Chrissays wrote:Hi all,
I'm almost done with the semester and I only have until December until I graduate. I am taking two summer courses online so I have the convenience of doing all my work at home.
Which certificates should I get in order to get a good position teaching english in Asia? I'm planning on knocking this out over the summer since I'll have the most time and it'll be the most efficient where if I complete everything on track I can leave as early as December, the month I get my degree.
Any suggestions? Do u get celta or TEFL? And what is the difference?
What is your degree in? Do you plan to do ESL for a career?
CELTA is probably the best certificate in terms of prestige. But let's say you wanted to work in South Korea. Unless things have changed (in 20 years
), if you have a degree, you can get a job and teach there. So what you'd be looking for is something to give you teaching knowledge. If you can get that from a cheaper program where you don't have to pay $2000 for a one-month course, you could do that.
In some cases, maybe a CELTA will get you a better job. There may be some slightly better schools in Asia that will hire a CELTA and not someone else. There used to be a British Institute in Jakarta. But, the pay at these places is only slightly better from what I recall. I never did the bargain basement $700 a month jobs in Indonesia. EF paid really low wages, I heard. I managed never to work there.
Honestly, teaching ESL overseas is a kind of low-end job in terms of pay. It beats McDonald's or unemployment in the US. It's fine for a single man. But when you start having kids, maybe you could continue to work at an institute, but it's hard to really thrive on that income. If you could start your own school and really build it up, it may be a good thing to be into, but you need to learn a little about business or have a partner you can trust. (Just imagine trying to find that in Asia.) Maybe you could marry a manager, even a finance expert or accountant, and pull it off.
If your degree is in something that can be taught, maybe you could look into teaching that along with ESL, especially if you started your own business. There is opportunity for certified teachers overseas. International and national plus schools in Indonesia hire expats for wages either above, the same as, or less than back home. But the cost of living is cheap and they usually provide you with a place to stay. It's not a bad gig if you are planning to do it for a few years while you are single.
If you want to do it long term, some people in Korea and Japan make big bucks doing private lessons. One way to get a lot is to find a teacher whose leaving and say, "Do you mind if I handle your privates for you.... when you leave?" Don't say it that way. But you get the idea. I didn't do that because it was against my contract in Korea. The government doesn't like it if you do that if you don't pay taxes on the income. I suppose it's possible to do private lessons and save up money to start our own business. Starting a school would be expensive in South Korea, but it may be more doable in some lesser developed countries, especially if you make some rich contacts who can fund your school.
I think it's good to go into a career like this with a plan. If you are already are certified to teach K-12, or some portion thereof in the US, the international schools are a good place for a career, probably. Otherwise, you could teach there but have some other plan for if you marry and want a family or need more money for something else. That could be a plan to open you own school or other business in Asia. If you are thinking of going back to grad school, I considered an MA TESOL, but just chose a more lucrative field. An MATESOL may put me on the top of the list for lousy ESL jobs, but it probably wouldn't have increased my pay, at least in Indonesia. Universities typically paid low, and if they hired MATESOLs, I'd have to compete with cheaper locals and other expats. Masters won't get you much in the way of university jobs in the US either. Maybe you could work for a university in a developing country, but salaries could be low. If you do get the rare good job, that's great. But the risk versus reward for MATESOL isn't that great, IMO. If you use it as a stepping stone to a PhD to get an okay university prof job, you might just be able to go straight to the PhD. I wouldn't advise most people to try to get a PhD.
The English institute thing has the advantage of working you 20 or 25 hours a week. You have to plan lessons, but it's not as draining as being a real school teacher, where you can put in well over 40 hours a week easily.
If you work in Korea, ask about the hours first. Typically, if you teach kids, you may work afternoons but they expect you to work Saturday. If you teach adults, you might teach from 6:30 or 7 AM to 10 and then go back at 4 or 5 PM and teach until 9 or 10. You can end up with not enough time to eat dinner and get 8 hours sleep, so recovering from jetlag can be really rough. If you got to Korea in the summer, it's hot and humid, but it's so far north, the sun comes up at 5 AM. Kids would get up with the sun and their parents would have them playing on the playground at 5 or 5:30 making noise outside the window when I was trying to sleep and recover from jet lag. The sun was so bright. The school owners put these awful hot polyester blanket and sheets on the bed. I finally broke the fan and strapped it back together so it would rattle and drown out the kids outside. I got a pillow to put over my head, and some decent-feeling cotton sheets. I felt sick for a couple of weeks due to lack of sleep. It's hard for me to sleep in the day time, though I managed to eventually and recover from the jet lag and the split shift. The split shift is unpleasant normally, but if you are jet lagged and haven't built up a tolerance to jet lag, it can be brutal.
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