If you have specific, current information about a city or country you have been teaching English in, share it with other graduates and students on the Graduate Forum.

Your posting will be viewed by the entire Grad Network and become part of an ongoing database of information on different countries. Cultural highlights, current regulations and visa information, schools to look for (and avoid) and other relevant information on any aspect of the teaching English experience is welcome.

Tell us what you know about all the different places on the planet to teach English and experience life in another country!! The more remote the location, the better.

Global TESOL College

I've been teaching English in Brno, Czech republic since late 2004 and quite enjoy the city.

Brno is the Czech Republic's second largest city after Prague and is a breath of fresh air from the beautiful, but loaded with tourists, capital.

Brno is a nice, manageable city that I find very comfortable for day to day living. It has a very well developed public transport system so you'll hardly miss having a car.

Also there are plenty of easily accessible and very nice places to spend a weekend if you want to get out of town for a bit.

The downside is that, for non EU citizens, the bureaucracy to get legally working in the Czech Republic is a real bear to deal with and if you don't speak Czech, you'll need to find someone who does to help you navigate it all because no one in official offices will speak any other language than Czech.

Prague is oversaturated with ESL teachers as it is and there is a lot more to the Czech republic than just Prague. Any larger city will have some market for English teaching.

I enjoy reading your posting!

You have been spending almost 4 years overseas and it seems you plan on staying even longer...

Nice that you've mentioned the language difficulty in the Czech bureaucracy. Therefore they are probably looking forward to improving their skills in international communication.

How open minded are the people in your area, in Prague or small villages?
Do schools search for English teachers particularly?
Are businesses looking forward to learning Business English at all?

Let us know...

Global TESOL College

For the most part, I find the Czechs a fairly liberal group. Prague is quite cosmopolitan and Brno seems to be heading in a similar direction.

The only problems you might run into is if you have a somewhat Middle Eastern or East Indian look about you, in some places you might get mistaken for a gypsy. You likely won't be brutalized for it, but you may receive some nasty looks and comments. The gypsies (or sometimes they are called Roma) are fairly easy to spot, so as long as you don't dress like them, act like them or hang around where they do, you should be OK.

Another note, as I'm originally from Edmonton and know there are a lot of Ukrainian descended people there. If you have Ukrainian heritage and are thinking about coming to the Czech Republic, you won't want to advertise that heritage too overtly. Ukrainians aren't exactly popular here. A lot of them come here and have mafia connections back home and so give Ukrainians a rather undeserved reputation for corruption in this country.

There is a high demand for business English in the Czech Republic, particularly in Prague and Brno. A few other towns that are large enough to support language schools are: Ceske Budejovice, Liberec, Olomouc, Ostrava, Zlin, Pilsen, Karlovy Vary, Pardubice and Hradec Kralove.

The demand for English teachers is high enough that you stand almost no chance of getting a teaching job in the country if you don't come here in person. Even if you apply for a job from home, the school will want you to come in and give an on site demo lesson before deciding to hire you. I tried finding work in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland while I was still in Canada. After about six months of such searching and realising that I would not be able to get a job without going over there to give demo lessons and that there was no way I could compete with the foreigners that were already over there pounding the pavement, I decided that I had to take the chance and go over there myself.

Also, you can't apply for a working visa if you don't have an employer. Your employer must apply to the local labour office for your work permit, which is a vital document to your visa application.

The visa process itself can be tricky the first time as the visa application form is about six pages long and you can't apply for a visa inside the Czech Republic itself. You have to do it through a Czech embassy or consulate outside the Schengen Region. If you're already in Europe, the closest non- Schengen countries are Switzerland, Great Britain or Ireland.

The visa process takes three to four months and, technically, it is illegal for you to work while the visa is in processing. However, most employers will not be willing to hire you and then not use you for that period of time so there are ways that they can get you working right away and still have it look legal.

Unfortunately, there is little incentive for people in official offices to speak any other language than Czech. It's been explained to me that it is explicitly against government regulations for them to do so. Any good language school will help you navigate the various offices.

For anyone thinking about the Czech Republic, I recommend the following website:

www.expats.cz

Its a wealth of information and articles about all aspects of living here and it has a forum where you can ask more exact questions to some very experienced expats.

I know I've said some negative stuff here, the Czechs could give master classes on bureaucracy, but I'm not trying to put anyone off coming here. It's been a very rewarding experience for me and next year I will be able to apply for permanent residency here.

It has been very frustrating at times, even brought me to tears a couple of times, but I still have no regrets.

