Viewing topic: CELTA or Oxford? Or neither?

Privet all,

I have spent the last few months working over a move to Russia. I've settled on Moscow, as there seems to be waaaaaay more schools and jobs there. I'm committed to going. I really want to be there by the end of July. So here's me:

*BS in biology & native speaker (so I've got that going for me).
*no TEFL experience or certificate
*committed to going.
*somewhat lacking the several thousand dollars to plunk down for a CELTA or Oxford certificate.

My problem right now is I just can't seem to break into the Moscow teaching market. I figured on just showing up in Moscow, but with what visa? I've been reading they ain't handing 'em out like the used to.

BKC seems to run a pretty good show, and they seem to have their s&t together. However, plunking down 1800USD for the CELTA course, plus another 700 odd USD for living expenses whilst attending said course, just isn't feasible for me. I'm looking to spend a year in Russia. It could be longer, but a year is my current goal. Average out 2500USD over that time, and all of a sudden that's a decent chunk of change.

I think I would make a good teacher. I've taught in various settings in the past and enjoyed it. I don't think it will be easy to teach; quite the opposite, I'm pretty sure it will be very challenging (but that's a good thing).

So what should my next move be?
Anyone have any good suggestions?
I'm to the point that I'm willing to stand on a street corner in Moscow holding a sign that says: "If You Can Read This, Please Tell Me Where You Went To School".

Thanks in advance. I really appreciate it.

Michael

Here I am, replying to my own post

What's the general opinion on London Teacher's Training College?

If I must go the certificate route, I'd like to go with one that has recognition, as well as be able to teach me something.

Thanks again.

Michael

Compared to some, you are overqualified! However, an ability to teach is a bit of an advantage, I'd say. If you know you can, no problem. If you think you need to, take a course, though *any* certificate will be as good as any other once you front up at a school here. Any certificate will also probably be of less concern to the staff than if you can [in no special order] a) breathe, b) speak like a native and c) explain how to do the latter. You could do an online course in a couple of months.

About the visas, see posts passim ad nauseam. Business visas don't cut the mustard any more, but work visas through agencies or schools are more and more possible. The cost is a small percentage of annual income: you can earn it back in a week without straining anything if you are prepared to be serious about the work, as indeed you seem to be. Work visas take at least two months to arrange, so you'd have to get here, do the paperwork and go and get the new visa after a few months. It might even be worth getting a business visa, spending the first 90 days allowed getting your feet under a few desks, going elsewhere for 90 days and arranging a work visa during the second set of 90 days allowed here on the business visa.

Never used BKC but they do have a good name... and as with most things you pay for the name.

Personal opinion: you're ready, go for it.

John

Ditto Cairo.

LTC has a cheap-ish online course that seems to contain all the necessary elements, plus they *should* still be offering a discount to VisaRus members (haven't checked in a while). One school in SPb is planning to offer ground-based LTC courses (partly due to me ).

Dunno about BKC - strict hierarchies, bureaucracy = not much opportunity to negotiate & move up the ranks to get decent money. I don't think their contract wages are up to much - they're more like a 'package deal' for people who just want to spend time abroad and work for their keep.

One thing I'd disagree with slightly from Cairo - recouping the cost of a certificate over a short term wouldn't be so easy. On the whole, you don't generally land big bucks on arrival, and in my opinion it's best not to try to.

The 'fast track to decent money' plan that I tout for newcomer teachers involves starting off in cruddy-to-mediocre schools to get a month or two of classroom experience & familiarise yourself with the ins-and-outs of schools until you feel ready & confident enough to saunter into a bigger-money establishment and shoot for real money.

Of course, the new visa situation largely messes this up, especially if you need to travel halfway round the world to get your visa =(

Experience and references count for a lot more than certificates - it would be worth trying to get some ESL experience locally before departing. Even as a volunteer in an immigrant ESL centre or a language camp-type place you're going to pick up more than you would from most TEFL courses.

