Having been an ESL teacher for nearly twenty years the question of whether ESL teaching is a good career is something I feel qualified to talk about.
ESL teaching can be a great career for the right person. There is plenty of scope for variety, in terms of what age and ability you teach, the settings you teach in, school, university, and so on. Plus, you can also progress into the management of ESL programmes schools and departments which can be financially very rewarding.
Having lived the ESL teaching dream for so long, I have seen how the careers of the numerous people I have worked with have progressed in different ways, in the main for the better, but sometimes, people just came to the end of their teaching journey for one reason or another.
There are tales of wealth, woe and wonder in this article which I hope will give you an idea of how an ESL career may play out in the long run, so, here goes…
Names have been changed and altered but these characters are all based on true stories and should give you an idea as to whether ESL is a good career choice for you or not.
The King Of ESL – Good Times Roll
King Keith, nicknamed the King as everything seems to go right for this guy. Originally, I worked with this American at a private language school in Bangkok. The hours of work were very forgiving for a party animal starting at 1 pm and finishing at 9 pm which meant that King Keith could go ‘on the smash’ pretty much every night and still hold down this middle of the road ESL job.
However, this job had a ceiling of income around the 50,000 Thai baht level and despite moving into more corporate teaching work within the same company this level of salary was never going to keep this guy happy in the long run.
King Keith, however, also had a property in the US which he rented/rents out, this tidy little passive side earner has meant that he has always had enough money to get by, and then some. Still, after the introduction of a Thai partner and a first child career progress was needed.
A friend of a friend was the answer. Keith was hooked up with a university gig. Now, the thing with these jobs is that they are seldom advertised and even when they are the advertised salaries are so low that no-one bothers to apply. However, insiders tip here, these jobs can be the most financially rewarding work going!
Seriously, whilst the base salary is only 30,000 baht per month the teachers working there get tons of extra hours and courses to teach from different faculties that want an English course to be taught or a subject to be taught in English and it is those extra courses that pay well, so very well!
It is not unusual for King Keith to walk away with 150,000 baht per month from these teaching gigs but here’s the killer – because it is not part of the main package it goes untaxed too! This sticks in my throat somewhat and is why I always demand he buys the first round of drinks when we go out – the dude is killing it with this salary and his US home rental.
His qualifications? A flimsy TEFL certificate, a decent Masters degree in TEFL and confidence and charisma. This guy has carved a ESL career for himself that is the envy of many!
Also read my insightful guide answering Can You Make A Career Out of TEFL?
The Bangkok Zombie
Next up, Desperate Dan, the Bangkok Zombie;. I worked with this guy at the same language school as King Keith, however, this guy lacked the charisma, charm and personality. He was a pretty cold teacher, not incompetent, but had no degree but did have a TEFL certificate and some experience.
However, this proved not to be a winning combination. I met him ten years later randomly on a boat to a Thai island. He was miserable as sin. He had spent time in Tajikistan and Korea and not enjoyed either of those experiences, he had gone for the money which always seemed to get spent on relocating and travel.
He had even been unemployed in the UK for a while but could never really get above the baseline ESL jobs through having a lack of a degree and not quite the prerequisite charm and enthusiasm. Honestly, I did feel quite relieved and smarmy whilst explaining to him how well my ESL career had worked out.
The Fox – The Full Expat Package
John the Fox, John the Fox worked for 30 years in ESL and EAL provision in government schools in London. He had loads of qualifications and experience from the UK and came out to Bangkok on a decent expat package including healthcare, annual flights, an annual bonus ad 15 weeks paid holiday per year.
Sounds like a dream right? Well, yes it was for him, kind of, except for the fact that he had not expected his international school employers to work him so hard.
He was kept busy training other teachers from the UK how to teach students for whom English was their second language, running a withdrawal programme and co-ordinating in-class support for those that needed it. Not the quite the ‘wind down’ to his career that he had wanted.
Another popular article is one I wrote on What Is TEFL Teaching Really Like: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly?
