For me, I love teaching the older students. My students were mostly in their early twenties and they all had great attitudes. I enjoyed the freedom of the private language schools. Some left the teachers almost entirely on their own. Others offered observations and regular teacher evaluations. I appreciated the time and comments offered by my DOS when I was just starting out.
When I post comments from other teachers from other forums here, my point is to provide at least a little bit of information to the TEFLer looking for a compatible private language school. Someone who prefers a rigid structure might do well at one of the Callan schools or Berlitz.
When going through comments, I am cognizant of the fact that the criticisms may be embellished, or even outright lies. However, when I see a thread of commonality among different posters, I tend to think that there may be some truth to the posts. For instance, when I started researching teacher opinions on Berlitz, one commonality was that for teachers who broke the contract, for whatever reason, the owner has tried to take them to court to get the 'training money' back, which can be anywhere from $2500 to $3000 US. This must be in the contract. Funny, though, I have also read that the training is not much more than sitting in front of a bunch of videos. There must be more to it than that. Even so, the owner of Berlitz has not come off very well in the opinions of the ex-teachers.
posted September 2004
posted September 2004
undated, likely 2003-ish
