Not a Teacher Yet?

Not a Teacher Yet?

If you’re newly graduated with your Bachelor’s degree (a requirement for all our teaching jobs) from a bricks and mortar college (yes, we know online degrees are accredited, but we have yet to find a school that accepts them), you have several options for teaching overseas. You just need two things:

1) A Teaching Certificate

If you majored in education you should be able to get a primary or secondary teaching certificate through your school. If not, then you’ll need a TEFL certificate. Do you like to talk? Do you love to travel? Do you consider yourself worldly, or perhaps, would like to? These are the qualities that will make YOU an excellent teacher of English as a Foreign (or “Second”) language, also known as an ESL teacher. How? Start by getting a TEFL certificate online. Finish in a week and start getting teaching experience right away.

2) At least 1 Year of Teaching Experience

If you got your Bachelors in education you likely have completed 6 months of teaching experience already as part of your student teaching experience. If not, then youll need to get teaching experience either through volunteer or substitute teaching.

  • Volunteer ESL Teaching Experience: You’d be surprised at how easy ESL teaching experience is to get… if you live in a English speaking country you will find that many churches, schools, and civic organizations are always looking for volunteers to teach English to foreigners.
  • Substitute Teaching Experience: Sign up with your local school district to become a substitute teacher. You might get called in every once in a while, or you might get lucky and become a long-term substitute and get some real teaching experience. In any case you should be able to teach enough to get a letter of recommendation from the school district, which is very important in getting your visa in many foreign countries. Depending on how many days you work you’ll likely be able to count the entire year of substitute teaching as a full year of experience, even if you didn’t teach every day.
  • Volunteer Teaching Abroad: If you have the funds to take a trip abroad you can earn your teaching experience by volunteering at a school in Africa. Getting there will be your biggest expense because expenses while working in Africa are minimal (room and board are between 15 and 30 USD per day) Find out more and apply on our website.