How the Covid-19 Pandemic has Changed TEFL
In a post-pandemic world, the education world has shifted to more remotely friendly environments.
When I was teaching, it was hard to find jobs teaching remotely. Not only that the resources for remote teaching were sparse. I used a lot of Skype (yes, I’m dating myself here) and it was ultimately limited to certain countries.
With covid restrictions, we are looking at a world where you can teach remotely from almost anywhere.
This is a double-edged sword. While you can now teach from anywhere, this means that your competition just got a whole bigger too. Now someone on the other side of the world can compete for the same teaching job as you. Even worse, they can do it at a cheaper price if they see the value.
For TEFL teachers, this poses an interesting problem. While you can still physically go to Asia to teach English, it’s no longer a necessity. You can simply stay where you are now and start gathering a client list of Asian students…without having to go abroad.
The choice ultimately is yours on what to do. No one knows how to function in this new post-Covid world quite yet.
However, for me, there is still something to getting credentialed in the country that you will be teaching in. It’s hard to understand and learn a culture remotely. It’s much better for immersion to still go about teaching English the old-fashioned way.
