Feb 15 2010
A TEFL TEACHER IN THAILAND
TEFL stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Since the 1960’s it has been a gateway career for those wanting to pay their way around the world. In those early days if you were American, Canadian, or British, you could stop for several months at a time in Paris, Prague, Peking, and Phuket, and earn your keep by teaching English in the public schools. The schools were none too picky about who they took, back in those halcyon years; if English was your native tongue and you did not turn into a werewolf at the full moon, you were hired.
By the time I took an interest in TEFL, in 2002, things were different. Most countries required, as a minimum, a TEFL certificate from a recognized course. I moved to Bangkok, Thailand, in 2001, and immediately began teaching Business English to the office staff at the Tahitian Noni Juice Company, on Phahonyontin Road. My good friend, Peter Willden, as president of Tahitian Noni Juice in Thailand, simply gave me a conference room for several hours each morning and divided his staff into several groups, then told me to “dive right in!” Not having any teaching experience, outside of some desultory Sunday School classes where I recounted the story of David & Goliath to the kiddies, I was briefly flummoxed as to how to begin. Luckily, the Thais are a gregarious and curious people. I began each lesson with something or somebody, such as baseball or George Clooney, and away they went, asking questions, which I would scribble on the whiteboard and which we would discuss and dissect for the next hour. Strictly speaking it was not standard Business English, but my pupils were quick to catch on to phrases like “three strikes and you’re out!” and “what a hunk of man!” Which, if you think about it, can come in mighty handy, under certain circumstances, when you’re in a boardroom or at a sales meeting.
This idyll lasted for a full year, and then I heard about TEFL International – a teacher training school down on the Gulf of Thailand. They promised to turn out TEFL-certified teachers in four weeks. At my friend Peter’s urging, I signed up for the course, hit the books and the beach for four weeks, and proudly hung up my TEFL certificate in the conference room for my erstwhile students to admire. Alas, a few weeks later the company was restructured and my position as Business English teacher was eliminated. But I found that with a TEFL certificate I was now a hot property in Bangkok. I had no trouble landing a job at Inlingua, a language school that specialized in teaching children. We played Hangman, drew pictures of Santa Claus, and sang “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”. Delightful work. My pay was thirty-five thousand baht a month, which allowed me to rent my own apartment, eat out every night, see a movie as often as I wanted, and travel by bus the length and breadth of Thailand on weekends.
I no longer work for Inlingua, but I still reside in Thailand, and still manage to eat out every night, catch movies, and now I travel around to other countries like Laos and Malaysia on my free weekends. My apartment is provided free of charge by my employer. I’m here to tell you that such a lifestyle is still available for the TEFL-certified teacher in Thailand. Ever since the world-wide recession began two years ago the doom & gloom boys have been warning prospective TEFL teachers off by groaning that teaching salaries haven’t gone up in Thailand in five years and that the work is getting scarce, yada , yada, yada. Pshaw! Just look at the job board at www.ajarn.com You’ll find dozens of open TEFL positions all over the country. It’s still a very sweet deal, especially if you’re like me, growing up in Minnesota and spending half your waking hours shoveling snow and dodging plunging icicles. Need a long, paid vacation in a tropical setting? Take a gander at www.tefllife.com to see how easy it is to get that TEFL certificate and settle down on the beach with a fresh mango smoothie and a blackboard!
