Having personal travel experience can be crucial in a career in international education. Where was your first travel experience and how has it left a lasting impact on you?
We didn’t travel much when I was a kid, so my first travel experiences were in the back of a station wagon that was always “going to turn right around and go home if you kids don’t stop arguing, keep your hands to yourself!”.
I can remember being very young and driving to our family house at the beach. There was something about it that felt like I was going into a dream or another world. Like it was a familiar place but it wasn’t really home.
Travelling as an adult, I have had similar feelings. One of my favorite things about traveling now is still linked to my imagination. When I finally see a place in real life that I have only ever seen in photos, it’s like I am alive in my own dream.
Jos with a high school EFL class.
What inspired you to co-found TEFLPros?
I knew that there was more I could do to help. If I just teach English, I can help a few people. Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching — but if I can build an education platform to train teachers, I can help a LOT more.
I am truly passionate about education and how important it is for teachers to have proper training, and the new teachers at the school I was teaching at with online certifications had practically none.
Just because you get training online doesn’t mean it has to be inferior. In fact, there are lots of advantages to an online course. For example, you can rewatch things, you can work when you are totally focused and ready, it’s available to everyone who has internet no matter where they live, and it’s more affordable.
Now, the battle we fight is dispelling the myth that all online courses are created equal. They simply aren’t.
English teachers with the U.S. Ambassador to Thailand.
Why should a potential participant choose TEFLPros?
I could go on and on, but I think I will defer to what the students tell us about why they chose TEFLPros, instead of the reasons why I think people should choose us.
First of all, we have unmatched support; in fact, we have won awards for it. It’s very important to us to make our new teachers feel like they have someone they can ask questions to. We were both beginners once too and we both said one of the things we wish we had was someone to ask a question to or get some kind of guidance from.
So, we aim to be a company who understands that this is a big decision, a huge decision, which means you might need a real person to be there for you.
Second, we believe all kids deserve a well-trained teacher. Whether you are volunteering, teaching online, working for peanuts in a very impoverished place, or making big money at an international school, education is a great equalizer.
Kids (and adults, frankly) deserve to have a teacher who can plan a proper lesson, manage a classroom, answer basic grammar questions, etc. We focus 100% of our efforts on making our 120-hour course the best possible training on the market, and the graduate ratings are in — we did it.
Third, we aren’t a nameless, faceless TEFL giant. We literally put our faces on what we offer because we stand by the quality of the course. We want the course and our dealings to be transparent and genuine in an industry that has a reputation for being scammy.
We also want our students to feel the consistency of having real teachers throughout the whole course. It’s funny — I was out to dinner in Bangkok a few months ago and a woman came up to me and said, “Are you Jos?”; she recognized my voice from the course (I guess I must have been talking loudly!). We had a great chat about her new job and how much she loved the course. Moments like those are really cool.
Lastly, if you have the time, don’t just take my word for it — read what our grads have to say! They are the ones who have diverse backgrounds and opinions and have absolutely nothing to gain from posting a review. We are rated a 9.9/10.
Jos teaching in Cameroon.
Describe the characteristics of an ideal participant.
The ideal participant is someone who understands that speaking English and teaching English are not the same thing, and therefore good training is important. Even if they don’t know how to teach yet, there is a big difference between someone who values proper training and someone who doesn’t. And the thing is, if you have proper training, it is only going to make your experience better in the long run — emotionally, financially, and professionally.
What is your best piece of advice for a prospective participant?
Being a teacher does not mean laying in a hammock, drinking out of a coconut, and taking awesome selfies. While that can definitely be part of the travel element of teaching abroad, that’s not a normal day for a teacher.
Here was my normal day: Wake up, get ready for work, battle traffic and rush hour crowds to get to my office, work for 6 hours straight, teach some private lessons, battle traffic again, eat, sleep. Sounds like what you may be trying to escape right?
