Dear Steemit friends!
Today I am going to tell you about my teaching experience in Chiang Mai and how everybody can do that without a teaching background.
Back in Austria, I studied pharmacy but soon I realized that this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life.
When I came to Thailand I was working for a German customer service company. I hated this job because I was eight hours on the phone and the whole job was just too boring for me. The only good thing was that I was able to live legally in Thailand for as long as I want. You might think I can work as a pharmacist all around the world. But no I can´t as the laws are everywhere to different.
As I am traveling a lot, I thought that there must be a way where you can combine traveling and work. I didn´t want to do something where I work the whole day in front of the computer. I wanted to work with people.
I did some researches and I found out that the best work while traveling is teaching English or teaching in general. I did more research and soon I even met people who taught English in some local schools. I never thought about teaching English before as English is not my mother tongue. But as nothing is too difficult for me I thought I can at least give it a try.
I had a very interesting conversation with the people who already taught in Chiang Mai. They also told me that Chiang Mai or Thailand in general is the perfect place for teaching English as the students are very respectful. Usually, an English teacher works around 20-25 hours a week which is perfect because then you can also explore the beautiful country.
Thai schools are very happy to have foreign teachers, as the education in Thailand is not very high. Nowadays almost every local school hires foreign teachers. They teach the students languages, science, mathematics or whatever. Depends on the teacher. But the most people come to such countries because they want to teach English.
I think it´s very sad that there are still so many country´s nowadays which doesn´t have such a high level of education. But I am also very happy that there are so many people who are willing to teach in those countries. They really help to give children a better future.
After this conversation, I knew that I want to do that too. The only problem was that I had a degree in pharmacy and not in education so I got again in touch with the teachers and they told me that they also didn´t have a degree in education.
I was wondering how people can teach without a degree. The guy explained to me that there is a certificate which is called TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language). With this TEFL certificate, you are allowed to teach English. I was super happy about this tip.
I went back to my apartment and I started to do more researches about this certificate. I found out that one of the best TEL schools is located in Chiang Mai. I directly emailed them and asked them for an appointment. The school was called "See Tefl". After one day they directly messaged back and a few days later I visited the school.
I really liked the school. Everybody was so nice and I felt super comfortable. The atmosphere there was very special. The owner of the school (John) explained me the whole system. He told me that the TEFL certificate is valid all over the world. So doesn´t matter if you want to teach in Columbia, Vietnam, China etc. You are able to teach all around the world. He told me that the duration of the whole course is one month.
It seemed quite difficult to me but I was sure I can do that even English is not my first language. After John showed me the whole school I was sure that I will quit my job at the German company and I am going to do the TEFL.
Now you might ask yourself how much is such a TEFL course. It´s not really cheap. I know that the prices are in every school and every country quite the same. Everything together costs 1800 $. Actually, I needed to pay 2000 $ but because I paid a long time in advance, I got a discount. It´s not less but it´s definitely a good investment. I didn´t regret one second.
I quitted my job and the following Monday I started with school. We were 23 people from all over the world. School hours were from 9 to 4. The first day we just had a general introduction and the teachers explained us the cultural differences. They also told us the differences in teaching in a Buddhist country.
Everything was super interesting.
The next day was not relaxed anymore. We directly started with grammar. The course was not only about grammar etc. We also had to do six teaching practices during the course.
But our first week was only about grammar.
During our second, third and fourth week, we had our teaching practices and next to them we had theory lessons where our teachers taught us about the different teaching methods.
Those weeks were super busy as we had to prepare the whole lessons by ourselves. It was a very good training tough.
The good thing was that we could prepare everything at school. They had a printer and all the other utensils. So it was no problem to print all the worksheets and games.
We were all super excited for our first teaching practice. Each lesson got observed by a teacher and we all got grades for the lesson we hold. At the end, every grade will be on the certificate but from all the notes there will be an end grade. So it´s very important to get a good grade for every lesson. Try your best and don´t worry. The students are wonderful.
Our first lesson was at a kindergarten which was the one I didn´t like the most. The kids were two years old and they just looked at me. They really didn´t know what´s going on.
The second lesson I had was the best. The students had a very good age. During the first week, the teachers will decide what you are going to teach. So you cannot decide by yourself. But don´t worry the topics are very easy as the students have a very low English level.
The more teaching practices I had the easier it was and I was not so nervous anymore. So the last four teaching practices were more or less the same. I was very surprised about the student´s behaviors. All the students were super respectful. You can really not compare students in Austria with students in Thailand. A teacher is a very important person for them so they would never be disrespectful.
I really enjoyed the time with them and every lesson passed so fast. Teaching those kids was a hard but also a fantastic experience.
For all my teaching practices I got an A grade which made me super proud. Those four weeks were super hard and stressful but I was so happy when our graduation day came and we all got our certificates.