Whether or not you go for a teaching course, I'd highly recommend two books to you: Jeremy Harmer's A practice of English teaching (or something like that - I gave my copy away some time ago) and Murphy's English grammar in use, intermediate level.

Harmer is an excellent reference for common-sense classroom practice as well as lesson structuring that cuts out a lot of the silly methodologies (though it explains said methodologies in simple terms), while Murphy explains grammatical functions in a way that even a native speaker will understand them

I started off teaching to fill in spare time, armed only with a copy of Murphy and no certification. Before I knew it I was out of schools and working as a teacher in a software company, raking it in. No teacher training - nobody cared. The certificate only proves that you've had some 'formal' training - it doesn't prove that you can teach.

Turning up at a school and saying that you can give a test lesson (and subsequently doing so) proves that you can teach, certificate or no certificate.

Moscow - err... I won't try to put you off. I wouldn't have wanted to start out there (I almost did, then didn't) and even after 4 years of experience and references coming out of my nostrils, I was still pretty unsure.

One thing about Moscow is there's also a bigger population of native speakers/teachers/living, breathing foreigners. Plus just living and travelling around the city... it's huge. Monstrously huge.

Sorry, I said I wasn't going to try to put you off

As Cairo says, you're already head and shoulders above the average calibre of 'teacher' who comes out here, plus you seem to have the right attributes and attitude - go for it. Feel free to post your questions here & definitely let us know how things progress. We guarantee to be more optimistic & encouraging than our compatriates round the corner at ESL cafe

Bobs and Cairo,

Thanks for the advice. I think my sensitive side needed some reassurance

As for Moscow, not my first choice really. I live in the centre of the US, and I roll my eyes at people that do work/travel here and often comment about wishing they were in New York or D.C. I have traveled extensively in the US, and there's so much to see outside of NYC and LA. A LOT. So I approach Russia with this attitude as well. Alas, the smaller cities I'd like to live in (such as Perm) aren't rife with teaching jobs. Besides, there's these two sisters I'm pals with in Moscow who've agreed to be my roommates.......

As for the certificate, I suppose I'll see what happens. I'd rather have the 'ground based' training anyway. Strange as it is opposite the US system, where here we are all about what degree, from where, with which honors, awards, etc. It makes a big difference from hotels to the Air Force.

And I'm quite sure whatever money I think I'll save to recoup the CELTA costs will probably go towards beer anyway.

How's SPb? I work with a girl from there, and she raves about it.

Cheers,

Michael

p.s: Dig the new avatar, Bobs.

Cheers Mike,

I like the avatar so much myself that I think I might rename myself to Evil Dr. Bobs v1.2 and set out to conquer the universe.

ShitPee, er, sorry, Saint-Pee is way, way nicer than dirty old Moscow. Well, it's also pretty dirty, congested, etc. but in human terms I find it way more civilised than Moscow.

The weather is mostly crap (stupidly cold winter, stupidly hot summer, only two or three months of comfortable weather in spring and autumn - same, I think, as Moscow) but the city is really beautiful, which partly makes up for all the poo.

A nice thing about St. Pete's is that you can easily get out of town and into nice, quiet suburbs (Pushkin, Pavlovsk, Peterhof etc. are worlds apart but only 30 minutes away) or forest.

I'm ashamed to admit that I've never really explored the 'wilderness' outside St. Pete's other than one time when I took folks mushroom picking in the forests along Murmanskoe Shosse.

I've been unlucky enough always to associate with the types of city characters that abhor the idea of unspoiled nature, or at least find it boring (unless you're there to take advantage of it in someway, e.g. picking mushrooms). Remove most of my close friends from smog, pollution and traffic lights and within 30 minutes they're bewildered and disoriented and moaning to go home

The one time I got out into the forest mushroom picking, I left my chums to forage for fungi while I went to wander in the woods. When we regrouped at the bobmobile for food, they couldn't understand how I could be enjoying myself in a big, boring forest without having something specific to do. I think they thought I was sick or something

Sick?

