Paris Hilton (lol)
I have millions in the bank, am as thick as they come, can't read so I can't do any research, have never been to Spain, just plan on coming over one day and buying a beautiful house with a pool and setting up in Spain and live a relaxed, worry-free life preferably far away from Gandia as I can get. Maybe you keep your house on over in the UK in case YOU fail.
P.S. My rose tinted glasses are working fine thank you

Seriously.... from as far back as I can remember I have moved all over the place. Some good some bad. I know all about life's ups and downs. About good and bad. and there is a perfectly good way of pointing things out to people without being downright rude. That's all I've been trying to get at, but some people are so thick that they don't get it. Duh!!!!

Sorry but this is absolute rubbish...you obviously have never lived in the real business world where people earn money on the merit and by their wits. If you dont think that can be tiring and energy sapping then have a go yourself. Two days a week!!!..you must be joking to call that a job! Some of the teachers I have known over the years have been the laziest stoned drunkards I have met and then they happily get paid at the end of the month...sorry but thats not tiring or living in the real world. They usually justify their existence and life style by saying they are hard working and dedicated.......go into most staff rooms and see for yourself!

This is from the CELTA leaflet (http://www.cambridgeesol.org/assets/...let-2012.pdf):
Ideally you should:
• have a standard of education equivalent to that required for entry into higher education
• be aged 20 or over
• have a standard of English which will enable you to teach at a range of levels.
Centres may still accept you if you do not have formal qualifications at this level but can demonstrate that you would be likely to complete the course successfully. Some centres may, at their discretion, accept applicants aged between 18 and 20.
So you don't need a degree or any previous experience to get a Celta certificate. Whether you get it or not depends on yourself.
I just like facts.

All I know is that if I want a teacher to teach me or my children a foreign language, I would want and pay for a "proper" teacher, not a TEFL, unless I wanted a bit of conversational stuff - and then I wouldnt expect to pay much

Jo xxx

I've worked in business. I've had plenty of 5am starts and 11pm finishes. It was taking its toll on my health, as I have a medical condition, so I chose to move away from that. I don't work two days a week, never said that. I said that I generally have 20 or fewer CONTACT hours. Marking, admin and prep time is extra.

I love how some people think the number of hours you work is the be all and end all. Who cares? Must be a working class thing. I was always taught that the less work you did for the more money, the better. That gives you quality of life, rather than working yourself into the ground. If someone has the ability to earn a full time wage while working part time, why begrudge them?The same with this obsession with the 'real world'. If you're working, paying taxes and contributing to society, then you're very much living in the real world. I've never claimed a penny in benefits in my life. I deal with people all day long and you think sitting behind a desk all day is the real world? Amusing. I don't know these teachers you met. I hear stories about people like that but none of them have ever worked in my schools.

I've always needed a degree to get a job in TEFL and the place I did my CELTA didn't accept anyone without a degree.

More fool you, then. Most secondary English teachers I know wouldn't have a clue about how to teach grammar to non-natives. I've just hired a private teacher to help me prepare for the DELE C2 exam. She works in an academy and has been giving private classes for years. There would be no point in hiring a Spanish secondary school teacher for this. I want to learn grammar and idiomatic expressions for my exam, not discuss Don Quixote. You don't seem to understand the difference between English as a foreign language and English as a school subject.

I had some sympathy for you earlier but that's gone now. You have just contradicted yourself, haven't you....You said teaching was more stressful than 'office work'....daft phrase that, 'office work' covers a multitude of tasks these days from highly paid IT work -more than you could dream of as a teacher and well-deserved- to scanning and hoovering the floors.
Then you say you gave up work in business because of the stress....

Why do you think working all hours is a working class thing? Nah, professionals work all hours, professionals and business owners.

Your comment about secondary school teachers is patronising and ignorant.

Most teachrers I know earn £40k plus. Heads of big inner city schools can get over £100k. Plus good pensions.

All have degrees.

Don't know a TEFL who earns anything like that.

Not disagreeing with your first statement but you are not comparing like for like.
A teacher of English as a foreign language at a school in London will only earn £9-14 per hour, and can earn more in Madrid (or Istanbul or other places) where the cost of living is lower.
Not that it's all plain sailing, as almost everywhere in Madrid closes at high summer (and a few weeks around Christmas too).
I think the teachers at standard schools in the UK are on a hiding to nothing and deserve every penny they can get. I personally know a couple who've had nervous breakdowns. No wonder too, with all the targets set from central government, unsympathetic parents, and shocking behaviour from many of the children. It's more like crowd control than teaching.
It is far more rewarding to teach people who want to learn than a class of 30+ who have no interest in doing so (and yes I know there are school children who do want to progress, but far too often they are set back by their peer group).

