As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve finally landed my first full-time teaching job since arriving back from Turkey in September 2010. The job market is tough.
When starting a new teaching job, it is unrealistic to expect much information to rather magically flow your way. In a typical HE setting on an hourly paid contract, you might be mostly isolated from other teaching colleagues, arriving on campus only to deliver your lessons, then leaving again immediately afterwards. If you’re lucky, you’ll have an office space where you can hot desk, or at the very least, there will be an online repository of teaching materials such as box.net, which you’ll still have to trawl through to find anything useful, and you’ll probably need to revise/adapt the materials besides.
In the private sector, colleagues will all be on full teaching workloads, which means they may have little time to ‘orient’ you. In many cases, you’ll be expected to dive straight in with the bare minimum of knowledge. Bear in mind that locating and familiarising yourself with a new syllabus and all the materials is extremely time-consuming. You’re likely to have a million questions to ask, and it pays to come prepared to a new teaching role with a list of questions you need answered. (You can then go around pestering everyone until you are satisfied). The following questions will help you to help yourself get oriented:
Questions to ask:
- When will my contract be sent out? Is it permanent or fixed-term?
- How do I get my ID card?
- How do I get on the payroll? When is payday?
- Do I need a CRB check?
- How do I get my IT account?
- Where is my desk/space?
- How do I print?
- What are the door codes?
- How do I use the photocopier?
- Where is the stationery cupboard?
- How do I access the shared drive/cloud service?
- Where are the course books/teachers’ books?
- Are we using a VLE?
- Where is the syllabus? When are the assessments?
- How prescriptive is the syllabus?
- Are we taking paper or electronic registers?
- What is the policy on late arrivals? How should I record them?
- Where can I get a staff handbook? a student handbook?
- What is my teaching timetable?
- Am I expected to remain on site between certain hours or only for classes?
- What’s happening in the first week? Is there a ‘standard’ first lesson I can use?
- Will my students already know each other?
Hello Sonya and thank you for taking the time to write this blog.
I am starting the Cambridge accredited CELTA in March (at the Liverpool International Language Academy) and have been looking into job opportunities post-qualification. From reading your blog and the comments following your first post, my first move is doubtless a series of summer jobs and temping.
However, I have grander ambitions: I started out with a first degree in biology which didn’t go further only due to a lack of money, but it also gave me a taste for academia and in particular, a fascination for the variety of teaching that I encountered, and through research I have decided I would like to aim for EAP.
Would you agree that my next obvious step post-CELTA is (aside from grabbing as much experience as possible) the DELTA? Most providers list at least one to two years of experience as a requirement for acceptance: is this always the case? Can I accumulate sufficient experience as a temping, summer jobbing CELTA-only teacher to meet that requirement?
What I’m afraid of is ending up in the same cleft stick that I was in with biology: just well enough qualified to be rejected for lab tech jobs, but not well enough qualified or experienced for a place on a research program.
Thanks for your time!
Regards,
Mike
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your comment. It does seem that DELTA is the way to go; I know of places that only offer permanent contracts to applicants with DELTA; they may hire others, but perhaps only on a 9-month contract, which means you’d need to seek presessional work for the summer months. Several of my friends are PhD-qualified or nearly so, yet they get rejected for the simplest EFL jobs simply for not having the DELTA! It’s worth remembering that this qualification has recently been reclassified in the UK as Level 7, i.e. equivalent to a Master’s degree, and it’s considered to be a highly practical teaching qualification besides. It has been a definite advantage to me in my career, and what was even better was that my employer funded it! Try to find a school that will do the same for you.
Best of luck!
Sonja
Hi Sonja.
Thank you for the information!
I’ve been trawling job ads (might seem early given that I have yet to begin the CELTA course, but it seems wise to get a head start) and have come across a few confusing acronyms. For instance, the RSA Dip TEFLA. I saw this in an advert for EAP tutors at Leicester Uni which said that CELTA holders would also be considered (presumably they don’t expect to get many applicants with the diploma). However, this raised the question of the equivalency of the CELTA.
Is the Royal Society of Arts a separate awarding body? How does this diploma compare to the Cambridge qualifications? Is it, for example, considered equivalent to the CELTA or DELTA?
Thanks for your time.
Regards,
Mike