What You Should Know Before Taking a Teacher Certification Program

By James Beckley

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A lot has been made recently about the need to be certified, before you can go and work as a teacher of English overseas. You can't go onto any TEFL-related site these days and not be hit with a barrage of banner ads, all promising lifetime job guarantees, quality training, jobs in Spain, Prague, etc. When I started teaching 2 years ago, I fell for one of those ads, believing that I needed just to spend the money on one of those programs, spend 4 weeks getting trained, and success was mine. I never considered the possibility of NOT doing one of those programs, and just figured that it was what everybody did. This is largely because they are touted so extensively, as well as the fact that the only person I knew who started teaching had used a particular certification program, one which I ended up taking myself.

Little did I know that not only is there a huge learning curve after you leave the certification program and enter the working world, but it may or may not be necessary for you to get the expensive piece of paper in the first place! This I only found out after a year or so on the job, and upon meeting and hearing about teachers who had enrolled in other programs where a certificate is not required.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. Let's say you have just recently graduated college, and spent a year abroad in Paris or in Seville and would like to return, but don't have many options when it comes to other kinds of work, since you cant get a work visa or a regular job there to begin with. Instead of getting a certificate, you can just sign up for a language teaching assistantship program, which pays you a regular salary, gets you a work visa, and additionally gives you tons of free time. This is a good alternative to spending a month of your time and over a thousand dollars on a program, which you may or may not decide to use in the fullest.

So why are they so popular? And what exactly do they do? These are very important questions for anybody considering signing up for one of these. If your goal is to work in the official TEFL world, meaning a job with a private school or directly with a business, i.e. not with an official program, and intend on working in the field at least for a year professionally and maybe longer later, then you will definitely need it. The certification programs are so important because they not only give you helpful theoretical knowledge about the field, but throw you into a classroom at varied levels to make sure you have some practical experience before hitting the streets looking for a job. This is very important if you are going to apply for a job in a city like Seville or Prague, which see lots of teachers come and go from all over the world.

Although a certificate can in some cases be waived, say, if you have teaching experience or intend to get it, it is the bare minimum usually required nowadays to get you a job. This is not to say that it is perfect and is a guarantee, far from it, because schools realize like anybody that the certification program business is just that, a business, and that if you just complete the minimum requirements, and have paid your money, you will pass. It's therefore not a quality control on teaching at all, and employers know this, while at the same time they realize that it is better than nothing, and that a certification program is the only real credential most beginner teachers can count on.

That being said, if your ultimate goal is not necessarily to teach forever, but have the experience of living and working abroad, maybe with the option of doing something else further down the line, then you can do a lot better without forking over the cash needed for this kind of thing. France, Spain, Germany and Austria, for example, all have great teaching assistantship programs whereby you assist another teacher in the classroom, which can involve as little as 6 hours of actual work a week, but for which you are paid a set salary (in France as little as 680 Euros, in Austria as much as 1000) per month, and given a legal working visa.

Since you won't be working many hours, ample time will exist to look for other opportunities and jobs, and you will be getting teaching experience, although perhaps not as directly as you would through a certification program. Just the same, there are definitely jobs, particularly in the Western European countries and business centers, directly with companies or with a private school contracting out to a business, which won't require a certification at all. For many of these jobs, which tend to be the higher paying ones by the way, the most important thing is knowledge of English, and additionally business expertise, or perceived business expertise, meaning that you can learn up on it yourself. This is very important for many workers all over Europe, given the fact that most companies see the need to provide English to their employees, and in fact many governments, such as the French, require them to by law.

Likewise, in the countries of Central Europe, such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, it is possible to teach English, as well as other subjects, get paid, and get your housing provided, and get free training provided through a program such as the Central European teaching program. This way, you can get experience teaching not only English but other subjects, for which there is also a strong job market at, say, International Schools abroad, and can therefore be professionally qualified and out working much more quickly and for much less money.

The drawbacks to programs like these is that there is a fee, although usually not more than several hundred dollars, and you are usually required to go to the city or place that they need you, which can be a smaller town or village, in the case of the Central European program. If you are picky about where you want to live, i.e. you want to go to Prague or Budapest because you have friends there or whatever, you should definitely go for a certification program instead. In the Western European countries, however, it is possible to get a fairly decent deal with one of the official programs, and to be able to work yourself into other jobs much more easily. This is because the competition in Eastern Europe has become much fiercer, at least in the larger and more popular cities, and there arent as great of benefits as available with the government programs in the West.

Apart from official programs like this, there are also lots of so-called non-traditional schools in both Western and Eastern Europe that will hire native speakers with or without teaching certification. These are schools like the world-famous Berlitz, which have developed their own methods of teaching which they and many others have found useful, and for which they will train you before you start working for them. Other schools include the Wall Street Institute and the Callan method, which I taught briefly in Poland. The great thing is that these programs usually pay the same and don't require the preparation that planning normal lessons do.

Overall, you should consider your teaching goals and needs -- just what you want out of the experience, where you want to be, and if you will want to do something else later. Remember, you can always do a certification course later, but you should know that there are other options out there and you can work as a teacher without it. Check out all the above programs and details as well, before making any decision, and just remember that nothing is written in stone- and that the TEFL field is very flexible and becomes much more so after you have experience!