Teacher Training

Ok, you’ve probably found yourself a job or you have been looking and now you want to know about training?  Do you need any experience to teach?  Do schools train you or help you in anyway.  The majority of teaching work in Taiwan requires no experience and training is usually provided.

If you don’t have any experience teaching before don’t worry.  Schools primarily target university graduates who they know have no experience in teaching.  Why do they do this?  Simply because it makes it easy for them to “train” teachers to use their materials and teaching style in class.  This only applies for the cram schools throughout Taiwan.  If you are looking at working public schools or a university, obviously they would prefer you have some kind of experience.

How much training a school provides you really does vary.  Some of the bigger “chain” schools will provide up to several weeks of intensive daily training.  This can run from 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday.  It can be tiring but if you have never taught before you’ll get to know all the ins and outs of how to teach English at that school.  Some schools won’t provide any or only one day of training.  This kind of attitude shows you that cram schools aren’t too concerned with education and are just happy to have a foreign English speaking person in classes to keep parents happy.

You may also find that your school has follow up training.  This, once again, is usually the case at the bigger schools and you’ll go off to training workshops once every three to six months.  These are usually just for a couple of hours a day and are typically held in the morning so you don’t miss evenings classes.  Not all schools have follow up training but if you are concerned about your lack of experience teaching and want to do the best job you possibly can, then you might want to consider applying for positions where you know the schools offer ongoing training to help you be a better teacher.