some favourites. This site has a good links page to start from, for example.
6. Keep learning!
OK, if you’ve taken a short course in TEFL (like a CELTA or Trinity Certificate) you may be feeling that you are a bit of a fraud. After all, how can anyone really be a teacher after only a month (or six months part-time) training? The answer is you can’t. Even the best officially recognised short courses stress that you are TEFL initiated. In an ideal world, you’d have a period of internship (like doctors). Well, we English teachers don’t live in a world like that. It’s more often than not in at the deep end and the rest of your training will be up to you. Find out about teaching organisations in your country. Join them. Go to a workshop or conference. Read a book or magazine about teaching. Talk to more experienced peers. The number one preoccupation you have now is probably just getting work, but once that’s taken care of don’t forget to keep learning.”
Wish someone had told me all that back when I could still be taught to suck eggs! Anyone else got any advice I should’ve heard years ago before I got set in my ways they’d like to turn into the next TEFLtastic guest piece?
Tags: guest writers
February 9th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Surely, surely, though, you’ve missed out the most important one!? Retire , or adjourn, with your newly-found professional colleagues to the nearest Lamb & Flag and let r-i-i-i-i-i-i-p for a few hours … or days even!
February 10th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
great points!
you’re SPOT ON with number 4.
February 11th, 2009 at 6:17 am
Well done and I like the reflective practice suggestion mentioned in No. 2. If one stays in TEFL for many years, then that memento will something to treasure down the road. That’s a keeper, for sure. Imagine looking back on that when you get ready to retire or at different points in your career ( maybe you’ll even be a trainer one day…) My suggestion there is to write a few entries in a journal rather that a piece of paper, as slips of paper tend to get lost quite easily. Perhaps a journal entry just prior to taking the course, one while taking the course, and one after popping the cork on the champagne !
February 11th, 2009 at 6:22 am
Or write it in a blog??
February 11th, 2009 at 10:48 am
I guess a blog would be fine for the types of things that someone wants to make public, but I find, at least for me, that there is a also a very private side of my reflections that I don’t care to share and I think that it would be a shame to leave those out the process. One tool that I like to use for reflecting is the Johari Window ( named after Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham). There’s a nice little summary of it here:
http://nucoach.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/the-johari-windowa-cognitive-psychological-tool/
February 11th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
ALEX CASE the world’s foremost purveyor of malicious hate rumours on the web. My prophecy applies to you too, HYDRA HEAD under your guise of tefl chummy boy. Drooling HYDRA HEAD agaog for HATRED.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Nice to have a message from Paul Lowe right now, because I just signed on exactly so I could send out another warning about him. I’m banned from Dave’s for posting about Laughing Coyote, so can someone else warn these people to Google Windsor Schools before they put their money down?
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=35647&highlight=
February 11th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Just reread that. Prophecy? Does that make you a prophet? Would make up, I suppose, for the lack of profit…
btw Paul, doesn’t it worry you that we all find your comments harmless and laughable enough that we actually allow them rather than just deleting them?
February 11th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
4′s spot on – -
But I have to say this, yikes, don’t throw stones y’all –
On the flip side, if you’re a newly qualified -even if you’ve got a masters originally in rocket science and the only reason you’ve now deigned to become an ELT is because you married into a country you can’t work in otherwise, you’re just not worth the same as a teacher with years of experience.
Put the ego in your back pocket and don’t whine to the DOS that your work has equal value. Until you can make the future perfect continuous a fun and interesting, memorable activity, be a little humble.
Er. that was a long whinge. A pet peeve.
K
February 12th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Career-what career? TEFL isn’t a career-it is a dead-end trap. Wait till your in your late fifties, unemployable and with no pension worth talking about let alone a house-then see if you want any of your momentoes.
February 13th, 2009 at 6:53 am
The life we’ve chosen…
Come on guys. Nobody held a gun to my head and told me to embark on a TEFL ‘career’. It was a choice I made and one I have generally never regretted. Many people have few better options than EFL and others simply cannot conform to the corporate routine.
I think it’s fair to warn people about where TEFL leads – that there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It has other benefits though and many a ‘career’ in the UK/US has recently gone down the toilet and left people in a mess.
TEFL is a dead end trap for many, but not all. If you want a way to live abroad and drink every weekday night then that’s an option, but it won’t generally lead to anything else.
If you get good at the job, behave responsibly and either schmooze your way into a management role, become a name and publish stuff, or find some other niche it can be OK. Sure – better to be a leading surgeon or top lawyer …. but those were never options for me anyway.
