Why you want to be a TESOL English teacher（Part2.）

Before quitting your current job for an TESOL career, take a long hard look at your motivations for wanting to teach English. Are you disgruntled with the rat-race? Is teaching English the only way you can travel? When all is said and done, teaching English is still a job with a boss, supervisors, clients, a job description and performance appraisals. Unless you love the language and dealing with all sorts of people, teaching can quickly become a chore. ELT is a business like any other, and students are clients with expectations and complaints.

Be Realistic

In spite of what you might have heard, there are no big bucks in ELT, at least, not for most teachers. While some native-speaker teachers have landed fantastic packages in Korea, Japan and the Middle East, these jobs are not that easy to find. In countries where English is not widely spoken, English teachers can make a good living, but their salaries are still incomparable to those in more lucrative industries such as law and finance. It's also unfortunate, but expected, that hiring practices in ELT are driven by client preferences. This means that native speaker teachers always get the pick of the jobs. Often, it is not enough to be a native speaker; you have to look like one. If you don't have blonde hair and blue eyes, don't give up though. With so many excellent non-native ELT professionals out there, mindsets are changing. Being the best teacher you can be, no matter what your first language, is the only way to overcome this challenge.

What is your personality type?

It sounds pretty obvious, but it really must be said: to be a good teacher, you have to respect other people and enjoy their company. There are too many examples of technically competent teachers who constantly run into problems with students because of personality issues. If you are rigid and lack empathy, you might want to consider another career. Students WILL be lazy at times; students WON'T always do exactly as you say; students WILL question you. If you can't deal with that, you won't get very far in your teaching career.

All caveats aside, teaching English is an extremely rewarding career which can take you around the world. Teaching is also extremely flexible since you can choose to work part-time or full-time, and you can also choose to teach different age-groups and language components. If you have a love for language and a realistic idea about what teaching entails, taking on some part-time hours might be a good way to find out for yourself, before you make a permanent switch.