Stevie, that brings up the other problem - class sizes.
When I was at school we had classes of approx 30, when my daughter was at school she was in a class of 32, despite the local council harping on about there being no more than 25 children per teacher - they included head teacher who rarely teaches and non-teaching staff.
Today is no better, all we have is these new superschools of 2,000+ but no improvement on class sizes.
Peter Drucker started the Pyramid method of management in the 1950's, saying that no manager can manage more than 7 people. So how can a teacher be expected to manage 30 people who have a desire to go in 30 different directions

Met quite a few UK ex-teachers in Spain who have had breakdowns/stress problems which enabled them to retire early on good pensions.

I didn't say I gave up working in business because of the stress. I said it was the hours. Perhaps try to read my posts properly before you accuse me of contradicting myself.

I didn't say working all hours was a working class thing. Again, read properly. I said the view that not working 40+ hours a week means you're lazy (a view expressed by several posters here) is something I find very working class. My grandparents used to have this view when they were a bit younger. This idea of 'grafting'. Why on earth would you do that when you could have a better quality of life working far fewer hours? Working long hours doesn't make you a better person. It doesn't mean you're contributing more to society. It doesn't mean you're living in the real world. It means you've chosen a job where you have to work long hours. Your choice. I think some people are both envious and have a martyr complex. Good for you if you choose to work 50 hours a week. I've chosen to work less because I can and because it's better for my health. I still contribute the same or more in taxes and have time to give back to society in the form of charity work.

MY comment patronising and ignorant? Have you seen what people have been saying about TEFL? Secondary school teachers who teach their own language are NOT trained to teach languages to non-natives. That is a FACT. It's just not what they do. Same as how I'm not trained to teach English literature. I'm not saying one profession is better or worse, I'm saying they are very different, which is a fact that seems to escape a lot of people on here. I get the odd e-mail from a parent with a child in an international school who needs extra help in 'English'. It usually turns out that they mean English as an academic subject. That's not what I do, so I refer them to a friend who does teach in an international school and knows the syllabus and texts they're studying.

Me neither. I don't think anyone is saying you can get rich from TEFL. You can make a fairly decent living if you choose the right country and take on business/exam classes (as I said, I'm earning more than the average salary here), but nobody goes into it for the money. I know I could be earning far more in the UK as a secondary teacher of French or Spanish. I have no interest in doing that because I don't like teenagers. The money wouldn't be worth it for me because I'd be unhappy. I don't begrudge my secondary teacher friends their salary and benefits and likewise they don't begrudge me my free time, flexibility and ability to travel. We made our decisions based on what we wanted from life.

Absolutely. You couldn't pay me enough to teach a class of 30 teenagers. I have total respect for those who do and I think they deserve every penny. Not that TEFL isn't 'real teaching' but the big draw for me was that most students WANT to learn and that classes are reasonable sizes. I can focus on actually teaching as opposed to spending half the lesson on discipline and crowd control.

You are right about the term Real World but its something that many teachers are not aware of as they go from school to college to school again and never have the opportunity of working in the normal environment outside the institution of a school or college. It is not their fault but something that makes teachers very different than the rest of society.
And with reference to the quality of teaching please read this..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20083249

More than half the teachers I have known smoke dope, at least at the weekend and a friend in Bristol even buys his from a teacher who supplements his income by selling it!

They are not the only professionals who use drugs before you say it but it is a sad reflection on them.

Must have been an interesting school you went to!

I think you are quite wrong to generalise about the teaching profession like this. Like in any profession, there are a few who aren't up to the job but they don't last long. Most are incredibly dedicated and overworked, many are suffering from chronic stress, and if they enjoy a smoke at the weekend so what, it's better than SSRIs.

No more harmful than alcohol, either - how many of those who regard smoking dope with horror don't consider alcohol to be a drug? I caught a few minutes of a TV programme about the emergency services last night, apparently alcohol-related illnesses cost the NHS in the UK £2.7 bn per year, not to mention the alcohol-fuelled violence caused. I don't indulge myself, btw, never felt the need, but I know lots of people who do, and have been doing for 40 years or more. They are not addicts, on benefits, or hippie drop-outs, and yes, quite a number of them are professionals of various kinds, including teachers.

And the highly paid professionals with their coke habits, what about them? It's what enables many City bankers and lawyers to function for the stupidly long hours they put in, although how effective it makes them is debatable. Might account for some of the reckless and irresponsible things the bankers do with other people's money.

Unfortunately, you're wrong, far too many poor teachers are in the system, it's almost impossible to get rid of them. A neighbour of mine had the famous "golden goodbye" at the age of 55, any guesses as to what he is doing now, supply teacher in the same school 3 days a week earning a fortune.