BUT the difference is, during those teaching hours, I was doing something meaningful, helping people every single minute. I often left class happier than when I entered it. Be realistic; teaching is hard work but it pays off in ways that no other profession can.
And your weekends and days off can be filled with some of the most incredible travels you will ever experience. Bali for a long weekend? Yes please.
What do you hope participants take away from your programs?
I hope they take away a sense of feeling really prepared to enter the classroom. Even after teaching for nearly a decade, I still get a little nervous before every class because you never know what’s going to happen in there.
But what I do know is that I have the proper training and mindset to handle whatever comes my way. The unpredictability doesn’t have to be paralyzing; it’s part of the fun IF you are prepared.
If you are not prepared, it quickly becomes a nightmare. We want our grads to feel like they can handle anything.
Jos with a fun English class!
What questions do participants often ask you, and how do you typically respond?
Q: Why don’t you have a bonus module for business English or young learners or private students?
A: A proper TEFL course should prepare you to teach any of these groups. We don’t believe in upselling you something that we should be teaching you how to do anyway. One of the skills a teacher must learn is how to adapt their lessons to different classes. This is something we go into great detail about on the course.
Q: Can I use this certificate to teach online? Why don’t you have an online teaching module?
A: Absolutely! TEFLPros is accredited globally and can be used at any online company or in-person school that requires a TEFL certification. Back to the previous question, we prepare you to teach any kind of lesson.
Plus, the online platforms all have their own systems that they will train you on so a one-size-fits-all module would be quite useless. Instead, we partner with real teachers who specialize on different platforms who can walk you through the unique process for each company.
Q: Do you provide job assistance?
A: Yes we do. The best job assistance we can provide is making you fully prepared to ace the interview and pass your probation period. The course includes an interview and resume guide that will walk you through the general process.
From there, it’s up to you about how much or how little support you want. Some people are happy to get their certificate and go on their way, while other people prefer more support. We base each case on what your goals are and advise you and provide you resources to get that dream job.
In the end, if our grads aren’t working, it hurts TEFLPros, so it’s in our best interest to help you get a job — but not just any job, something that you ACTUALLY are excited about. We have also won awards for our job assistance because it is so personalized. I have even sat down in Bangkok to have coffee with grads and talk them through interviews! I love it.
Q: Do you offer a practical component?
A: We get this question a lot actually and it makes me a bit crazy because the promise from other online courses of an in-person component can be quite misleading. I always advise people to read the fine print on that.
On the pre-sale page, some TEFL courses will say “We will send you to a local school to teach”. But in the fine print, it basically absolves them of this promise unless you happen to be in one of their specified locations where they have contacts.
Even if you are in one of their special locations, they sometimes have trouble following through simply because of logistics. Plus, they can’t possibly cater to the location of everyone in the world, varying schedules, etc., so this is often an empty promise. Most students don’t read the fine print (I surely didn’t when I took my course) and so they are commonly left high and dry in this area.
TEFLPros took a very different approach to this because we firmly believe that new teachers need to observe, period. We included 18 real classes (recorded) as part of the course. So, no matter what, EVERYONE who takes our course has observed classes, not just the people in special locations who have matching schedules.
Not only that, we have 18 hours of observation — not just 3 or 4. You can put on your resume that you have observation hours. These are real classes, not staged. You observe them and reflect just as you would do in person, but you can do it from home.
This ensures the quality of our graduates because everyone has a significant number of observation hours under their belt. We also require our grads to submit several lesson plans (which we guide you through how to do) then give one-on-one feedback for each one.
You can use the plans in real classes, send them to prospective employers, or bring them on your interviews to show that you know what you’re doing.
What hopes do you have for the future for your organization?
I hope that TEFLPros can offer more consultative services in the future. As I mentioned, two of the things that set us apart are our commitment to quality and our level of support, which I believe both lend themselves well to consultative endeavors. I also hope that we will be able to publish more books and materials for EFL professionals.
