A while back I gave high praise to the late Ian Dury for discarding that glib phrase in favour of "If you can, teach; if you can't, FUCK OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!". Quite right, too.
But now I've been doing a CELTA course in teaching English to foreigners. It's a damn good thing to do; there are lots of TEFL courses, but not all of them are recognised anywhere. CELTA is a seriously good one, and will get you a job more or less anywhere. You can do it part-time over several months, if you've got that long; alternatively you can do it intensively, in a month. It costs about a thousand quid.
It's bloody hard work though. Especially if you're doing it in Britain in the summer when none of the transport works; it's taking me 5 hours a day to do the commute, on top of the very intensive 8 hours' coursework. The trainers are real slave-drivers, in the best sense; switch off for five minutes, and you'll find yourself utterly clueless half an hour later. Now we've started teaching practice, anyone who asks a question is told "Well, we did that last Thursday - weren't you listening?"
Still, it has a real flavour of being worthwhile. I'd recommend it to anyone; what you need is not a job or a career - those just convey you into the hands of some management arsehole - but a skillset, and this is a good part of one.
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5 comments:
Why not do a weekly report on how the course is coming along? I would love to read it.
Are you with International House, British Council or someone else?
I will. It's a thing called Manchester Academy, just near Piccadilly station - all properly CELTA-authorised.
Don't want to rain on the parade, but even with a CELTA you are not going to rake it in. There is something about teaching English that makes it seriously underpaid.
As you know I am going into hospital again and with that in mind I am creating two months worth of postings that will go up automatically while I am out of it. A couple of them deal with this theme so when the blog goes on autopilot, keep your eyes peeled.
Dead right I'm not going to rake it in teaching English. The plan is to have an extra string to the bow, make the odd few bob in the short term (as one element in what bourgeois arseholes term a "portfolio career") and, four or five years down the road, to go to China and set up my own school, giving me a slightly better chance of raking it in.
Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach PE.
Blogs don't update themselves, by the way...
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