TEFL International Alumni Blog | TEFL Course

I’m a woman nearing middle age and presently teaching the first year of Primary School in Botswana. It’s my 11^th year in Botswana and I’m returning home to my beloved, yet challenging country, South Africa, at the end of April this year. My name is Jenny, although good friends call me either, Jay / Jeni-Flower. With a surname like ‘Street’ one can just imagine what I laugh I have every time I’m asked for my name. Folks usually look at me as though I’m a retarded case and say sweetly, “Your name lovey, not your address.” Last year I decided to take myself off to Florence in Italy, a place I’ve always wanted to spend more time than merely a tourist in. I enrolled for the TEFL course there and spend the most glorious Spring month ever, in Tuscany! The course was tough, as I last wrote an exam in Matric in 1980, but with notes pasted all over my apartment room, to force my memory back into action, I managed a comfortable pass. A TEFL course is something I’d been considering for about a year prior to the Spring of 2009.

After my most glorious month in Tuscany and a bit of a holiday in Venice and the island of Elba, I’m just not the same person. I have the confidence to do anything I now put my mind to. Thus, I have decided to return to my home village of Philippolis, in the Free State, South Africa, and build my art studio and a small restaurant on my home’s property. You may ask what about TEFL? Well I initially thought that I’d do TEFL teaching over the internet in my home village, which I thought might just be kind of fun doing a lesson, for Japanese students, at my time of 22h00! Well, the internet facilities in our village have not reached the great heights of 3G yet, so that door closed for the time being. I am going to use my TEFL qualification, coupled with my teaching experience, for the good of my home community, of which English is their Second Language. A passion of mine has always been to teach Life Skills to rural, under-privileged children, and so I will hold “Story Time” once a week, at our newly restored Village Library, incorporating Life Skills (First National Bank has a great story book they published a while ago) and English into these ‘lessons’. That way, I can give back to my community and use my teaching, including TEFL skills and experience, at the same time as working on my cuisine and artifacts business.

As I’m on duty at our School’s cricket festival, I’m leaving the comfort of my air-conditioned classroom to go and work in the tuck shop now.

Watch this space for more developments……one can never fully predict the marvelous things that come our way!

Ciao!

Jenny Street

I’m sitting here writing this on a very sunny Sunday morning in Southern California while sipping coffee and listening to the sizzle of bacon my family is cooking. Yes, I am living back at home with my family for the first time since college. After wandering all over the globe for over two years they were kind enough to let me curl back into my bed and put my backpack to rest for the time being. I am getting ready to write lesson plans as I am student teaching and almost finished with getting my teaching credential, and hopefully out of my parents house with a real job come summer.

            I was like so many other travelers; I had a fascination with seeing new places and meeting new people. Everything I had was on my back and I was kind of floating from place to place, slowly making my way around the world. A few days before New Years 2008, I was hit by the sudden realization that my money was not going to get me all the way around the world. I had two options, fly back home to California once my last purchased plane ticket took me to Thailand or figure something else out. It didn’t take long until I was swiftly on my way to the nearest Internet café on the cliffs of the Indian town of Varkala. During my travels I had met several people who had taught English in foreign cities and talked about how great TEFL International was. Using some of the last of my “Around the World” funds, I enrolled myself into the Phuket, Thailand course and bought myself at least a few more months abroad if nothing else worked out.

            Upon landing in Bangkok I hopped on the first flight to Phuket and began class the next day. The course was amazing and I made friends during those four weeks that will be friends for a lifetime. We were like a small family enrolled in the course for all kinds of reasons, from getting over a divorce to a teacher from Kazakhstan craving warm weather and new teaching techniques. During the fourth and final week I arranged interviews at different schools in the south of Thailand, lugged my ever growing backpack onto the first bus and sealed my fate for the next year and a half.

            I taught English at both the college level and grade 2 while living in a rural Thai town. I bought a motorbike, learned Thai and traveled to the islands nearly every weekend, meeting up with friends from my TEFL certificate course who also chose to stay in Thailand. We had a small and ever growing network of “farang” teachers that we organized theme parties, holidays and long weekends on the islands with.

            TEFL International introduced me to the unbelievable world of international teaching. I am only back in California now as I am finishing my teaching credential and Masters in Education to enable me to teach in International schools. I have to say that before my TEFL course I was a wandering nomad. Now, I have discovered a job, career, and purpose and look forward to the day I am back in the International classroom. 

My name is Susan Bai, from Inner Mongolia, China. I taught English to all ages and levels for the past ten years. I was offered to take the TEFL course in Thailand by the founder and CEO of the organization Bruce on November 2008. I completed my course in Zhuhai later that year and became the course administrator and trainer of the Shanghai centre till the office was closed in November 2009. Right now I’m on my way home after spending three months travelling in India. I’ll continue to teach English in a small city in Northern China. I hope to establish an English club for locals to improve their language skills and try to help enrich people’s social lives there.  

