While living abroad for few years now, and trying to move up the teaching ladder, fine tune my teaching and speaking skills. No one will deny when you’re trying to make an ESL teaching career abroad , if you’re South Asian who grew up with English, but have that flat native speech sounds, stretches and pauses that come with it the world will look down on you. The other half truth being , the recruiters would suddenly put on the tag “We’re Racist” and obviously rule your application out just because you’re Indian.
Generally speaking, if your CV has been worked on splendidly well using an updated canva.com frames and makes a great first impression to your recruiters and you outsmarted them by hiding your nationality. You’ve a chance to get an interview call if you’re sending teaching applications for other countries. However, unless you’ve a decent neutral accent, or the one that of Shashi Tharoor or the BBC news readers. Surely, you’re just a dime a dozen.
What these teaching agencies do not disclose while selling their teaching certifications in India are the facts about the suffering and constant stress that’s going to come with it, while you stay unemployed. If you’re taking this career forward in a light that you want to travel the world, and teach at the same time. They don’t tell there are thousands of others who pursue these qualifications with you, who are natives and will obviously be picked for the job . You may have to face harsher circumstances than an engineer would.
Sure, these hefty teaching English certificates are internationally recognised qualification. It gives you confidence and effective toolkit when you stand in the classroom full of foreign learners who know few words of English. It’s going to do wonders for your students , if you’re pursuing this career to teach in your home country as you already know the work culture.
This is a wake up call for the Middle-easterns, Arabs , Asians or Balkans that these certificates won’t do wonders for you, least of all make you earn equally well. What’s more important these days is what passport you hold for a career like this. If you shook yourself out of your comfort zone, and took an education degree from Europe or from one of the native English speaking countries.
Teaching career abroad comes at a huge cost. One of the truths being, if an employer is hiring you, he sees that you got one of the criterion met with these teaching english license, and with some relevant teaching experience. Whatsoever, you won’t be paid at par. Unfortunately, the truth of the day is you’d still be hired cos’ you’ll cost them low.
Sure, if you’re a warrior enough as I’m. If you don’t easily give up and are willing to work on yourself, compromise your comfort zone, shed off your native Indian english accent and know few other languages.
You may go places! 😉
*P.S the opinions are totally based on the real life experiences of the author of the article and doesn’t support or reject any sort of education .*
Empty Barrels: By Divya Kukreja 
Dear Divya,
I just wanted to say that you write very nice posts. You have brought up a very important issue in this post. Many of us are not aware of such issues. I understand that the life of an Indian working abroad can be hard. There will always be some struggle along the line. But as you said, if we don’t give up and improve ourselves, things will turn out well. I wish you very best with your efforts. I too write blogs (mostly poems in Hindi) and enjoy reading nice blogs of people like you.
Abhijeet
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