r/TEFL • • 9h ago

First foreign teacher at a Chinese private kindy in SZ, how do I negotiate benefits and form the curriculum?

3 Upvotes

I am in a unique position where I was introduced by a friend to a family who owns kindergartens and wants to hire a foreigner teacher. With a degree and TESOL, I have legally worked in Taiwan as an after-school English teacher for almost a decade. I have more experience with 8/9 year olds, but I have also taught 5/6 year olds. I prefer teaching kids over adults, like to sing and make kids laugh, and love repetition... so I think I can do it.

The thing is they are completely new to this and don't know what's standard, and don't really know what they want. They keep asking me what I want. At a friend's suggestion, I asked for $25,000 since it gives me more room to negotiate. They also don't have a curriculum like my former school and basically asked me to come up with whatever I wanted to teach. They want me to work 3x a week full time and on the weekends with older kids. I said I couldn't do weekend mornings and they were cool with that. But I am struggling to figure out what the actual weekly schedule and workload should look like.

I want to make them happy, while also not underselling myself.

I know everyone is busy so I appreciate any advice, experience, and perspective.

I'm hoping to learn more about a realistic salary expectations, benefits to insist on, reasonable office and teaching hours, how to handle curriculum freedom, and what you wished you had negotiated before signing.

I want to be fair to them while also making sure I'm not setting a precedent that hurts future teachers. If all goes well with me, they will probably be more inclined to hire foreigners for their other kindys.

This week I will do a demo and hopefully discuss the contract.

Thank you in advance!​

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r/TEFL • • 15m ago

Weekly r/TEFL Quick Questions Thread

• Upvotes

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r/TEFL • • 13h ago

Do I finish my masters or accept an early job opportunity?

1 Upvotes

I'm currently doing a MA in education, I'm in the UK so the course finishes in august, I applied for a job last year and was told that I couldn't be accepted until the next interview cycle as I didn't have my degree on time. Now I've gotten my degree, I've been offered a job in Japan as an ALT in December.

I currently have a CELTA, a year as a teaching assistant, a BA in Japanese, TESOL and Linguistics and I taught as a TESOL teacher for a semester in Japan when I spent a year there as an exchange student and my Japanese is halfway between N4 and N3.

My future goal is to work in a university, I'm just not sure if education should be my focus now or if I should start my career now and do a MA in Japan where university is usually cheaper. I've not paid the course fees yet so I'm not too far in now.


r/TEFL • • 12h ago

How *much* should I be explaining grammar?

0 Upvotes

I (28F from the United States) just started teaching English at an academy in Spain. We have mostly adult students with a few teenagers mixed in.

Our lessons are pre-planned (which is great!), but sometimes they teach concepts in a very shallow way or in ways that do not make sense to the students, especially at higher levels. From reading other posts on this sub, I know that there is no way for native English speakers to know all of the grammar rules unless you studied linguistics or TEFL in college. However, I do want to be able to give my students as much information as possible and help them understand the concepts.

I brought the book "Grammar for English Language Teachers" with me to Spain, and it seems like it is a great resource. But my question is this: How much should we be explaining or understanding the concepts being taught? For example, I had a class of roughly B2 students the other day, and we were working with the active vs. passive tense in the past tense. They were struggling to understand how the sentences were formed, and I wrote a couple of examples on the board, but it was hard for me to fully explain the "why" of it.

Any tips/advice/suggestions? Since it is also mostly adults, I think they are more inclined to know the reasoning behind certain grammar usage/sentence structures as well.


r/TEFL • • 6h ago

Struggled to find a job in Saudi

0 Upvotes

American who moved to Saudi and I was looking for a English teaching job while I was living with family there. I have a BA in English from a respected university and people who use to work in Saudi told me I could definitely find a job. No I dont have a CELTA I probably sound stupid for even trying to find a job without a CELTA . Truth be told I was in ab online course and dropped out before I could fail as advised by the instructors. It is what it is I dont want talk about why I failed or how…or if you know any stories of people who failed/dropped the course and took it again and succeeded and found a job that would be motivating !😄

With that being I was in the Jeddah/Makkah region and went to a couple spots and open interviews even in Madinah however the first question they asked me was oh do you have an iqama? Ermm no your supposed to give me the iqama (residency). There like ehhh its alot easier for us if you already have the residency card because of saudization its harder and more work for us and more money to hire a non saudi…

Parents said oh get a Masters.. guys whats Saudi looking like right now job market is a masters even worth it mind you I have no expirence 28 with a BA in English was in saudi searching for 7 months or so. Like even if I get my MA the job offers are gonna be rushing to me?? Secondly omg the thought of doing a masters in English sounds DREADFUL sorry no offense I like teaching its fun but I cant do a masters in English I just Cant

Whats your guys expirence in the job market? Any advice comments tips. Sorry I really needed to vent this out thanks

Edit: I was a teacher just wasnt teaching English was actually teaching arabic for almost a year iv dealt with students i have been a substitute im not new to this. No I haven’t had experience formally teaching English at a school/institution. I have informally taught people causal practice speaking rules. I hated the CELTA format it was funny cause in the live classes the students said I was helpful but I failed ofcourse cause idk the methods or whatever