Here’s my story:
     My name is Erin Tallman, I am 24 years old and I took the TEFL course in Brittany, France the month of September 2009.
     Having been living in France for about a year and giving private English lessons to have an income I realized that teaching was something that really interested me. Once looking into TEFL I saw that there was a one month course offered in Brittany. I had already applied to an assistant English teaching position in a high school in Marseilles and decided that taking the course in Brittany could help improve my skills and prepare me for this position. It wasn’t sure that I would be accepted into this assistance program. If this particular position didn’t work out for me I planned on finding another teaching job by having the TEFL certificate. The course was incredible and opened my mind to all kinds of ideas to teaching. The whole experience was really enjoyable for me and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Indeed I was accepted at Michelet High School in Marseilles and have been using ESL activities throughout my classes. In addition, I continue giving private lessons and have incorporated what I learned while taking the course. Aside from this I take my job very seriously and am even organizing a group of French high school students to study in the United States this summer for one month. They will study at ELI (English Language Institute) at the University of Delaware. This program also uses an ESL learning style. This is only the beginning of a very exciting journey, I’m sure!

My name is Dave Russomano. I’m from the American costal suburb of Stratford, Connecticut which floats in the relatively uninteresting stretch between NYC and Boston. After I finish my current contract in Bangkok, Thailand, I plan to travel through Laos and Vietnam for a month before starting another year contract in either Taiwan or Japan.

I suppose I could simply say I decided to take a TEFL International course because I wanted to travel and teach, but this boring stereotypical answer, though basically true, leaves far too much out. My real reasons are quite difficult to summarize without a little back-story. In college, I studied abroad twice: first for three months in Athens, Greece and then for three weeks around Darjeeling, India. These experiences thoroughly infected me with the travel bug. As graduation approached in the spring of 2006, I applied to U.S. government-sponsored intensive language programs in Bangladesh and Jordan. Unfortunately, they were thinly veiled attempts to seed a new crop of government translators and my application essays may have hinted at my leftist leanings. Undeterred, I applied for the Peace Corps. In order to teach English for the Corps, I needed to log three months of experience in an ESL setting, so I tutored a free English class at a community centre. Several months later, in the last stage of the application, I was rejected for (overly cautious) medical reasons. Stunned and lacking a backup plan, I continued working (moving furniture) until our moving van was t-boned and I wound up with a few thousand dollars in workers compensation. As I recovered from the accident, I planned my overdue career change.

A friend told me he planned to teach English in South Korea where qualifications weren’t required and the compensation included flight reimbursement and housing. I jumped on the bandwagon and was about to sign the next year away when an experienced couple told me that the position I was about to take was far from ideal. It was then, when the possibilities of other options first genuinely dawned on me, that I began investigating a TEFL certification that would lengthen my list of choices. In a matter of weeks, I was on a plane to Costa Rica for a month long course.

Since My TEFL International course in Sept/Oct of 2007, I’ve spent one year teaching in Indonesia, two months teaching Taiwanese students online, and around eight months teaching in Bangkok. In my down time, I’ve visited Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, and Singapore.

As I write this lengthy rehash and ramble of the last two and a half years with the gilded Bangkok evening skyline glittering through my apartment window, I’m thinking about getting to sleep early so I’ll have a clear head for the my classes tomorrow.

‘Let Me Tell You A Story’

The streets of Pune, India were my work place. I started my initiative ‘Let Me Tell You A Story’ in 2006 to encourage reading and oral storytelling among children. Reaching out to children from all parts of the city and from all stratas of society was my vision and the streets of Pune offered me that opportunity. I began storytelling on weekends and slowly formed a small reading group that came to me week after week. They began enjoying every story told and participated actively in all the activities I organised for them; ranging from story writing to addressing social causes.

Soon I moved to work with schools and NGOs on reading and storytelling based projects focusing on numerous reading based activities and introducing a variety of authors to every age group.

Mid 2008 I had to move to Hong Kong with my husband and I decided to take up the TEFL course to be able to work with children there. Having no basic training in Mandarin or Cantonese, the best way I could pursue my passion was by getting qualified and trained as a Native English Teacher. The course opened doors to more opportunities, YES, but above all, it taught me excellent approaches to taking my initiative forward. I worked in Hong Kong for a brief period of 8 months and moved back to India.

Now, here in Mumbai, I have re-established ‘Let Me Tell You A Story’ and am presently associated with activity centers where I work on building the habit of reading at formative years with mother & child and with book stores conducting storytelling sessions.

Soon I look at taking ‘Let Me Tell You A Story’ to Pediatric Cancer wards as a regular session & to introduce novel teaching techniques through story telling for dyslexic children.

One day, most people in India will know ‘Let Me Tell You A Story’

I am Vaishali Kulkami.

