Looking for English Language schools in Katowice

Hello.

I am a native english speaker looking to move to Katowice as soon as possible! I have applied to a few schools to be an English teacher but I know that there are still a lot more that I do not know about yet.

Does anyone know if there is a list, maybe on a website with all language schools in Katowice?
Preferably in English, my Polish is not that great just yet.

Thanks for any help :)

What if they all accept your application? :) Maybe it will be worth waiting a bit...

HeHe I wouldn't mind that! I need to get there soon so I just need to apply to all the schools I can and take the best/first one that will have me :)

Hi,

how's your search going?

I'm looking for a similiar role but am happy to wait for the right oppourtunity.

regards
Marek

Try this: ang.pl/szkoly_jezykowe.php?mid=5

Try:

Top English School, Katowice.
They have 5 schools in the area: Katowice, Chorzów, Sosnowiec, Zabrze & Tychy.

I quit my job there b4 Xmas, 1 of my mates quit yesterday and my other mate is leaving at the end on January.

Do you have any qualifications?

TEFL/CELTA/DELTA/TESOL etc???

If not it might be impossible to get a job.

Good luck :)

Isn't Top English School a callan school? Its listed on the callan website, if it is then you don't need any qualifictions to work there

It is a Callan school I woked there for a while its a great stepping stone to better schools.
They will hire you black but the boss will keep some of your pay. All the Native speakers quit due to the boss when I worked there in Katowice. The boss in Chojow(SP?) just north of Katowice is awesome. Also try Empik I loved working there on 3-go maja just across form the train station.

The boss took your money? How the hell does that work? How much was the pay per hour then?

why the heck would you recommend a place you and your friend quit?

Honestly man, school management in the kato area have their collective head up their collective arse. it might be easier to ask which schools to avoid. I know, bubbling with optimism, i am.

I worked for Top English for a year, it wasnt bad, but you were treated like a piece of the machine rather than a teacher.

They paid me 40 pln an hour. Took my money isn't exactly accurate but its like this:
I had an agreement for one year where they paid ZUS (Polish health insurance) Then they didn't renew it. They wanted me to form my own "company" so I would pay ZUS this is a very common practice saves the school a ton of money.

Then I worked black and was taxed at a higher rate than I would normally and I would also have to find my boss and somedays he wouldn't be there with my pay.

It wasn't a lot of money but after 6 mos it adds up. I then found a better job at Empik but Top is a good place to start as you can learn how to teach and also the prep. time is almost zero so if you go to Poland for some fun Callan schools are good, but boring after a while. I just have bad feelings for the Katowice Top English School.

40 is pretty good. So Callan Method really does take no preparation then. So how much preparation goes into teaching normally? Lets say you got 25 hours contracted at a school teaching English, how many hours would you actually be preparing for?

In Callan, very few. You'd only really prepare for any business classes or Cambridge courses like FCE and CAE. They guarantee 26 hours a week but it doesn't always work that way.

I worked there for 3 years and was a trainer. Such an easy job.

How about a non callan teaching job? How many hours a week would you spend preparing for that? Preparing is like working for nothing really isn't it? So even though Callan pays less, does it work out to be the same in the end because of the amount you prepare for the lessons?

Well, not really. Even if you factor prep into the equation, I still get much more at another school. It just depends what school you are referring to.

Do you know roughly on average how many minutes you spend preparing for 1 hour of teaching?

For me, I spend about 20 minutes for a two hour class. It can be much less - just depends on exactly what I'm doing. I've spent half an hour searching for just one thing in one textbook before.

For Callan, it's perfectly possible to turn up 5 minutes before. I don't, but I like to chill out and talk to people/etc - but if I wanted, it would be perfectly possible to turn up 5 minutes beforehand to teach a Callan class.

In my opinion, anyone new to teaching should try and find a school where they can do a mix of Callan-style and traditional teaching. The Callan stuff is good for getting used to teaching - and places less demands upon you as a teacher.

Strictly speaking though, that's not really teaching is it?

Strictly speaking, it is as you are teaching the use of words but I know what you mean. I feel much more of a teacher at my 2 other schools.

Prep time for Britam is longer as they expect more which is fine by me. Lessons at SU are pre-planned but I can always draft an idea or 2 of my own in to enrich the lesson.

Yeah, for me Callan is beer money :)
I teach only my Private students the traditional way.

Callan is for shits and giggles sometimes. There is some grammar which has to be presented concisely so the skill of taking a hefty chunk and showing its operation in succinct fashion is one which must be learned.

Callan is a tempo method, others are timing methods where you try and stick to the alloted time. However, you have to use your judgement. In SU, some of the prescribed times are wide of the mark. I have spent 40 mins on a task which methodologists gave 10 mins for. It just depends if you want to roll with it or be over stiff. I prefer the latitude approach, teaching it until it's satisfactorily understood.

I feel that Callan just glosses over things as the teachers condition themselves that faster is better. Quantity not quality. They try to cover many more new pages, even though they could just skip some material anyway. In my last month there, I made a mockery of the process by cutting straight to new work and flying through it, averaging about 12 pages, LOL. Did I care? No

What pseudoscience is this, Seanus? Callan, like all schools, is a moneymaking method. Saying that a Callanoid is a teacher is like comparing a McDonalds drone to a head chef. I feel disgusted just thinking of it.

