Should I get TESOL/CELTA Teaching English Qualification?

[njmac]

cloudberry - that's a shame. Exactly what I wanted to avoid. Not a bad idea on the freelance Business Analyst thing though. Do you have any kind of trade to fall back on? Where are you by the way?

Brengun - That's always the big question eh? For us it's about eating away at the money from our house sale and relying on the generous nature of my in laws until we've eaten them out of house and home

[Rosamunda]

Probably a wise move. I spent (wasted?) AU$2,500 on a TESOL qualification last year and it's highly unlikely I'll be able to secure teaching work in Finland given the large amount of competition and small amount of available posts. Maybe you can put up a website and do some freelance (business analyst) work remotely? Keep us posted and good luck

I don't think that "education" is ever a waste of money. Even if you never teach EFL, you will have learnt something on that course and you never know when it might be useful. It is easy to combine teaching languages with other jobs (I have three other sources of income apart from my teaching and none of those is the state). There are no "available posts" because that is not how teaching works here. When you work freelance you can get work from several different language schools, and some months you have too much and others are dire. You just have to be flexible and learn to manage your timetable effectively. And as Bubba suggests, once you get started (and if the feedback is good) the work gradually starts rolling in. The teachers with no work at the moment are the ones who either are not qualified, are not experienced, have no professional background (ie no niche) or have flu. I have had less teaching work in the last few weeks but I have been busy with exam work and also translations. Now the teaching seems to be pickin up again and I even have bookings for January already.

[njmac]

I'd totally agree that education is never wasted. The problem seems to be short term benefit just now and it's lack of experience that would concern me. Although in my case I had a court case (as a witness) and a few things that filled my time so completely before I left that I would have managed a weekend course in flower arranging before I left.