Want to help a cyberbegger get on a TEFL course?
Just found a request to help raise $415 dollars for a TEFL course, needed to help get out of a trap of minimal wage jobs by getting back into education. On the cyberpanhandling site BegsList here:
Quite apart from the weakness in the plan, I’m always drawn between two competing reactions with these “TEFL to help turn your life around stories”:
a) It quite often works and I’m proud to be in a profession that sometimes helps people make a new start or reinvent themselves
b) It quite often doesn’t work, and we end up with a fair proportion of people who couldn’t cut it back home and/or in their original jobs for very good reasons
and low entry standards is obviously a factor in both (a) and (b)…
January 30th, 2012 at 6:23 am
I think it’s madness that they are begging for money to get into TEFL, $415 isn’t much money and surely they could find it somewhere. I think TEFL can change your life around, it did to me and several of my colleagues.
February 3rd, 2012 at 11:00 am
The low entry standards probably does more good than harm overall. It lets people get a start who maybe missed the boat when straight out of university. The problem of people with low skill and motivation continuing in TEFL is more serious but not the fault of low entry standards themselves. More the fault of bad management IMO.
There are plenty of bad teachers in UK state schools who are just showing up and going through the motions. These all have to have degrees and pass a PGCE or BEd course – which is far more on paper than a CELTA or equiv.