Where do I start?

Teaching English abroad can be a great way to enhance your career, study a language and culture, or fund international travels. But beware that when you extend your job hunt beyond national borders, the process becomes far more complex. There are a lot more options, many of which can be hard to investigate from afar. You can’t see your future neighborhood or workplace, and it’s unlikely you’ll be able to meet your employer face-to-face.

Fortunately, a world increasingly connected by the Internet and other sharing technologies makes international job hunts a lot less intimidating.

There are forums like Dave’s ESL Cafe where ESL and EFL teachers share knowledge, experiences and ideas.

There are blogs like ESL Lesson Plan with everything from ideas for classroom activities to discussions of possible workplace issues.

There are even websites for online TEFL certification like i-to-i and Bridge-Linguatec that sidestep the hefty tuitions and geographic limitations of onsite programs.

And international job listings are more accessible than ever before, with newspapers like El Dia offering online classifieds and career sites like Monster: Global Gateway that allow you to search jobs worldwide.

But, despite the unlimited access to all these resources and more, the TEFL scene can still feel completely overwhelming. This blog will attempt to bring all those excellent resources together into a single and more manageable resource—a launching pad for aspiring EFL teachers such as myself. I will aim to show how the Internet and technology don’t have to complicate the process. Rather, they can make the international job hunt easier by providing a means for quick and simple communication between countries and by providing international resources that would otherwise be inaccessible.