Just through being in the right place at
the right time, I have been involved in the setting up of new TEFL courses in
two different schools in two different countries- once as a new teacher trainer
and ADoS of the school it was run in, and the second time as the senior teacher
trainer and teacher trainer trainer, and even as the trainer of the senior
teacher trainer who took over from me when I left. As such, I hope I can offer
some insight into some of the ways you can go about setting up a TEFL
certificate course in your school without too much pain and hassle- something
that I couldn't find anything else on the internet about.
Setting
up your first TEFL certificate course
Although it is perfectly possible to set up
a Cambridge CELTA course or Trinity course from scratch, in both of my schools
we decided it was easier to go with one of the lesser known courses. This was
not so much due to lower standards (you are after all ultimately responsible
for the standards of the course you give, and the trainees will soon make you regret
it if you are not up to the job), but because they dealt with the most time
consuming part of the course- getting the trainees onto the course. As we did
not have to deal with any advertising, designing application forms etc. etc,
this left us free to concentrate on the already challenging processes of
getting ready to train them once they arrived, arranging accommodation for them,
and finding students they could experiment on in their practice classes. In
both cases, the organisation we used also helped us find experienced teacher
trainers from other schools who helped us out on the first couple of courses.
If your school is thinking of the starting
the same way, it is fairly easy to find organisations that offer TEFL
certificates and recruit the trainees centrally on the internet- if they offer
lots of locations on their website they are almost certainly looking for more
and will reply to an email enquiry about becoming a TEFL course centre in
record time!
Getting
ready to apply
Whichever course provider you decide to
use, there are steps you can take in the months and years before to make sure
you are ready to start teacher training and to show that you can start teacher
training. To be the kind of school that is ready and raring to go on the
teacher training front, you will need to:
1)
Recruit teachers who can become
teacher trainers
2)
Turn your teachers into teacher
trainers
3)
Make sure you have the space
and resources
4)
Get yourselves checked out
1) Recruit teachers who can become
teacher trainers
Even if your school is fairly small and
unknown (as mine were), being able to tell teachers there is a good chance they
can get involved in teacher training is a great way of getting experienced, qualified
and keen teachers into your school. If the process of setting up the course is
not sufficiently advanced that you can actually advertise for a teacher trainer
or you'd prefer to ease new teachers into the training roles slowly, the best
thing to do is to advertise for Diploma and MA qualified teachers. Demanding
qualifications like these not only attracts the right kinds of people, but also
gives trainees confidence in the course.
2) Turn your teachers into
teacher trainers
If you want to use the teachers you already
have (and giving long serving teachers no chance to get involved can cause some
friction with any teacher trainers you have brought in), you will need to make
sure they have or are at least taking the higher TEFL qualifications mentioned
above. Other things you can do in your school to get them ready for teacher
training are observations and peer observations (with many different types of
observation and feedback tasks), teacher workshops, and videoing their classes.
If you can persuade them to get involved in giving outside workshops, writing
advice for teachers in TEFL magazines and websites etc, becoming examiners for
IELTS, FCE etc, those things are both good practice and a way of raising the
profile and status of your school.
3) Make sure you have the
space and resources
This is perhaps the most difficult point to
deal with, as extra classroom and bookshelf space are not going to be joining
your school due to vague promises that they can get involved in teacher
training- there is no substitute for hard cash! One way of getting round this
is holding the first course during your least busy time of the year, but it
might be difficult to get students for the trainees to practice on if it's the
summer holiday. Another method is having the teacher training at a different place
to the school, but then trainees can't benefit from mixing with the "real"
teachers, and you will have to double up on things like teachers' books and
stationary.
4) Get yourselves checked out
Some schools can find it a shock moving from
doing things your own way to being inspected and judged by an outside
organisation that does things differently. Ways of getting used to this include
joining any local organisations that certify schools (or starting such an
organisation with other schools if there isn't one), and becoming a test
centre. Encouraging your managers to take an EFL Management or other management
qualification can also have a similar effect.
Moving
on up
Both of the courses I was a teacher trainer
on later decided to "trade up" to a more well known TEFL course a year or two
after starting up. The disadvantages of this are that you will suddenly have to
find all the trainees yourself, possibly in competition with 30 or more schools
offering the same certificate in places all over the world and advertising in
the same places as you. The advantages are that the trainees will find their
qualifications more widely accepted and the fact that it is well known will
mean they come to the course with much more confidence in it than might otherwise
be the case. It can also make it easier to recruit teacher trainers, and there
is the possibility of offering other teaching qualifications offered by the
same examination board.
