After spending more than 1o years teaching ESL, 7 of them in Taiwan, I’m back “home” In Arkansas and starting again. I have my B.A. in English, but no teaching license. I’ve been subbing and, boy is it a different world over here. Anyhow, I’m still persuing teaching over here.
I would really have thought that that many years teaching would mean something to someone, but it doesn’t. No one knows if I’ve been in Taiwan for all this time, or in Thiland, but either way, they don’t seem to be able to relate.
So, anyway, March 30 I’m taking three pre-professional exams, reading, wrighting, and rithmatic, and then in April I take my content knowledge assessments. Once I pass, I can be hired on full time, but have to study ed courses once a month and durring the summer for two years. Then a couple more tests, and I’m done. I’m a real teacher! I’m looking forward to the ed courses, as I think I’ve done a pretty good job without them, thank you, but I’m hoping I’ll do even better with them.
I studied “Teaching English to Second Language Learners” before I graduated. It was a graduate class, but they let me in, heh. Anyway, that was before the licensing guidelines had been outlined for TOFEL. Now, to get credit for it, I’ll have to take three more, and hope I don’t have to re-take that one, as it’s been 10 years ago this year. So, then I can teach ESL over here, and not just high school English.
So, anyhow, this is the option I’ve found for myself. Wish me luck. The first tests shouldn’t be difficult at all, except for math, uhem. But I’m nervous as I don’t like testing. So send me some good thoughts, will you?
Anyway I posted this because I didn’t know about this program before, and thought maybe some other Forumosans getting tired of Taiwan style mafan might think about it.
Peace.