(upbeat music)
- Good morning from Toulouse, France.
My name is Amanda, I'm in my early 40's,
I am from the state of Maine and I am here in Toulouse
attending my TEFL certification through
one of ITA's partner schools, TEFL Toulouse.
I chose the in-person certification
over the online certification because I wanted
the interaction with the instructors in person
and the feedback from the other students in the class.
I also don't live in an area where it's easy to find
English learners so that was a consideration.
We're jut about to finish our second week
of our four week class.
It is just shy of 8:30 in the morning
so I'm headed out to the school right now.
I'm gonna take you on my walk to school
and tell you a little bit about a typical day
in the life of a TEFL Toulouse student,
so come along.
(upbeat guitar music)
So just across the street from the school
we have the Jardin (mumbles) which is a park
that's full of different types of shrubs,
trees, bushes, plants, all labeled.
There's also ducks and chickens roaming around,
little food stands, there is playgrounds and activities
and a museum for kids.
So it's just about 9 o'clock in the morning.
It's already about 72 degrees here.
Typically most days we get up into the low 90's
with 70 or 80% humidity.
Coming from a northern tiered state
this has definitely been one of the hardest things
to get used to.
There is no accommodation included at the school
but they have a list of landlords
that will take their students for about a month at a time
so I paid about 510 euros for the month.
I'm staying with an older retired woman.
It's about a 25 minute walk from school.
There are seven students in our class this month,
two American's including me, two British natives,
and three people from France.
It's a good mix of people.
We also have primarily British instructors,
we do have one woman from Canada, one man from Greece,
but primarily British instructors.
On a typical day I get up at about 7:30 in the morning.
I'm usually ready to go by about 8:30,
I give myself about half an hour or so for the walk.
Class starts at 9:30 and runs until 7:00 p.m. most days
so it's about a 10 hour day
but I like to be here nice and early.
Our morning session starts at 9:30 each day.
We have two teaching sessions or theories
separated by about a 15 minute break.
We then have just about an hour and 15 minutes for lunch
midday and then our afternoon is filled
with lesson planning or teaching.
We have about five to 10 local students
that come in for reduced price English instruction.
There are about eight different training sessions per week
that they can come to and they can pick and choose
what they wanna come to, anything
from pre-intermediate level to upper-intermediate level.
We have to teach six hours of lessons while we're here
in addition to preparing a one-on-one lesson plan
for one student so we generally teach
two pre-intermediate, two intermediate,
and two upper-intermediate classes.
While we're here we also have to create the lesson plans
and organize activities for those.
So our classroom here consists of
two different teaching classrooms,
there's a computer room that we can use
that has laptops and desktops, there's kind of
a relaxation room that the students can wait in
and we have a little kitchenette
with a refrigerator and a microwave
so we can bring lunch with us if we want to.
There are multiple shops and restaurants
within about 10 minutes walking distance
from the school that you can go to to get lunch
if you don't wanna bring lunch with you.
It can get expensive or it can get timely.
It also is pretty hot in the middle of the day
so sometimes you don't wanna go out and get lunch
but you do have options.
Once you get out of the first week of training
you actually have afternoons a little bit more free
if you're not teaching that day
or don't need any lesson planning help,
you don't have to stay at school after lunch
so that is a nice option to your day.
So it's just about 9:30.
I'm gonna head into class, we're gonna start
theory in a few minutes.
I'm here all day so if you have any questions
please feel free to send them to me
at my link below or you can send them
to the International TEFL Academy
and I will try to answer them for you later.
- Hey everyone, my name's Grant Shabelluh,
I'm from Raleigh, North Carolina and I'm 23 years old
and I chose to do ITA with TEFL Toulouse
'cause I wanted to travel and see the world
so I am here for a month and then
I'm heading to Prague for the year to teach.
- Hello, my name is Mellie, I'm 34 years old
and I come from (mumbles) a small city
in the north of Spain and I'm been living in Toulouse
for about two years now so this is why I chose
TEFL course, the TEFL course here in Toulouse.
And I just wanted to find like an insight on teaching.
I wanted to learn more techniques and maybe
some different ways of teaching all those students
so that's why I thought that the TEFL course
would be a good idea.
(car engines roaring)
(background talking)
- So I'm home from school for the day.
Today was an early day for me
because I don't teach anything
so we have the time off that we can do lesson planning
or other things that we need to do around the city.
We do have time at school that we can get help
with lesson planning and we have resources there
that we can use as well.
Since we teach a total of six hours
over the course of the four weeks
we have two weeks where we teach one, one hour lesson
and we have two weeks where we teach two, two hour lessons.
I taught my two lessons this week on Monday and Wednesday
so that gives me a little bit of down time
but I teach two lessons again next week.
Resources available at the school
to help us plan our lessons are a copier/printer,
computers, student books, teacher reference manuals,
other visuals and one to two instructors
each afternoon that will help us out.
I came to France with the intention of living here
for sometime so I obtained
a visa before I left the United States.
It is a long-stay tourist visa
which doesn't enable me to work
so I'm currently looking for a university program
that I can take so I can go back to the United States
and get a student visa which will allow me to work.
As far as what I wish I'd known before I came
I do wish I had given myself a few days
before class started just 'cause we're so busy
during the day and during the week
makes it a little hard to get things setup
like a bank account, get transportation passes,
learn the lay of the land, so I do wish
I'd come a bit earlier.
We have a grammar exam in the morning
so I'm gonna go ahead and go study for that
but if you have any questions
please feel free to send them.
You can send them to my own Instagram
@ExpatMaineiac or you can send them here
to the ITA Instagram and I will answer those for you
before I sign off in a few hours.