Make Your Own Curriculum
I am preparing up written materials for a TEFL curriculum. Making your own curriculum and going through the process that it entails is a great way to take control of your teaching career. There is nothing more satisfying, except maybe some of those best appetite suppressant products you can buy, than being able to present not only a teaching portfolio, but also a ready made curriculum at a job interview.
Making and designing your own curriculum is a way to understand the learning process and help you deliver a better lesson every time. It’s also a very important thing to have when it comes to being independent. If you can remember many other posts here, I advise you to be independent in your jobs. Remember, just like a good appetite suppressant, a self designed TEFL curriculum will satisfy your hunger.
More On The Teaching Circuit
I have become very interested in the teaching circuit lately. I wrote a post about it before and I have seen just how successful it is. I am interested if anyone has decided to take off with it? It’s really an idea that could be applied to any skill that can taught.
It’s also a chance to visit and travel, but make a steady income wherever you go. Just make contacts with people in every city you plan on visiting. Give them a website about your seminars and then get them to set up dates. You could do a percentage split with the host.
Teaching Seminar Circuit
There is a new way to increase your income, travel the world, and still be involved in teaching. I call it the Teaching Seminar Circuit. It’s not like a regular teaching job that ties you down to one school. Instead it is a way to impart your knowledge to an even wider area.
What exactly is the Teaching Seminar Circuit? People always want to learn a new skill or be presented with new ideas. This is where the TSC comes in.
Evaluate your skills and find an area in which you can offer valuable skills. Next, design a seminar course around what you have to offer. The best seminars are usually one to two days so keep that in mind while you are designing your seminar. Once you have a seminar ready, you should practice giving it once or twice to friends and getting solid feedback.
Now you are ready to begin marketing it, but that is for a longer post that I will be making on Get Pesos.
Find A Great TEFL Job
I don’t really publicize it as much as I should, but slowly but surely Great TEFL Jobs, a site I started up last year, is starting to make inroads in the TEFL jobs market. It’s beginning to get solid visitor numbers and it is starting to get job comments.
See, Great TEFL Jobs has a special premise. It allows people to comment on the TEFL jobs advertised. When people are able to leave comments about a job, they feel like they have a way to help other job seekers. For job seekers, they have a chance to get the straight dope before they take on a job.
I would say that the site is a success and with the planned changes that are coming on the site, it should get even better.
Private Class Guidelines
I can’t count the times I was asked to do private classes when I was abroad. I would choose carefully which private classes I took on based on how well the class would fit my schedule. For private classes that I accepted, I judged how much my free time was worth to me and charged accordingly.
I made sure that my private classes were lucrative for me. I may not have had a lot of private classes, but all of my private classes were worth it. In fact, while I taught in Mexico, most of my income came from private classes.
There are some obvious downsides to teaching private classes, but they can be reduced. The biggest problem is handling payment and it is followed closely by handling cancellations. I handle these based on my belief that private classes have several advantages for students, but those advantages shouldn’t focus on easier payment terms and easier cancellation terms. That’s why I came up with my guidelines for private classes. I doubt that these will work for you, but they should be a good base for coming up with your own guidelines.
1) All private classes are taught in the context of a course. A course has a set length of hours with at least several objectives to judge performance against.
2) All course payment is due up front.
3) Students are allowed one free last minute cancellation per course for sickness, meeting, etc. They are allowed 3 other cancellations, but they must be made at least 48 hours in advance. Anything above those limits are lost classes.
These terms have sometimes seemed strict to some students who have approached me for private classes, but private classes are business and I conduct them professionally. If a student is unable or unwilling to agree to the guidelines then I do not waste my time teaching them.
What guidelines do you use for your private classes?