So You Think You Want to Take a TEFL course.

After taking the TEFL course last month and having time to reflect and analyze the whole experience from a more distant perspective I want to share some of that experience to help inform anyone curious about it or considering doing something similar.

This course will take up all of your time.  ALL of your time.  Having just graduated from college last spring I thought that I was plenty prepared for the rigors of another month of schooling.  I had taken no less than 15 units while working at least 25 hours a week for the last several years, so another month sounded like a walk in the park.  Although it wasn't intellectually straining the course consumed my focus for the month.  From 8 a.m. til 5 p.m. you are busy with teaching lessons, peer evaluating, and lectures on various aspects of teaching and grammar of the English language.  Afterwards you go home and begin planning your lessons until you pass out roughly around one in the morning.  You would assume that after a month of lesson planning it would have gotten progressively easier.  You would be wrong.  Not completely wrong I suppose, it does get slightly easier, but it still takes just as long.  As the course continues you will become more aware of considerations that should be taken into account.  So with each successive lesson that you need to plan there is a new element to incorporate.

What is nice about this intensely focused course is that you genuinely do learn.  I spent 5 years in college and have a degree in accountancy, I spent one month in this course to get my certificate.  Which one do I feel better prepared to do as a profession?  Hands down, I feel more confident to start teaching.  I remember very vividly hearing many graduating accounting majors expressing concern about not knowing enough to go into auditing or to work as a tax preparer, many already had jobs lined up.  (And we wonder why we are in a recession.)  These are the people preparing your financial documents, and the people reviewing them.  After 5 years of schooling I felt exactly the same, I was in way over my head.  Now, after only one month of focused learning and practice I am very aware and confident in my ability to be a teacher.

What should seem like an obvious step is planning a budget for while you're taking the course.  If you didn't think about that then perhaps teaching isn't really going to be your thing, because forethought definitely isn't and that's a bit of a prerequisite.  What ever you think you're going to need for your budget add some extra money to that.  After spending all day taking notes and teaching, the last thing that you want to do is to go grocery shopping, cook, and clean all before spending the rest of the night planning your next lesson.  This is totally doable, we did it, but planning on grabbing a pizza for dinner or a quick plate of pasta is a must.  Not only to save some time, energy, and your sanity, but you want to experience some of the country you're in while you're here.

Another important consideration is how long will it be in between finishing the course and when you start working you'll have to budget for.  This can be a rather tricky aspect to estimate.  In the TEFL world, job guidance is basically as follows:

Advisor:  Where would you like to work?
Student:  (Fill in the blank) sounds nice.
Advisor:  Oh great!  That's a wonderful place.  What you should do is move there and THEN start looking for a job...by the way...you usually only start with maybe 10 hours of work, so try looking for multiple jobs.  And Good luck!
Student:  WTF?!

My point being, you should make sure to budget accordingly.  Plan for any moving expenses you might incur, because where you want to work and where the TEFL school aren't always in the same place.  Budget for however many months you expect it to take to find a job.  Note:  This varies widely by location.  In many parts of Asia, its sounds as if you show up with a TEFL certificate you are guaranteed a job.  In Europe it takes a lot of pounding the payment and knocking on doors.  Make sure that when you are planning your budget for the time you won't be employed that you don't include any income from what you expect to make your first month working.  Two reasons for this.  First, you won't be making enough to bother including in your budget.  Second, even if you do make enough to live off that first month (you won't, but let's stay optimistic) the industry standard is to pay only once a month.  So you won't be getting any income from your first month of work until your second month anyways.

The demand for TEFL teachers really is international.  If you are looking to take this course as a way to travel it is an excellent opportunity.  Students from my class are spread out all across the world.  You can literally go any where in the world an find a job teaching English as a foreign language.  Yes, the highest demand for these teaching jobs is in Asia, as soon as you begin researching that will become extremely evident.  That's not to say there aren't jobs in other regions of the world, I'm teaching here in Italy. 

If Europe is of particular interest, and you're American, you should be aware that there are some difficulties with working here.  First with jobs in the EU, EU passport holders are given job preference, I know that doesn't sound fair, get over it.  Secondly, it is very difficult to get the required paperwork to work and live here legally.  It shouldn't be very difficult for you, but there is a catch 22.   For most countries you need to have your future employer send documentation to the consulate so you can get your work permit, but most companies won't hire you without a work permit.  (I know...it doesn't make sense to me either.)  What's funny about the work permit is that it requires almost no effort from the employer, they just don't want to do it.  There are several ways to get around this, but none of them are technically "legal."

