Well, after reading my last blog post I could feel the negative energy flowing from the page so I decided to write again to counter that with something positive.
Although still uncertain where my future will lead me, I have taken some steps to occupy my time and also try to improve my chances of getting work. I have taken courses, some free and some not, to try to sweeten the deal should someone wish to take a chance on me. In the field of community development, I took an awesome e-learning course given by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Managing Gender-based Violence Programs in Emergencies. It was not only an interesting and easy to follow course, it was extremely informative and eye-opening. I recommend it to everyone. Here is the link so do not hesitate to check it out. https://extranet.unfpa.org/Apps/GBVinEmergencies/index.html
The next course I took was an online TEFL/TESOL certificate course. I have been on the fence for years about this type of learning and have done a lot of research on it. I found that there are so many websites offering these courses and the only difference I could find was the price. I thought that because I already worked for 3 years as an ESL/TEFL teacher I could easily fall back on teaching English if nothing turned up for me elsewhere but the truth of the matter is that 99% of these openings require a certificate! So, I started to research online programs again and came away just as confused as always....which course, how many hours, how much money....it made me nuts! I decided to go the cheapest route possible and put "Cheap TEFL courses" into a search engine and lo and behold, I found myself with something I had not expected at all....a Groupon! For $69 I could get myself a 160 hour TEFL course...$69!! Before swallowing this however, I needed to do some more research into it as I didn't want to walk into a scam. I found everything I needed to know on the Lonely Planet website. For over an hour a read an on-going message board about this course. I found that there was 1 negative guy, 1 idiot (this person claimed that the site was poor because of all the spelling errors...what I found was that it was British English and absolutely correct by their standards) and all the rest of the people chiming in had nothing but positive things to say about it. In particular, one woman was a long-time teacher who was moving to another country and thought she could teach English as a way to supplement her income. Her comments were positive, upbeat, and she really liked the course and this impressed me the most, being a teacher myself. I took the bait, took the course, and got my certificate...in 2 weeks! I have to tell you that it was not as easy as I thought it would be. I figured since I was already an experienced TEFL teacher, it would be a breeze. Not even close. So, I did get through it and am pleased and happy, because now I can begin looking for a teaching job overseas.
For the Groupon: http://www.groupon.com/browse/chicago?lat=41.8781136&lng=-87.62979819999998&address=Chicago,+IL,+USA&query=TEFL+course&locale=en_US
For the course: http://www.tesolexpressonline.com/
So, that's that. I have a back up plan and I feel much better now.
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