Well, they do teach as they have to define words in a concise way. It isn't classic teaching by any stretch of the imagination.

It depends. I think though, that Callan is a good start to the language - it's easy and it does give people an introduction to English that isn't dreadfully dry. But it falls down miserably after the first 4 stages or so because of the need to introduce grammar. Callan clearly didn't realise that it's absolutely impossible to use his 'method' to teach grammar - and I suspect that he didn't understand it himself.

I think the best teachers (and consequently, the best schools) are the ones which mix Callan with other forms of teaching depending on the need. My school does this - and while Callan gives them the base from which to learn new words, all sorts of different materials are used to make sense of the grammar/etc.

Anyone who follows the Callan 'rules' rigidly should also be shot, in my opinion. You're right - anyone who follows Callan (or similar) blindly isn't teaching. This is why new people to the job should insist that they're allowed to mix up lessons - and if the school is so rigid that they cannot accept that someone might want to teach something different, then they shouldn't work there.

The one huge problem with Callan in my view is that 'bad' students will go away and never look at the books between lessons. Or they'll memorise the books off by heart, but never do any outside learning. Until someone writes a method which forces people to work independently outside of schools while still allowing them to learn quickly, there'll always be the same problem.

But I go back to my original point - Callan is good for new teachers. It allows them to try different things out in the classroom (if the school is good!) - with the crutch of the book if whatever they've tried hasn't worked. It's obviously hopeless to those with experience - but this is where a good school should allow teachers a free reign to use whatever materials they feel are appropriate.

Seanus - your point about the grammar. I managed to negotiate two things with teaching Callan classes - a) I don't teach the grammar, b) I don't teach stage 1/2. Needless to say, it makes life much more enjoyable...although it does make Polish teachers want to murder me when they discover a huge chunk of grammar to be taught :P

I agree. Callan isn't for those who have been otherwise indoctrinated. I only had 2 years of experience under my belt prior to taking up the Callan assignment. I couldn't go back to teaching it now. I have been offered due to the success I had teaching it but pastures new have been cemented.

It's an excellent way to fast-track the learning of beginners. The beauty of the method in the first few stages is subject/verb agreement and matching auxiliaries. Can you? Yes, I can or No, I can't. It also automates the response, instilling it sharply. It shows the rhythm of the language too. Bloody exhausting on the teacher but it's fine when you get into the groove. Tagging the first 2 words of the answer is important to maintain the flow and focus of the lesson.

When you have familiarity with the book, you take the lesson in your stride. I found myself walking around the room not needing the book, even for the long questions. A bit sad really but there we go. When it became too robotic, I knew then that it was time to pack it in for sth else.

See, this is where we differ. I don't do it, the school as a rule doesn't do it - unless the person is actually struggling to answer. It's completely 'wrong' according to all the rules, but it makes classes a lot more laid back and enjoyable for most people. I do do it sometimes though, just out of boredom.

It's probably fair to say that Callan is also a good way of showing someone what teaching is about - if you can't control a Callan class, then you shouldn't be teaching full stop. Although it does depend on the school, I guess - again, students in my school are encouraged to ask questions - but in many schools, it seems that it's banned.

My 2 cents worth Callan teaching taught me grammar which as a native speaker I didn't
know how to explain. After a few months I could teach it well after one year I could teach it in my sleep with 5 seconds prep but I began to dread teaching it. It did however make me a better teacher and I was recruited by a great school. Typical prep for me is 20 minutes. But for CAE classes it was an hour. If you have never taught English start at Callan learn the grammar and if you like it move to a new school. I wish I was back in Poland as even though we have hope now we don't have decent jobs here in the US.

well all right I don't.

If defining words were teaching. the school would hire dictionaries rather than native speakers, no?


OK I'll summarise what I know of the Callan method. It's seems to be a mixture of Audiolingualism and the Direct method in that while grammar is mentioned here and there, the main focus in on the students' spoken production, which is based on drills. The principle being that by repeating similar drills over and over really quickly, the student is conditioned into giving a certain response to a certain question.

The Callanoid stands at the front and takes the class through a series of drills in a definite order based roughly on increasing grammatical complexity, the principle here being that by improving your grammar, yuo improve your language skills. If the student says something correctly, they are rewarded with a smile from the teacher (positive reinforcement of good behaviour). Bad behaviour is discouraged with a frown and a disapproving tone in the Calbot's voice.

On the good side, the students are speaking from day one. But then again, in a well-managed communicative classroom, they would do so too. Also, untrained natives can be taken straight off the boat, given a book and be sent into the classroom. Aslo there;s nothing to prepare.

On the bad side, there's no interaction between students. There is no groupwork. There is no free practice. There is no exam practice. There is no ESP language. There is little development of the student's own idiolect. there is less development of the student's own ability as an active learner. There is no accommodation of student aims or learning styles. The student communicates with noone but the teacher, in fact there is no authentic communication at all. And that's just off the top of my head.

Not to mention that behaviourism was discredited as a guiding principle of language teaching 40 years ago and that language development can't be represented as a straght line from bad to good grammar.

Overall, the Callan method's only success is as a franchise. There's no teaching going on here. Move along.

Thanks for your view, MrBubbles.