If I haven't dissuaded your interest there are plenty of resources on-line to check for teaching positions, and schools to get your certificate all around the world.  Simply search for "TEFL" and more resources than you'll ever want will be at your finger tips.  For information about the certification course I took, there is a link at the very bottom of the sidebar of this page under Relevant Links.  Click the link to Via Lingua.

A Quick Word of Warning

To all men thinking about visiting this city with their significant other consider this your warning.  Florence is infested with small adorable babies.  I don't know where all this talk of Italy having a declining population is coming from.  This census clearly did not happen here in Florence.  The people here are doing more than their part to make up for the deficit.  Don't quote me on this just yet, but I'm fairly certain that this city has more babies per capita than any other city I have ever been to.

The first few weeks here Rachael and I were too preoccupied with the course to notice the unusual trend, but it didn't take long for her to pick up on the peculiar abundance of these cute little things that are over running the city.  Via del Corso is a virtual baby parade.  Mom's and Dad's are constantly meandering along this street pushing their babies in their tricked out strollers.  You may want to do some additional hand strengthening exercise before coming as you will be enduring plenty of hand squeezing because the one you are with will be constantly falling in love with another cute baby every few minutes, and frustrated at not having one of her own.

Europeans definitely got the strollers right though.   I'm not sure how they afford babies in this country.  They seem to purchase strollers for very specific periods of the babies life, periods that they will grow out of in a matter of days.  For the very small ones the only stroller that will seem to do is one where they can lie down in a bed then be zipped into a sleeping bag and then have the cover of the stroller zipped and snapped up so that the baby does not even have to know that its outside, sounds like a great way to travel. I would like to be pushed around in one of these strollers.

As of yet I haven't attributed a cause to this abundance of small children in the city.  It may be something in the water, more likely though it is something in the wine.  It could also be a combination of the beauty and history of this city, Florence is undoubtedly a mecca for anyone who loves food, wine, art, history, shopping, and everything else that makes Italy such an alluring country.  For those of you wishing to hold off the discussion of 'why don't we have kids yet,' you may want to consider holding off your visit until you are prepared.  You will have to give up a lot to avoid that, so its up to you to decide.  Consider yourselves warned.

Firenze!

Getting to Florence was nearly a disaster.  A strike had been scheduled. Thank goodness the people we were staying with spoke Italian.  On a visit to Venice there had been an announcement on the train, I haven’t the slightest idea what it said but the people we went with heard and understood it.  The regional trains had planned a strike for Saturday evening through Sunday night.  Awesome, right when we were supposed to be going to Florence by train.  Luckily, the strikes were only affecting the regional traffic, so after making a quick change and getting a ride to the Mestre station we were on our way.


It wasn’t the prettiest of days when we got into Florence. It was raining and I thought it was rather cold. Never the less we decided to walk from the station to our flat because we knew that it wasn’t far. This sounded like a great way to check out part of the walk we would be doing every morning, but luggage wheels do not like cobblestones.  Especially when those wheels are supporting 60 to 70 pounds of cloths and whatever else had been crammed into those suitcases.  Once we got to the apartment which took a few tries, there are several buildings marked number 5 on this street, we were pleasantly surprised by our accommodations. The large wooden doors open to an entrance with high vaulted ceilings that have simple but elegant paintings on them. The flat itself has 5 separate bedrooms, a kitchen, kitchenette, 2 bathrooms and a washing machine. The washing machine was surprisingly difficult to find because it was in the kitchen and looked exactly like anyother appliance. After getting our keys from the women that neither of us could really understand we set out to explore the city some before unpacking.

Our goal was to walk down the street and find the Piazza Della Repubblica and the entrance to the language school. We wanted to get some eyes on where we would be going everyday for the next month. Good thing we did. Maps of Florence are slightly misleading, the scale on them is deceiving. What looks like 2 to 3 blocks on the map which in San Francisco where we were used to walking around and takes several minutes, is in reality like 20 steps here. This town is tiny. Everything is right next to each other. Not having a car is going to be no problem at all. After adventuring about getting lost a few more times we decided to grab some quick street food for dinner and head back to clean up and get things situated in our room. The next morning school started.