TEFL Certification

In order to teach English abroad, the TEFL Certification is something most schools/employers look for when hiring.  I chose the TEFL Institute, because they had a class on the north side of the city of Chicago(i live in the suburbs) and was only a month long.  They also have classes in New York and online.  I chose not to do an online class, because I would procrastinate the entire thing and I rather have face to face time, especially in a teacher/student setting. Also, while taking the class in Chicago, the 20 hours teacher observation was embedded in the class.  It was also a chance for me to move downtown with a good friend and experience living in city for more than a week or weekend.

The class size was quite small, we had 10 students in the class, usually they have around 12.  And the class was from 10am-6pm.  Now speaking with the Institute beforehand, you were not really told that it lasted to 6 pm.  The classes end at 3:30, and the 'practicum' or 'teaching observation' came next. There were three different locations for the practicum, I was at TEFL Institute for practicum so I will only tell of my experience. The other two places were at a Church of some sort and a school. One of the other places had you just observe another teacher, while the second one, was your own class for and hour and a half.

The day was split into three parts. A 3 hour class with a 15 min break somewhere in there, 30 minute lunch, followed by another 3 hour class(a different teacher) and a 15 minute break.  After the second class there was about an hour and a half period to get ready for 'teaching'.  At the Chicago location, they have free English classes for foreign students(many of them were from Copeland College).  It is an opportunity for the students to practice their English some more and for us 'teachers-to be' to get some valuable experience.  However, from the first day you were thrown to the wolves, and were expected to have some sort of plan with your students.  These 'English Classes' were shaky at best, because it was free, the students sometimes would not show up, or maybe 1 of the 5 students you were supposed to be teaching came.  The upside of this is that the students have more one on one time with the teacher; and other teachers can evaluate someone else's style of teaching because none of their students came.  The downside is that you really are not getting 'teaching classroom' experience and you are more of a tutor.  For me, at least one of my students showed up everyday, so I was unable to evaluate another teacher, but I got to meet many different people from many different places. A few of the countries that people were from, were: South Korea, Japan, Turkey, Columbia, Argentina, Bolivia, Poland, and Saudi Arabia. There may have been more, but I took the class 4 months ago and my brain is a tad bit hazy.  The students were very receptive and just enjoyed speaking English with a native speaker.  I always thought that the teaching cliche about teachers not teaching for the money, was true. However, it really is not a cliche.  Even after the first week of seeing some of your students improving, made it seem worthwhile.


Overall, I learned a lot about grammar, since I hated it as a child. Also I learned a lot about lesson planning, teaching strategies and theories.  Since I am writing this before leaving, all I can say is I hope it has prepared me enough to be a decent teacher....