The Sand Man – Money On The Mind
Let’s talk about the Sand Man now, nicknamed as such due to his lengthy stints in the middle east. An average teacher but with a great personality that he used to inspire students. He started his career with a CELTA and then moved onto do a Masters degree a few years later when he experienced the ceiling of the financial pay of the TEFL industry.
Due to his leadership qualities, he was earmarked by the language school we worked for at the time as ‘management material’. He finally got bored at of working in management with all the pressure they were putting on him for financial results and targets to be hit and he went off to do a five-year stint in the Kuwait.
He again worked in management of a language school, a different franchise of the same company in fact, and he did really well out of it financially. He kept his head down and led quite a disciplined life and was renowned for being stingy with his money.
This paid off for him as he later became a property developer ‘doing up’ and selling a series of properties back in England. More recently, though, he ploughed money into an island resort which has unfortunately since ‘nose dived’ due to the whole Covid situation. Will he return to the ESL/TEFL teaching game, who knows?
Struth Sheila! Marry A Monk!
I’ve talked only about blokes so far so let’s hear about a sheila from Australia. Someone who just wanted to live out of Australia and experience the world for a while.
It turned out she had the personality and delivery to lead classes skillfully through language points and topics and developed a real rapport with the students she taught.
At the same time, she married a guy from Lao, who was actually a monk in a monastery at the time, so goodness only knows how she prised him out of that profession.
Still, after around 7 years TEFLing in Asia, she returned home to the land down under and now teaches in a college, no doubt helped by the skill base she had picked up from her time as a TEFL teacher.
Kiwi Lisa – The True Professional
Just to show the other side of the coin too. Kiwi Lisa was my head of department at a UK private school which ran an international centre that fulfilled two roles.
Firstly, it ran a full time English programme for students to focus solely on English and secondly it had a withdrawal programme which allowed students to participate in the main school curriculum and also gain extra ESL lessons.
Incidentally, most of the Students were from either China, or Russia. Kiwi Lisa had worked in London at language schools and on summer school programmes before completing a DELTA and a masters degree.
She then ran that school and went onto run a similar department at a much larger private school in the UK – she would definitely be on very good money there and with an enormous 18 weeks paid holiday!
Lisa was very hard working, extremely organised and knew the Cambridge ESOL exams inside out and back to front.
Organising school trips, the marketing of the international centre, dealing with school agents, creating, adjusting and modifying a curriculum specifically for the needs of the students that enrolled, sometimes last minute were all part of her job role when I worked with her.
So, if you think ESL is boring, or a limited career path, think again! With just a bit of foresight it can be developed into something quite remarkable really.
The ESL Rambo
And, finally of course there is myself, the Rambo of the ESL scene, never wanting to return home. I started off teaching TEFL based purely on the fact that I had enjoyed teaching some Cambodian teenagers that had asked me for help whilst I was backpacking through there.
There was something rewarding about seeing the lights in their eyes light up when they finally ‘got’ something, and with parents who were both teachers as well, it felt like a natural career choice.
It would be fair to say that I started at the very bottom of the ESL teaching career ladder in shopping mall language institutes and underfunded government schools with 50 plus students in a class.
I slowly progressed into universities in Japan and then after becoming a proper fully qualified teacher in the UK by doing a PGCE and spending 4 years teaching in the UK returned to teach in international schools abroad.
I am now a Head of Department and get all the benefits of being an international school teacher, such as, flights, annual bonuses, health insurance, free school places for kids and so on.
So, for me, personally, ESL has been a very good career choice. For others, it has been a mixed bag but I do feel that it is what you make of it.
If you want to take it seriously and make good money and climb the career ladder you can, but, at the same time if you are not prepared to put in the work or you don’t have the right balance of personality traits, then you probably aren’t going to do much more than scrape by.
ESL can be quite an unforgiving career choice to those who don’t ever get above the basic level entry jobs.
That would be my proviso for developing a career in ESL/TEFL/EAL, get off that bottom rung as fast as you possibly can, by whatever means you can, and you will then have much better opportunities to progress and develop a meaningful career in the long run.
To get off the bottom rung you might be interested in reading my insiders guide to TEFL certificates and my guide to the CELTA certificate so you are well informed about what courses are out there.