Thank you again for your posting, Kevan.
If you know schools which would like to post a job on our website please forward the following link.


http://www.globaltesol.com/jobs/post



For more information contact:
Global TESOL College
www.globaltesol.com
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Toll Free: 1.888.270.2941
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Email: admin@globaltesol.com

Another Edmontonian here! I went a bit further east than Kevan and ended up in Istanbul! I love the city, will be going back but working for EF. I'll tell you about the school I worked for last year but first I want to talk about Istanbul so it's clear that my experience with the CITY and the PEOPLE were wonderful, the school just sucked. Contrary to what the news is, Istanbul is a friendly city, quite easy to navigate (I didn't speak a word of Turkish!), cheap to live in and has something for everyone. While most of the people are Muslim, it's not the strict, opressive society that westerners think it is. Winter lasted four days! You can imagine that THIS Albertan laughed that the schools were closed for the snow!

Istanbul is also a great springboard city to travel elsewhere from. Along with exploring SW Turkey in January, I also popped in to visit a friend in Sofia, Bulgaria for a weekend and a few days to visit family in Glasgow.

As a single woman, I am treated with respect when I go out and I don't feel uneasy anywhere.

There are various churches for those who are inclined and Taksim is alive with clubs, bars, restaurants and shopping. The Turkish baths (hamam) are to be experienced! Ahhhh!

I love it there. The school...however...

From last Oct to this June, I worked for Doga Koleji. I wasn't impressed by them. Nobody was in charge, the co-ordinator was USELESS and pass-the-buck was the catchphrase. The administration didn't speak English!

Before I even left Edmonton I explained to this co=ordinator (I believe there's a new one now) that when I went to Ethiopia, they stuck me in a house with 6 people who smoked and grew pot in the yard and I want to be guaranteed a female, non-smoking roommate. I got a fine roommate when I got there...for a month. Then they tried to shuffle the rooming around and put me in with a man. when that didn't go over, they moved me in with a smoker. Then they moved another smoker in there. (I made the school buy me an air purifier for my room.) So I spent most of the time stuffed up, wheezing and my sinuses will never be the same. I also had a medical emergency and told this co-ordinator that I needed to go to a clinic NOW (I found a lump in my breast - it wasn't a convenient time/place to tell her the problem but I was shaken and upset when I was talking to her)...she hemmed and hawed and said "what are you doing on Wednesday?" (this was on a Monday.)

The school has NO direction. It is a VERY unsafe establishment (building materials left all over the place, they spray pesticides when the kids are outside for lunch, they have little rivers and ponds with no railings around them) and there is NO discipline as far as the kids go. Their excuse is that the parents pay a lot of money to put the kids in the school so they don't want to make them mad.

Oh yeah, and the report cards are a joke. Everyone has to at least get a 'good'. They can't have 'needs assistance' (even though it's on the report card). I had one girl who couldn't take her coat and hat off without help, couldn't change out of her gym clothes without help. I marked 'needs assistance' and the principal said that I couldn't do that. Had to put at least 'good'. (I asked her why we didn't just fill them all in at the beginning of the year then.)

Doga doesn't care if it's right or wrong, just as long as it looks good.

So, the school sucked but Istanbul is a fun city and the locals (plus, likely your Turkish teaching partners) are very helpful. (But watch out for the carpet salesmen in Sultanahmet! They'll annoy the heck out of you.)

This coming year I'll be working at EF, hopefully it'll be a lot better.

Great story Cijay.

I had a colleague at one of my previous schools here in Brno who had spent 8 years in Turkey working for IH and loved every minute of it.

My understanding of Turkey, is that the further east in the country you travel, the more dangerous and unpredictable it gets. If you stay in Istanbul and other points in the more European influenced western part of the country, its perfectly safe.

You can get bad schools anywhere, I've worked for a couple of not so good ones in Brno.

Thanks for posting your experiences.

I've come to the conclusion that the 'good schools' are rare. That'll be tested at the EF I'm going to but maybe I had too high of expectations about the schools themselves. Doga expects you to immerse in the (our campus was BEAUTIFUL! Horses, petting zoo, swimming pools etc) job and they work the Turkish teachers VERY VERY hard.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that one of my little boys (just turned five) whose mother worked at the school was almost 'forgotten' at the end of the day. When I asked which bus to take him to so I could personally deliver him to the bus from here on in they said "he doesn't get on a regular bus, people just walk around the buses 'til they find someone who is going to his area." (everyone knew him and where he lived.) I swear, I could have taken him home, fed him, put him to bed and brought him back the next morning and they wouldn't have been any the wiser. I should have because he was just heartbroken that he'd been forgotten. I shed some tears that night too.