Showing posts with label CTEFL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CTEFL. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Found some Students
That's right, its Prof. Kasel now! Had my first class teaching the students at the business school. Its a little weird to respond when students say, "excuse me Professor..." More details to come after my first week with a full schedule is done, but for now I'm going to relax while I can.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
The Search for More Students
Giver of language, Teacher of tongues, Ambassador of the English language, a EFL teacher. Sounds like a great job teaching gig, and it pays just as bad as every other "great" teaching job out there.
Many TEFL teachers will begin their teaching career at a language institution. If you read my other blog, So You Think You Want to Take a TEFL Course, you'll know that this is not enough to get by on. The key usually is to get private students. They are the EFL teacher's "bread and butter." You get paid better and you deal with one student who usually is motivated and has very specific goals. All great, but where do you find them?
My initial thought was to try a posting on craigslist. In the States this is usually a great start, it gets your message out to a wide audience quickly, and its free. This does not work in Florence. People just don't use craigslist for things like that here. There are plenty of postings for rentals (be very cautious of scams), but for other things its just not how its done here.
A suggestion by the school where we took the course was to order business cards. I personally really enjoyed this. I like having a business card, I fell more legit now that I have cards to hand out. The only problem I have with handing them out is that my command of the Italian language is very limited. I was talking to one guy trying to explain what I do, and he may have gone away with the assumption that I'm a singer in a band (I'm not really sure, so don't ask.) I still gave him a card, but this form of advertising would be much easier if I spoke more Italian. Additionally you need to be going places and when you're counting your pennies going out doesn't really fit in.
Another option that I'm going to take on is posting fliers at schools. Florence has numerous schools. These institutions apparently have community bulletin boards where a lot of the communication of want ads are posted. These are supposed to be great resources for lessons and for other things like apartments and such. We'll see how that one goes.
If any of you teachers, or anyone with experience networking, out there have some other suggestions please comment.
Many TEFL teachers will begin their teaching career at a language institution. If you read my other blog, So You Think You Want to Take a TEFL Course, you'll know that this is not enough to get by on. The key usually is to get private students. They are the EFL teacher's "bread and butter." You get paid better and you deal with one student who usually is motivated and has very specific goals. All great, but where do you find them?
My initial thought was to try a posting on craigslist. In the States this is usually a great start, it gets your message out to a wide audience quickly, and its free. This does not work in Florence. People just don't use craigslist for things like that here. There are plenty of postings for rentals (be very cautious of scams), but for other things its just not how its done here.
A suggestion by the school where we took the course was to order business cards. I personally really enjoyed this. I like having a business card, I fell more legit now that I have cards to hand out. The only problem I have with handing them out is that my command of the Italian language is very limited. I was talking to one guy trying to explain what I do, and he may have gone away with the assumption that I'm a singer in a band (I'm not really sure, so don't ask.) I still gave him a card, but this form of advertising would be much easier if I spoke more Italian. Additionally you need to be going places and when you're counting your pennies going out doesn't really fit in.
Another option that I'm going to take on is posting fliers at schools. Florence has numerous schools. These institutions apparently have community bulletin boards where a lot of the communication of want ads are posted. These are supposed to be great resources for lessons and for other things like apartments and such. We'll see how that one goes.
If any of you teachers, or anyone with experience networking, out there have some other suggestions please comment.
- Did a certain strategy work for you or was it a combination of many?
- Did any of them fall flat on their face? (craigslist for me)
- Do you know of other ways to advertise in Florence?
Monday, December 28, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Finito!
We have just finished the last component for the CTEFL course, and I'm super excited! We were both offered jobs teaching at the American Language Center which we just accpeted yesterday. The contracts officially starts in January. Until then we are going to be doing some training in test preparation and in the materials they use at the school, also doing some substitutions and private lessons until our contract start with the next trimester.
Its a little surreal still at the moment. One month ago we were talking about moving here and would jokingly say that we want to both do really well in the course so that they will just hire us and we can stay living in Florence. And here we are! Its weird how well this has all turned out.
We are going to have at least the next week off from doing anything related to teaching. Hopefully we'll find ourselves in a few of the museums with our free time. The last month hasn't left many opportunities to explore all that Florence has to offer.
Even walking around here is amazing. The city is getting set for the Christmas season. The streets are draped in white twinkling lights. In the piazza where we went to school and where we're going to begin teaching they are setting up a Christmas trees and stringing up even more lights. This city is absolutely gorgeous this time of year. Its fun to call it home.
Ciao from Florence.
Its a little surreal still at the moment. One month ago we were talking about moving here and would jokingly say that we want to both do really well in the course so that they will just hire us and we can stay living in Florence. And here we are! Its weird how well this has all turned out.
We are going to have at least the next week off from doing anything related to teaching. Hopefully we'll find ourselves in a few of the museums with our free time. The last month hasn't left many opportunities to explore all that Florence has to offer.
Even walking around here is amazing. The city is getting set for the Christmas season. The streets are draped in white twinkling lights. In the piazza where we went to school and where we're going to begin teaching they are setting up a Christmas trees and stringing up even more lights. This city is absolutely gorgeous this time of year. Its fun to call it home.
Ciao from Florence.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Backstory
For those of you curious readers who don't know what Rachael and I are doing with our upcoming adventure in Italy, here's a little insight...
Having recently graduate at what might be the least opportune time since the great depression, Rachael and I found ourselves distinctly without career. To remedy this, and do something awesome, we have decided to FLEE THE COUNTRY!
This coming Tuesday we are moving to Florence! This is where you get jealous. We are going to be taking a course so that we can get our TEFL(Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate and get jobs teaching. We are taking the certification course through Via Lingua. This will be our first month in Italy.
During the course we'll be doing our job searching. Ideally we'll be staying in Florence for some time, but we are open to going anywhere the work takes us.
Thanks for reading, please leave comments. Don't forget to check back soon, the next post should be coming straight from Italy!
Having recently graduate at what might be the least opportune time since the great depression, Rachael and I found ourselves distinctly without career. To remedy this, and do something awesome, we have decided to FLEE THE COUNTRY!
This coming Tuesday we are moving to Florence! This is where you get jealous. We are going to be taking a course so that we can get our TEFL(Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate and get jobs teaching. We are taking the certification course through Via Lingua. This will be our first month in Italy.
During the course we'll be doing our job searching. Ideally we'll be staying in Florence for some time, but we are open to going anywhere the work takes us.
Thanks for reading, please leave comments. Don't forget to check back soon, the next post should be coming straight from Italy!
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