Trying To Land A Great TEFL Job?

If you are trying to land a great TEFL job, then take a look at our job listings. We have some great TEFL jobs just waiting to employ you. One of the biggest factors in a finding a great job is getting the initial job lead. You’ll want to check it against the ratings that I have spent a few years working on. There are many school listed here and some of them have very indepth comments on actual working conditions.

After you have found a great TEFL job listing, it’s very important to follow up on that job lead by putting your best foot forward. I came across a post on ELT Times that has some great advice on putting your best foot forward and landing a great TEFL job. It’s titled 10 Tips you Must Use to Get your International Teacher Application Emails Read.

There are several great tips there, but this is my personal favorite:

1. Use a meaningful subject line.
I suggest you include the specific teaching position you are applying for and your name. By using this style of subject line you are immediately identifying it as an email from an applicant and the recruiter will expect to see a teacher application when they open the email. Also, this will make it easier for the recruiter to find your email in their inbox should they need to refer to it again.

One tip that I would add to the article is that you want to have a professional sounding email address. If you aren’t going with your own teaching portfolio domain as I have suggested elsewhere, make sure you use an email account that doesn’t bring up stereotypes or say something about your character you don’t want known.

Another thing: Don’t use an email address associated with a Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, etc page that you don’t want your potential employers to see. It’s very easy for someone to go to one of these sites, put in your email address and pull up that picture of you getting drunk.

Find An Online Teaching Degree Program

With the economy tightening up in the US and Western Europe, one of the best ways to situate yourself to get ahead is by returning to school and getting a new degree. If you are a TEFLer, you may not already have a teaching degree, but that can be easily fixed these days.

You don’t have to limit yourself to studying in a brick and mortar university. In fact, these days, you can study online. There are so many great opportunities to study online with reputable universities so it’s never been easier to get your teaching degree.

A great place to check out the various teaching degrees that you can get online is Elearners.com. They have a great list of online teaching degrees that you can get. Not only do they have listings of general teaching degrees, they also have listings for online degrees in many different specialties including educational technology.

All in all, if you are looking to get ahead, now might be a great time to look into online degree programs.

Using Social Networks For Teaching

There are so many social networking sites out there these days. They are a great way to connect with friends and family back home, but more than that, they are a great way to connect with students. It’s a great way to get your students practicing their English in a fun and interesting environment. Setting up a social networking account for your teaching is a great to really connect with your students and communicate lessons and homework.

As you know, there are several social networking sites out there. I am impartial to Friendster. It’s a great place to set up a full featured page to communicate with your students and put up videos, music and even a blog.

A good runner-up is Hi-5. Hi-5 has many of the same features as Friendster and your students may already be a Hi-5 member. This could be good or bad.

So what is the deal? Do you use Social networking sites in your teaching? Which sites do you use?

Demo Teaching

If you aren’t involved in TEFL yet and are just considering going abroad to teach English, you may be a little scared about what to expect in a TEFL class. Luckily, I found a video that helps you out. It a practice TEFL class by a TEFL trainee in Mexico City. It’s a fairly typical class of Mexican adult students.

So how do you think you could do? Could you teach in front a class like this? Believe it or not, with proper TEFL teacher training or some actual teaching English experience, you could perform as good, if not better, than the trainee in the video. It’s really up to you to make the best possible learning experience for your students.

Financial Concerns For TEFL Teachers

There are a lot of issues facing TEFL teachers today. I think one of the biggest problems is also one that isn’t talked about and that is the effect of a bad US economy on TEFL teachers around the world. I don’t think enough teachers are considering the possible impact or fallout of the US economy on their own TEFL teaching careers.

Most language institutes do not have deep pockets and an economic downturn could cost many of them their students. That means that teachers will be laid off. This is kind of bleak because there might not be new jobs for them to go into and they may have to come to the states and dying job market. If you are in TEFL or are thinking about it, now is the time to be concerned with your finances.

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