Travelling to exotic locations abroad, spending evenings and weekends on the beach. Meeting like minded teachers from all over the world. Helping improve the English and career prospects of eager students. TEFL teaching sounds like a dream job, but what is it really like?
TEFL teaching is anything but straightforward. It can be stressful and pressurised trying to work out and meet the expectations of the students, parents and school leaders. As well as having to settle into a new culture away from family and friends, money can be tight and the next payday can seem a long way off.
The reality is though that the TEFL teaching experience that you will have very much depends on which country you are going to, what your employers are like, how much money you are paid and how well you adapt to your new life abroad.
I’m going to delve into a few of these different aspects of TEFL teaching and try and paint a picture as to how these factors might play out in real life. Let’s go..
What’s TEFL Training Like?
The good – These days there is an absolute plethora of choices to suit all budgets in terms of getting your TEFL certificate. If you have desires on a future teaching career then the CELTA is very professional and makes you very employable very quickly.
However, if you are just dipping your toe in the water then so long as you do one of the accredited online TEFL certificates then you can get the cost right down to just a couple of hundred of dollars and get yourself into the job market place.
The bad – The face to face TEFL certificates where you typically spend 120 plus hours in a classroom with observed teaching practice included are hard work, there is no getting around it. It can be nerve wracking standing up there and doing your first few lessons and a real opener as to the type of person you really are.
Are you going to buckle under the pressure and throw the towel in? Are you going to take it personally when the students are checking their phones whilst you are trying to teach them irregular verbs via a lesson plan you were up all night preparing?
Will you even want to keep teaching after you have invested all that time and money in doing a classroom based TEFL. There are no guarantees in TEFL land, right from the word go!
The ugly – There are most definitely TEFL courses out there that are not worth the paper they are written on. They are generally non accredited courses meaning they have not been checked by a reputable organization/third party. This is a massive case of buyer beware!
If your course costs $27 do you really think it is going to help you much in terms of employability and/or in the classroom. Employees will take notice of who your TEFL certificate is done with!
What’s TEFL Teaching Like?
The good: You may find that you are the only native speaker that your students have ever spoken to, this means that they are going to be paying attention to everything you say, often looking forward to your classes and offer no behavioral challenges.
Your lessons can go to plan and you leave your classroom each day feeling satisfied about having done a great job. There is no better feeling than having delivered a great lesson that engaged all students in a fun way and watched them make real progress because of what you delivered – TEFL teaching can truly be a great and highly rewarding experience.
The bad: You might equally also find yourself stood in front of a class of fifty teenage students who have very little interest in learning English and with nothing but a box of chalk and a blackboard to entertain them with.
One of my first jobs was just like this. Twenty five contact hours per week in non-airconditioned classroom in 30 degree heat. On top of that, I was told that my lessons must be fun or my contract would not be renewed.
The teacher’s room was a mix of local Thai national teachers and westerners, such as myself, and there was clear resentment shown towards us, being as, in their eyes we were being paid a lot more money than they were but for doing far less than work than them.
I guess it was a good learning ground for me as a teacher and gave me plenty of opportunity to go through and perfect my full repertoire of TEFL teaching games and strategies.
The ugly: One language school I worked at in my early TEFL days stands out as being the most unprofessional ‘work’ environment that I have ever found the misfortune to find myself in. Everything from the colleagues to the photocopying was dreadful.
The head teacher at the time had been at the language school a couple of years and had gotten the job after having come out of a very disturbing ten year stretch in an Indian prison, how I do not know. I felt sorry for him but he was clearly mentally unstable and suffering some sort of PTSD. Working with young children was probably not the place for him.
Another teacher was a complete drunk and it was sad to see a steady deterioration in his health over my time there. He lived nearby and on days when he wasn’t working I would walk by early in the morning and he would be outside his house starting the day with several big bottles of Chang lager shouting/slurring at passers-by.
I could go on about the guys teaching there that were clearly just there to hit on students, or the photocopier machine for which we had to walk across to the other side of the shopping mall then pay for photocopying ourselves and then get this amount reimbursed (only if we had a signed with a receipt) in our next pay check. Unbelievable.
I guess the moral of the story is that you don’t know what you are letting yourself in for, so, do as much due diligence on your future employer as possible and if you start a job and its not right – don’t hang around!
