United States
US
Luke Gorman
Teach Enrich Empower
Having The Time Of My Life
I am 24 years old and last year I decided I wanted to become a teacher.
After speaking with friends and doing some research The TEFL Academy was clearly one of the best courses out there. The assignments really prepared me for teaching English as a second language and gave me the confidence I needed. Once I decided what course I was going to do I had to decide what country I was going to go work in. After some extensive research, Vietnam seemed to tick all the boxes.
Prior to travelling to Vietnam, I had to complete my 2-day in-class TEFL Academy session. The course was running over the weekend and I was flying to Vietnam the day after on the Monday, with nothing planned and no job lined up. I remember asking people on the course how to get a teaching job and hearing lots of different answers. Despite this, I was still very nervous about the fact I was arriving in Vietnam the following day with absolutely nothing planned. I am going to talk about my experience and hopefully help give some good advice for first-time teachers that I wish someone had given to me.
“I am now in my 2nd year in this school and still here having the best time of my life and could not recommend this experience enough.”
I arrived in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, with only a couple of hundred dollars, so I was very keen to start working immediately. After 1 day of getting my bearings, I decided to begin looking for work. I tried a few websites at first and was really struggling. Then I met a foreigner in a shop and began chatting and he advised me to join a variety of Facebook groups. I got home and joined every Facebook group possible, “Teaching jobs Vietnam”, “Teaching jobs Ho Chi Minh”, “ESL Teachers Vietnam”, “Expats Ho Chi Minh” etc.
Immediately I saw a large number of job-related posts in these groups. I applied to about 20 random jobs in the area that day as I was very keen to start working as soon as possible. I expected the job hiring process to take a couple of weeks so was very surprised when 2 hours later I received my first job offer. It was literally a guy on Facebook saying “Hello, can you please come to our school and collect your books today and start tomorrow?”.
The next 24 hours I received an incredible number of job offers. I quickly realised that as a native English speaker I am incredibly valuable to many schools and language centres, despite my inexperience of teaching.
For the next few days while searching for jobs I was considering where I would work, salary, what subjects I would teach etc. Finally, I got a job offer teaching Math, Science and English to Primary kids at an international school in Bien Hoa (just outside Ho Chi Minh). I accepted this offer and began working at this school the following week. I very quickly made friends with the other foreign teachers in the school and got some help with getting myself a nice apartment. I also discovered I had an unknown passion for riding motorcycles and regularly go off roading across the country with friends. I am now in my 2nd year in this school and still here having the best time of my life and could not recommend this experience enough.
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