February 13th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Jim:
If that’s really the way that you feel, then I think that you are wasting your time reading these posts – this is a blog for people who actually care about TEFL. That said, I do understand your comment and know why you might feel that way. Things in life are neither easy nor free and this applies to TEFL, too. It’s what you make of it.
February 13th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
care about tefl you some kind of tefl nazi-one day you will wake up and realise your a tefl loser
February 13th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
If its what you make of it why is it full of dead end drunks. Even good ol Alex openly publishes the names of two tefl heroes and the aclies anonymous yes anonymous meetings they went to. Losers incorporated.
Top surgeon or lawyer-bottom lawyer or surgeon, tree surgeon anything is better
February 13th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
What I do now is I email job ads with crap money and ask em if they have made a mistake. The crappily named Robert language “college” in cemetrey by the sea is offering 13-15000 a year for teflers-a pub cleaner gets more than that and a crappy Moscow school is offering 750 dollars a month for ESP teachers. What a joke?
February 13th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
7th thing to do when you become a 4 weeker:
say I’ve been had. Those courses-the trainers take em seriously I suppose it is all a front. They treat you like crap and run it like a boot camp=I suppose they fall around laughing afterwards when they have pocketed your cash.
February 13th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Sorry that you feel that way about TEFL. Well, then, I wish you the best in your career as a lawyer:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/115257/how_lawyers_make_for_good_alcoholics.html?cat=7
http://www.lawcrossing.com/article/2583/Attorneys-Kick-Addictions-with-Help-from-The-Other-Bar/
February 14th, 2009 at 3:09 am
Jim, if you read the whole post you would see that all of the top 7 things you probably didn’t know about me were jokes. In fact, I was assuming most people would realise that those 7 things were jokes even without needing to read that far…
February 14th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Sorry, I was really tired as I had been running from crappy class to apalling private lessons
February 14th, 2009 at 8:35 am
lawyer what planet are you on -I am too old and skint as I am a tefler with a family to support
February 15th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Okay, Jim. But based on the info you mentioned in the other thread, sounds to me like you’ve taught in the Middle East and they don’t hire there without an MA. If I had to guess, I would say that you have an MA in TESOL, at least 10 years of experience (if not 20), work at a Uni or a college, make at least 50K US per year (tax free), have a free 2-3 bedroom apartment, round-trip air fare back to your home country, free medical insurance and high school tuition paid for for your kids, if you have any. Am I right? Is the glass half full or half empty here? Come clean.
February 16th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Wrong-they don’t hire without an MA-complete rubbish. Take a look at the ME jobs on tefl.com and Dave’s-no MA needed for almost all of them. Examples of employers in ME who don’t require MAs: BAE, Bell, SDT, STA, Higher Colleges, industrial and community colleges, lang schools etc. Where are the jobs that pay 50 nk a year-that is what 35 000 pounds.
WRONG
February 16th, 2009 at 10:34 am
I find it hard to believe that Julian Edge marked one of your assignments, yet you seem to be claiming that you only have a TEFL Cert. Is that the case? Do you have a higher qualification? You really didn’t answer the question. Yes, there is the odd language school and private high school, but they are by far the minority as far as English teachers are concerned. The whole language school culture is nothing like it is in Asia. The Higher Colleges pays what I stated above, and has been for at least four years, at least for MA holders (something of which there is no shortage of in the UAE). They do accept teachers with a BA and the RSA Dip, but the majority have an MAs.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:55 am
P.S. Yes, Dave’s ESL often lists a lot crap jobs. So? That doesn’t mean that aren’t any decent ones — t just means that those employers are willing to pay him to list their positions.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Whatever you do folks, don’t go job hunting at Dave’s ESL Cafe. I can’t stress the importance of this enough.
Also, never assume that you’ll be able to get any worthwhile info from the ESL Cafe forums.
Alex, as ever you and your readers are welcome to report warnings about all these bounders on the ELT World forums…
http://eltworld.net/forums/index.php
Thanks to Lindsay for this excellent list.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I completely agree with you, David.
February 16th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
The Higher Colleges are only one employer and the UAE is only 1 country. I never said that I only had a cert and Julian Edge did mark 1 of my assignments-I did his foundation module when he taught at Aston. I realise that the UAE is full of MA holders and many that claim they have an MA.
February 16th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Of course David V is the owner and profiteer of eltworld.net. No wonder he is dissing Daves and promoting his own Turkish shite.
June 28th, 2009 at 8:32 am
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