TEFL Destinations
The good – Well, this is where TEFL really starts to become attractive, as either a temporary, or full time career option. Hustling bustling Hong Kong, the big smoke of Beijing, the street food of Bangkok, multicultural Kuala Lumpur, the list of options is endless as are the adventures to be had!
The bad – Yeah, but dude, they are probably not going to tell you that the job they sold to you in Tokyo was actually on the outskirts of Tokyo and that there would be a two hour commute to your school each way, which is exactly what happened to me back in 2003.
The job I was promised was supposed to be in Tokyo downtown, however, what actually happened was the head office was downtown but the university that I was teaching at was way out of town and I actually had to take four different trains and a bus ride to get to work each day. Fortunately, it was only a short contract and I made a bolt for the door pretty shortly after that.
The ugly – I have known people arrive in Bangkok to begin their new exciting TEFL adventure only to realize that they absolutely hated the place after just a few days!
The heat, the noise, the disorganization was all just too much for them and their TEFL dreams were shattered. There is no saying what a TEFL destination will do to a person, even if they have visited there on holiday before. Holidays are great but they can give a very false impression of what it is like to actually live somewhere.
What Are TEFL Salaries and Pay Like?
The good – Some destinations hit a nice sweet spot where the cost of living is low and the pay is at a decent level to make it a desirable location for saving money or general living. China springs to mind as of this moment, TEFL teachers that I know are doing much better there than they were in other places like Thailand right now.
Bangkok, for example, is not really that cheap a place to live, if you want to maintain a similar lifestyle to ‘back home’ unless you are happy to eat street food every day and live in a small condo.
However, if you hop over to China you can get paid a good deal more for doing the same job. Some other less desirable locations can also pay very well even for new TEFL teachers, but, the hours can be long and the lifestyle tedious – I’m talking of the sandy destinations if you get my drift!
The bad – In general, your typical TEFL salary for a newbie is going to cover your basic living costs and not much else besides. You might struggle to save money in general and indeed paying for a return flight home may be a stretch for some people who are not used to living on a budget.
You are sold on the experience of living abroad which unfortunately without a bit of cash to treat yourself with can quickly turn into a rather unsatisfying experience.
The ugly – Agents running off with money. Schools withholding bonuses at the last minute when they know you have booked a flight to leave the country, ten month contracts being offered rather than a full year so they can avoid paying you over the long break. Visa costs being taken straight from your salary that you weren’t told about. All of these and more happen regularly in the TEFL industry – watch your back!
The TEFL Lifestyle
The good – You could find a teaching gig in a school where you are done teaching at 2.30 pm, home by 3 pm with spare time during the day to do your lesson planning and marking. Throw in lengthy school holidays, a tropical climate and you are onto a winner!
The bad – Trying to keep up with your expat friends on twice your salary can see you broke half way through the month and have you staring down the barrel of quiet nights in with nothing but YouTube for company. This was not the adventure abroad you came looking for!
The ugly – Long hours teaching kids and teens during weekends and evenings for crappy pay! Yep, I’ve been there, it wasn’t fun and pushed me to do better for myself but it’s not an uncommon scenario for TEFLers to end up in that situation and then think that this is all that TEFL has to offer them.
Disillusioned they turn tail and head back home never quite realizing their true TEFL potential – don’t give up if your first or second job is rubbish, there is a lot of demand for TEFL teachers out there, find the place that fits what you are looking for and don’t just take the first job going!
Holidays And TEFL Teaching
The good – Work in a school and get 12 weeks plus paid holiday per year with public holidays thrown in for measure. Most schools will also have a ‘sick day’ allowance too.
The bad – Work for a language school and you may get stuck with whatever the typical national allowance for holiday days is. Here in Thailand it is pretty low, around ten days per year for many office workers and language school teachers. However, there are a lot of public holidays here, 23 per year which is nice – just a shame that everyone is travelling at the same time!
The ugly – Paid holidays! You are kidding me, we can’t afford that, some language school owners would scream, or, you have to accrue your holiday days as you work. This never seems to work out well. Schools that are not clear and stingy with holidays are best avoided full stop.
The Future Of TEFL
The good – Numerous opportunities do exist in the TEFL industry that can lead to career progression beyond classroom teaching. I have had friends go on to work in management, marketing, examining, and teacher training all off the back of TEFL teaching.