My name is Edward  Cheung and I’m a Canadian. I decided to take the TEFL course in Phuket, Thailand in 2007 because of my thirst to travel. I felt teaching abroad would be a wonderful way to experience new cultures. Ever since I graduated from the TEFL course in Phuket, I have been traveling and teaching. After the wonderful experience in Phuket, I flew to South Korea to teach English for a year. My time in Korea was a great experience, so much so that I decided to stay on teaching for over a year. While teaching English, I had taken on the opportunity to travel much of  East Asia and to immerse myself into the culture. It was a rewarding experience.  

Three years have come and gone since I started my journey in Phuket. Those three years have taught me that teaching can be a powerful tool in changing lives. As a result I have decided to make teaching my career. Now I’m in Wollongong, Australia, taking a Graduate Diploma in Education course in order to become an elementary teacher.

My travels and teaching career have not been an easy path, but it was definitely a rewarding one. To those who want to travel and teach abroad TEFL international is a great starting point for a great adventure!

My name is Gio Zane and I’m currently living in Florence, Italy, and intend on staying a full year or more.  I’m a USA-passport only, and grew up mainly in the USA, most recently NJ/NYC.   I have always enjoyed studying languages.  I studied Spanish and German in school but picked up Italian very fast from living a few months of every year in the Italian Canton of Switzerland and other parts of Italy.  It was a combination of visiting friends and family and just making the effort to stay connected with Europe and Italy in General.  Now I’ve made the plunge to attempt to live and work in a city I’ve always wanted to get to know.

The first step of transition was decidedly to take the 4-week on-site intensive TEFL course at the school here in Florence (The Learning Center Tuscany).  I flirted with the idea of doing online courses or weekend intensives in the US, but decided in the end that doing the course in a place I intended to teach and live would be the best experience.  And it did prove very valuable.  I would say most importantly because it gave me direction when I first arrived, I had a schedule, some new friends to meet, and instructors that knew the ins-and-outs of Florence.  Most of the students in the course got jobs immediately following the course being finished, though they traveled to less well-known parts of Italy.  A few now are in Asia.  I’m excited to know that those experiences are there if I seek them, but I wanted to stay in Florence, specifically, yet knew the job possibilities weren’t as extensive given the high amount of other english speakers.  But I made the rounds, visiting different schools, and speaking with the directors, and handing out my resume.

I also put some posts on various free classified sites (I used Kijiji.it) for private lessons.  Actually it was my landlord for my little apartment that introduced me to two of my first private students.  But then I got a call from a school!  They wanted me to teach an intermediate class twice a week.  After that, I started to get more students through the school.  Then we got a contract to teach at a business 4 classes per week.  Now I work about 15 hours a week through the school (which can be a lot) plus private tutoring when I can.  It’s enough to pay my rent and support my experience here.  While I like inviting students over to my house for a private lesson, I find my best experience is working with a school.  I’m better prepared for my lessons and the atmosphere is more professional, and of course I get paid a bit more

I would say the TEFL course helped me to solidify the basic knowledge of the current trend in teaching, but I find that my lessons are a bit different than the method I was taught.  I feel I have just found a certain style that I enjoy, that keeps it interesting and real for me.  I know the students really enjoy maintaining an interesting conversation, and I can’t stress enough the importance of “discussion driving” as I like to call it, even if it means some extended “teacher talk time” but I think the students learn from listening to how I say things as well.  Knowing that I am certified, though, and can draw from the method I learned in my course, gives the lessons structure.

My plan is to finish out my year stay and reevaluate.  I probably will go back to the US for a while just to work and check in on my life there.  But I am happy to know that I can and certainly may soon travel to ASIA or somewhere I’ve always wanted to go and learn a new culture while offering students a valuable ability to communicate with the world through English.  This is where I am now,

My name is Bethany Iblings and I’m originally from Washington State in the USA. I’ve traveled around quite a bit, but after graduating from university I decided to settle in one spot for awhile. Since I graduated with a degree in International Studies, I wanted to find work that involved living abroad and decided to attempt teaching English since that seemed like a great opportunity to get involved with other cultures while gaining experience and capitalizing on a skill I already possessed: English. I knew that I wanted to live in Egypt for awhile, and after weighing the scant options for TEFL courses in Egypt, I decided that TEFL International in Alexandria, Egypt was the right fit for me. Duration, location, recognition, and price all seemed just right.

After completing the TEFL International course in November 2008, I stayed on with TEFL International for the 6-week internship, which gave me additional teaching practice, and the ground work for further Arabic studies. After the internship, I was offered a job with a private language center in Cairo called Amideast. That was a little more than a year ago, and I am still happily teaching with Amideast in Cairo. I teach adult students (18+) in the evenings and enjoy getting to know them while helping them to improve their English capabilities. I’m also pursuing Arabic studies and enjoying the continued adventure of becoming part of Egyptian culture. I’m not sure how long I will stay in Cairo, but I’m very thankful for the experience, knowledge, and certification that TEFL International gave me and am sure that I will continue to use it in the classroom for years to come.