An Experience to Remember

I attended the June TEFL Certification program in Barcelona, Spain and it was an overall amazing experience. I was very lucky and met some wonderful people. My roommate and I still talk via Facebook today! I came to the program will an extensive background in business but I had no formal teaching experience, so in the beginning I was quite terrified. However, as I started to realize that a lot of my presentations in business and my Spanish classes started to assist me in conducting my lessons, I began to be more comfortable. After the first lesson, I pretty much got the hang of planning my lessons and the flow of the "ESA" methodology.

Barcelona is a beautiful city. I was able to practice my Spanish while I was there as well, however, keep in mind they speak Catalan as well!

I think a very important issue you should consider is if you are planning on staying in the city you take the TEFL course at to work. You need to know if you are going to work in that area, so you can start preparing your CV and other materials after you meet with the career counselor. I knew I was staying for a little while, so I made sure to meet with the career adviser and jump on any opportunities to post my CV and reach out to inquire about potential job opportunities in the area.

I wish I had known what I know now because I feel like I can go back and exploit many more potential opportunities to teach in the Barcelona area. The good thing is I found that there are a lot of people looking to learn English in Spain, especially Barcelona and Madrid.

The one thing I remember is I wished that we met with the Career adviser earlier on, around the first days of class, because I barely had enough time to go on the interviews at the end of the month for the jobs I found because there were so many projects due at that time as well. I think it makes more sense to allow the people who are staying to work to prepare earlier on, so they are not rushing to try to find somewhere to live and work, while completing all assignments.

Nonetheless, I found the experience to be very interesting and I learned a lot of useful skills from teaching that I have taken with me and will use in my future career obligations. I am much more confident speaking in front of other people and I hope to return to Spain again and teach at an academy!