It was definitely not easy but once you did it you can be really proud of yourself. A few of our students gave up in between. Even though you need to learn a lot in those 4 weeks I can highly recommend the TEFL certificate. It´s a great opportunity to work and get a little bit of income while traveling. I met such amazing people during this time and it was a great adventure for life. Those students give you so much back. They really appreciate your work. So if you want to work with children abroad and see a bit of the world then do the TEFL. Once you have it you will be very happy about it. You might not always need it because you might not always work as a teacher but with this certificate, you have more options. And once you taught those cute little kids you don´t want to stop anymore.
I really had a wonderful time.
I hope you guys liked my story and I would be very happy about comments, likes or any feedback.
Thank you so much for reading :-)
I really suggest you stop comment spamming. Telling you here as you obviously ignored my reply to your two comments. I already reported you to steemcleaners.
All I can say is I unfollowed you and it shouldn't be bad to get some followers and some attention before start posting. If that's such a huge thing, I'm sorry for using steemit. In the world of entrepreneurship, it's called hustling. I'm not trying to sell something and neither am I trying to scam people, I'm just trying to put myself out there before investing tons of time writing valuable posts. I did my research and saw hundreds of posts getting seen by less than 10 people and getting upvotes for less than a $ while other useless posts are getting seen by thousands with upvotes for over hundreds of $ and why? Because nobody knows about those people. No offense but there is a reason why I run multiple businesses and you spend your time writing people who "spammed to get known on a new platform they are on", I love using steemit but if I would need to spend months or years to get a bit $ for sharing valuable content it would just not work so that's why I'm trying to speed up the process. So you tell me do you really think this is such a huge offense? Oh and if you still say yes, then I would really appreciate if you could tell me why you don't stop those people who are making $20,000 by taking advantage of steemit? ->
https://steemit.com/steemit/@jerrybanfield/meet-steem-s-1-author
You're spamming. I'm not the first person who was annoyed by it. I checked.
Hustle all you want, people get annoyed by spam. There are smarter ways to gain attention here on steemit, I managed it without spamming the same comment under hundreds of posts.
Anyway, as I said, steemcleaners are informed. They will take it from here.
And I don't really care about my number of followers, all that matters are positive interactions (comments) of people who actually read my posts. And you clearly aren't one of those people. :)
The thing is, this is a social network. Copy pasting the same line everywhere is not encouraged.
If you really want to make connections on this platform before posting (and that is a really good idea) then try engaging with the other person.
How would you feel if I commented under each of your posts anew:
The thing is, people will tell you to stop. People will try to engage with you and tell you why what you do is not nice. And if you ignore that, some will start flagging you. Copy pasting the same comment over and over is the textbook example for spam.
Happy to discuss this with you if you have any questions 😊
There are soooo many more important things in the world than getting annoyed by that sorry but this is ridiculous. But really bad that there are so many people nowadays who criticise everything.
Hey, I just discovered your post, really nice. I am John and your post is really nice. Please also follow me and upvote my posts. All my posts are really great and I am really great. They are so great, you have to upvote them really. I am writing about poems and flowers and it is so nice. This has nothing to do with your post but I care about upvotes for me and not your content I just hijacked.
Omg hahahahha you really don´t have a life right and do I care about you posting that now.....no because I have nerves. Feel free to do that every day. Maybe I should get you some nerve pills as I am working in a pharmacy maybe you calm down then. :-)
Naaah, don't want to spam.
You know it may be that you actually read what you commented under. But be aware there are users who use bots to comment under many posts. And you could be seen as such a bot. And some users are reacting really bad to such spam.
Upvoted! love this post, travelled for four years and thinking about what to next, doing the TEFL course is on my list for a long time. will start soon i think.
Please keep your posts coming, will keep an eye out. hope to teach in Japan or Korea some day
Ohhh yes you should definitely do that it´s really great. I hope teaching in Korea or Japan works out for you. Sounds very interesting. I guess these are very nice countries.
Thanks for your comment.
you are welcome, will will see what happens. so many destinations still on the list to visit. just saving money for now!
This post recieved an upvote from minnowpond. If you would like to recieve upvotes from minnowpond on all your posts, simply FOLLOW @minnowpond
is an excellent post, thanks for sharing your content
Hello my friend @leo-tmp I am your follower and you are mine. This is a reply message as a strategy for you to add votes and replys in your post ... what an interesting topic you handle in your blog, I would like you to do the same with my last post about (fantastic places #2 the Northumberland National Park) https:// steemit.com/travel/@victorlondono/lugares-fantasticos-2-el-parque-nacional-northumberland .... thank you very much ...
@victorlondono
I liked your story, leo-temp. There's fire in in (kinda ties in with your name leo...maybe). It looks as if you can have a positive impact on the children you teach also because you are doing it from a perspective of having taken a conscious decision to make a change to your own life circumstances. I feel that is a powerful foundation and one that transmits a positive influence on others.