Usefulness of teaching English in India?

December 9, 2007 10:21 AM

How useful is teaching English abroad (India) ?

Hey people!

I'm halfway to India at the moment and I have the idea that when I get there I'd like to find a school and teach English as a foreign language, preferrably in a small town. I would be willing to stay for 9-12 months.

Unfortunately I won't have any money to support myself when I eventually get there.

So, should I expect a school to be willing to provide me with food and accomodation (maybe with a local family)?

Am I misguided and expecting too much? Is it worth a small village school supporting an English teacher? Should I have saved money in England and taught on a truly volunteer basis?

I know India teaches in English anyway, so maybe I'm not nearly as useful (valuable) as I'd be in South-East Asia.

Any thoughts much appreciated...

(Graduate with a weekend TEFL certificate and no experience)

posted by RufusW to grab bag (5 comments total)

I have absolutely no hard evidence to support my position, but I was born in Mumbai (went for several years to a British starting school there), then with my family, moved to the US when I was 5. I'm going back there later this month with my non-Indian wife... and we both feel that having a westerner teach English would be seen as a "hot commodity." I was taught English by Indians, and that's well and good, but getting the nuances of the language from a non-Indian would give so much more to the children. Additionally, I don't know what the teacher situation is in India... Is there a shortage, is there demand, especially in small [rural] towns?

Good luck!
posted by lonemantis at 10:57 AM on December 9, 2007

First:

- How much money do you think you'll have when you get to India?
- How much money are you expecting to make?

Your first stop after you answer these should probably be Wikipedia to get a good idea of what the education system is like and where you'll fit in it. I wonder if advertising yourself as a freelance private/exams tutor would bring in more money for less work.

However, at the very least, you'll almost certainly have to set yourself up with a computer, access to photocopying, a business-casual wardrobe, your qualifications in a verifiable format for prospective clients, a mobile phone, somewhere to do your work, a way to get there, a place to live...and perhaps learn how to do/obtain these things in a language other than English, depending on where you go. Also keep in mind that you might be breaking a few laws about who is and is not permitted to work in the country, so being in a small town might not be to your advantage if you're looking to dodge attention from authorities.

Finally, not to completely crush your dream or something, but I've taught English at private schools in Latvia and Indonesia, and I have to say that even with reputable bosses, legal visas, a full library of materials, a photocopier (free copies!), and my own classroom, the job is quite a challenge. I earn a pretty good local wage and have a free apartment, but that's because I'm working full-time, a good 40 hours a week (20 of those actually in a classroom, the other 20 marking exams, planning lessons, attending meetings, doing admin tasks, keeping my class organized, creating materials, etc.) with relatively little vacation (two weeks at Christmas, one week at Easter, national holidays), and often late into the night - some days I'm actually in the school building for 10 or 11 hours. No offense, but it is really not a softball profession for vacationers, and I wonder how easy it would be to freelance if you don't have a local base of clients established until, say, three or four months in.

Now, the case may be that there are hundreds of parents in every neighborhood in the country waiting for someone like you to come along and help their child ace the next exam, but what after that? Even with my full-time job, I'm only on a 9-month contract, after which

I'll end this rather pessimistic answer with a suggestion: keep going through India to Thailand, where the Ministry of Education mandates that foreign English teachers must have a bachelor's degree (which you've got) to work legally, which cuts down on non-professionals taking jobs from more qualified folks and keeps quality high in the marketplace; while salaries may not be incredibly high, you're living in Thailand, which is awesome! Furthermore: it's worth investing in a CELTA if you can; the experience is totally worth the money, and it's basically the baseline qualification that most reputable schools look for when hiring people. Here's the official list of places to do it in Thailand; if the link doesn't work, go to this site and look manually.
posted by mdonley at 12:10 PM on December 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

Whoops!

Even with my full-time job, I'm only on a 9-month contract, after which I can either choose to reapply and start work again in the autumn - meaning no work and no legal residency here in Latvia in the summer, which gets expensive if you choose to go home and risks deportation if you try to stay.
posted by mdonley at 12:14 PM on December 9, 2007

I don't have any first-hand India experience, except for some cursory job-searching I did for myself in that region.

The best ways I know to find out about ESL opportunities both appear to have nothing on India. I'm not sure if that means that there's not a lot of jobs or there are a lot of jobs but no interest. I'd tend to imagine that if there were a lot of jobs, there would be postings for them somewhere on the internet (but I can't find any; just a couple at sketchy looking websites I found on googling). The websites I tend to trust on these things are Dave's ESL Cafe and Transitions Abroad.

As for small villages. In general, teaching English in small villages is much harder anywhere in the world. Finding a small village or even small town that can support the salary of an English teacher is difficult. I've met a couple of people here in Mexico who worked in smaller towns but they invariably worked for a really awful boss who stole from their already incredibly meager pay. In bigger cities, even ones that aren't too too big, you have a much greater likelihood of finding a school that is not awful and that will not abuse you and that is actually hiring.

I hope you're able to get a response from someone actually teaching English in India. I'd be glad to know myself. You could try a posting to the General Asia Forum on Dave's ESL.
posted by mosessis at 2:22 PM on December 9, 2007

I've done gone and did a search on India in the General Asia Forum at Dave's. Most of them are pretty outdated (like 2005ish), but possibly still relevant.

Northern Indian job possibilities

Question about salary, indicating that most English teaching jobs there are in call centres (which is definitely a possibility for you, but would probably be in a bigger city).

2004 thread saying there are good job opportunities, mostly in call centre "accent reduction" work

I'll just add that I wouldn't be too put off to see that most work is in industrial cities with call centres. ESL teaching jobs are often a sight less glamorous than most people imagine, but in my opinion it's still completely worth it. You would be living in India, working with people from India. That's not so bad, right? Even if it's not working in a rural setting, it's still a completely different and much more Indian experience than working in England.

Good luck!
posted by mosessis at 2:35 PM on December 9, 2007