Only if ye be eatin' the wrong mushrooms. I love the out of doors. Unspoiled nature is just the ticket. I've found myself spending a week or more in the woods backpacking, and loving every minute of it. Cities are good too. It takes even me a few hours to adjust to 'not having anything specific to do'.

I think it's all about balance; big cities and night life and plenty of people/concrete/machines, and the wilderness & natural splendor, with plenty of solitude/bugs/carnivores

I'm leaning towards suburbs myself. I've always felt a bit claustophobic in big cities like NYC or Chicago.

Hot as hell in summer, cold as hell in winter, and only a few days of decent weather? Sounds a lot like St. Louis!

Seriously, be careful with them mushrooms. I spent hour upon hour in the field in my undergrad work staring at fungi and bugs, and I'm still too chicken to do even a little morel hunting.

Michael

Oddly, I had an argument on this very subject with the gf (been having a lot of them lately )

I'm definitely getting more and more claustrophobic all the time - I'm a 5-mile-personal-space type person, not really altogether at home in a big city and not too keen on crowds.

We were talking about the concept of 'relaxing' - with most Russian city dwellers I find it doesn't mean chilling out and getting some peace and quiet - it's parties and fun and laughter. Even if they go somewhere in the country where you could chill and get some quiet, Russians take their city crowds and noise with them in the form of friends and guitars.

Another annoying Russian thing - enforced 'enjoyment', i.e. it's summer, there are only a few weeks of good weather per year, you have to desperately enjoy as much of it as you can before it goes again. That means 'relaxing' for a few hours at the dacha... in between sitting in massive traffic jams going out of and back into the city along with everyone else, getting stressed, uptight, impatient, crashing, overheating, etc. etc. etc.

'Relaxing at the dacha' generally means p*ssing about making inedible food on stone-age 'appliances' (or making shashlyk, which is a bit better) fixing broken bits of the dacha, shoring up the fence where the stray/neighbours' dogs get in, lamenting over the wilderness that was probably once a vegetable garden and contemplating the meaning of Russia.

That's a weird way to have fun I really can never understand why so few people here can enjoy quiet and tranquility. They get bored in about 5 minutes.

Also the need to go out to cafes. Cafes, to me, are meeting places and on occasion places you can get nice food. Going to a cafe with a person you live with doesn't make sense to me. It's not like you need to go somewhere to meet them... But hell, this is Russia and who am I to judge And some visits to the cafe don't count unless certain conditions are satisfied. It's bizarre. And so is this rambling post. As is Russia.

Bob,

Been a while since I've gotten back to you. On the job front, not much. The only schools "interested" so far are the big ones that require a certificate, a certificate which requires classes the of course offer for about one and a half to two months of what they will be paying me in the end. I'm starting to like your book's plan of showing up and getting a job the old fashioned way. Still trying to break the Western mentality of 'you don't know anything unless you've a diploma to back it up'.

I've made a few third person connections in Moscow through my dealings with people at my hotel, both employees (mostly Bulgarians) and guests. Both say they have friends or relatives living in Moscow and they will see what they can find out about jobs. I don't expect too much to come of it, but what the hell, it's worth a try, right?

I think I'll just start mailing out copies of my CV and cover letter to some of the various schools in Moscow, perhaps I will get a response. If not, then I'll be showing up sometime in August, and I'll have to start thinking about visa invitations in the next month or two. I have tried to fax my CV to a few schools, but the fax numbers I am finding on the internet must be outdated or something.

In the mean time, spending the summer here at home will give me the chance to do a bit of volunteering at the local international institute as a teacher's aid, a position I don't have yet, but the volunteer coord. sounds pretty positive about having me on board. I work about 50 to 60 hours a week as it is and value my free time, but I guess at some point I really need to get serious about coming over there, and this seems to be a prudent move on getting some classtime experience. Even a few hours in front of a room of students will do wonders for my self-confidence, I'm sure.

As for your Enforced Enjoyment, I love to be outside all year, so maybe there will be something for me to do in Moscow in the winter besides drinking. I hope there's skiing somewhere, at the very least ice skating? Hopefully.

How is your summer going?

Michael