TEFL in the news- IH takes 9 year old into youth academy, trains him for greatness
It seems International House has found a way out of the severe worldwide competition with Bell, the British Council and Central School of English for the cream of the TEFL teaching crop by signing up children who have shown their precocious grammar explanation and elicitation skills on youtube to be trained until they reach legal TEFL teacher age in their youth academy in Belgium. They are already calling this one “the new Scott Thornbury”. You can read the full story here:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/03/sports/soccer.php
Any regular readers who know my juvenile taste for extended football= TEFL teaching metaphors probably knew not to even bother clicking above. As usual, though, I do have a serious reason for my university-magazine-level jesting (i.e. please keep on reading. Please! Please! Pretty please!)
The point is: why are schools not competing for our signatures? Why instead are they offering worse and worse conditions that would suggest all TEFL teachers are the same? Are the few extra pounds they would need to get a TEFL professional not worth their while? Maybe they have done the maths and realised that 20% of their teachers losing them students costs them less than a 10% pay rise all round. It’s possible, especially seeing as most students leave sooner or later anyway. Anyone who has done the Diploma in EFL management know the magic mathmatical formula that means it makes business sense to treat your teachers like something you need to scrape off your shoe?
