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I always knew which country I wanted to teach in before I enrolled in my TESOL certification course. Italy had been calling me for years with her bold reminders of Renaissance architecture and art coupled with thousands of years of rich historical remains at every glance, lantern-lit cobblestone streets, statue and fountain sprinkled piazzas, spiraling towers and medieval domes, Roman bridges, open air operas and festivals celebrating everything from roasted chestnuts in the Fall, to warm, spiced wine in the winter, novello wines and radiant wildflowers in the spring and sweet, succulent watermelon all muggy summer long!
Now, five years later, I am completely acclimated to Italian society, fluent in Italian and happily teaching English in Verona, an enchanting city in northern Italy. I have made it all work with my foundation in teacher training and this is how:
I had a degree in English, but before I took off to Rome to look for a job teaching English, I wanted to have some sort of teaching experience and know-how so I took the month-long course (including the advanced certification) at Transworld Schools. Also, before embarking on my journey I needed to housing, job placement and a visa to be able to live and work legally.
Once I felt confident about being ready to teach English with the TESOL credentials under my belt, I began researching schools so that I could acquire a student visa. With their enrollment confirmation in an Italian language class I was able to apply for a student visa at the Italian Consulate in San Francisco. I definitely urge you to get a student visa BEFORE you depart for the country you are planning on teaching in. It enables you to stay for an elongated period of time, and, more importantly, you can be hired legally to work and eventually you can convert it into a full working visa.
With the student visa I was able to 1) learn Italian at my weekly classes and 2) be hired by the school to teach English at their institute thanks to the clause in the work visa which states that you can be hired on "internship" status. This was fundamental for my later conversion of my student visa into a working visa. It is, in fact, the easiest (and one of the ONLY) ways to be able to stay in European countries for more than three months, and more importantly, to be able to be eligible for the work visa via conversion process.
The first thing that I found out about Italy, was that the one-bedroom apartments in Milan, Rome, Florence and Venice, were all priced at around €1000 a month, while the average, full-time working salary was, again, right around, €1000 a month. So I decided to transfer to a smaller, more provincial city (Reggio Emilia), where I could still work on my Italian at my language school's remote branch, and where I could have my own apartment for €450 a month, while starting at the €1000 base salary. Quickly, I began expanding my network of contacts and before my first year was up I was teaching in four schools and making around €1700 per month ($2,470).
After two years of teaching I entered the fashion industry but I have always taught English lessons on the side and I have been ever-thankful for the month-long training course I had taken. Participating in an actual course with other teachers in my same position of making life-changing decisions and being able to practice teaching in mock-classes designed to show the importance of communicative techniques and the different types of learners, to really prepare for the whole teaching of speakers of other languages experience.
As soon as I started teaching, I was bombarded with the language difficulties and the detailed grammatical queries about conditionals, subjunctives, past participles, present perfect tenses and what the verb "get" really means. The questions were overwhelming, but at least I had been prepped for them in my Transworld classes and I knew where to find the answers. That peace of mind gave me self confidence, which I was able to relay to my students. I was able to sell myself to Universities with my TESOL credentials and get jobs over even more experienced teachers. |
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