Besides those, I have also had friends use TEFL as a platform to see what other opportunities there might be for them in the country they moved too. Real estate selling, human resource recruitment firms, and hotel management have all been moves made by former friends and colleagues.
So, TEFL has a lot going for it if you can be a bit visionary with it and see a bit further beyond the next few lessons.
The bad – It is very easy to get stuck in a rut with TEFL teaching. You find a job you like, or are at least okay with. You settle into a nice routine abroad doing what you set out to do and suddenly a couple of years have gone by and you have effectively achieved nothing else and you can feel yourself starting to go stale and maybe even get itchy feet.
It is at this point you need to reassess what you are doing with your life but so many take the easy option and just keep on getting more and more comfortable until 3, 5 and even 10 years pass, often paycheck to paycheck possibly with the occasional sideways move thrown in for good measure but ultimately with little actual career or life progress.
It is so easily done in the TEFL game for some reason and it is often the root cause of the bitter expat you may encounter sitting on their own at the end of a bar complaining about their life to anyone that will listen. Avoid like the plague.
The ugly – Oh boy TEFL can get ugly. To be fair it tends to happen in certain countries more than others but some people find themselves in the situation described above but then for excitement or to keep the ‘live abroad’ dream a reality, they get a little too involved in the party scene.
Temptations such as drugs and alcohol become habits rather than the norms which drain already tight financial resources and also start to chip away at mental health. The end result of this is a person who starts to essentially ‘go off the rails’.
I have, unfortunately, had close friends, and other people I have known, at least in passing, to have to be physically retrieved and taken home suffering from severe mental health issues, drug addiction and/or from having completely ran out of money.
Sadly, two people I taught with have passed away due to a combination of those reasons very prematurely. Without your usual family and friend support network from your home country, it is a lot easier than you think to get yourself into a negative spiral which can end very badly indeed! You have been warned.
TEFL Social Life And Friendships
The good – A new exciting life abroad is a great way to meet like minded people and have a blast. If you do an in-person TEFL course then you may well find that the intensity of the course ensures that you form close bonds with a new group of people.
This is even more the case if you do the course whilst you are abroad. These people may well be your first friendship group and a great source for jobs, help and advice in the future.
Furthermore, you may find that you fit in to the local community quite readily and form lasting and meaningful friendships with the locals, these can be highly rewarding, fun and insightful for both parties.
The bad – Going abroad with a boyfriend or girlfriend? Well, you can forget about that relationship. From personal experience, I’ll give it six months. There are just too many areas for disagreement that are likely to occur and any crack in the relationship is going to get magnified as you live in a completely new environment.
Often, one person will love it and the other person will hate it. Maybe they can’t make new friends easily, their workplace may be more stressful, they may get more homesick, or they may enjoy teaching less than their partner. Either way, six months!
The ugly – As in any walk of life, there are characters that are simply best avoided and the TEFL industry seems to have racked up its fair share of undesirables. People who perhaps have few other career options other than to keep on TEFLing in far off lands. Borrowing money and not paying back, making snide remarks at work, lying about you behind your back, these can escalate quickly into pretty dismal situations and poisonous relationships.
TEFL And You
The good – You will definitely go through a period of great personal growth by TEFLing abroad, especially younger people who are perhaps not even used to being out of their home country or living away from their family for extended periods of time.
The need to be independent, think for yourself and make sensible judgment calls will make you a stronger and more capable person whether you choose to stay in TEFL or not, you will be better off for the experience.
The bad – You will change. Your views on the world will change. Your views on life will change. You will change so much that if you do TEFL abroad for a number of years when you do go back home you will no longer see things through the same eyes. You may find that you have simply outgrown your hometown, for good!
The ugly – Will you be able to fall back into a normal 9-5 routine in your home country after having lived in the wild west of a Saigon suburb or spent each evening eating out at Chiang Mai food markets? Aside from this, your former friends will have perhaps moved on, away or both, and will have very little to zero interest in whatever larking about you ended up doing abroad. The life you left is simply not there for you anymore.
FINALLY, you are different, and there are exceptions to every rule. You may well experience none of the bad or ugliness that I have outlined above and I hope that by raising awareness to some of these more unfortunate situations, you will manage to evade them and turn TEFL into the awesomely cool experience that it should and will be for the vast majority of people out there reading this! Good luck fellow TEFLers!
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