What are my chances in finding work at a callan school in Wroclaw?

I have decided to move to Poland this summer from the US. Since I have no teaching qualifications (ie: CELTA/Trinity TESOL) and have no desire to get qualified (yet), I am looking into working at a Callan school. I've heard that callan is boring to teach but honestly I'm not looking to make a career out of teaching grammar and I already have a part time job via the internet. I just want a job that will get me away from the computer for at least 20 hours/week.

I have a university degree, i speak polish fairly well (i'm 1/2 polish) and I have dual US/Polish citizenships.

What are my chances in finding work at a callan school in wroclaw?
When is the best time to start handing out CVs? August?

Hey!

I understand your choice not to get any teaching qualifications, but to be honest most Callan schools teach by other methods also and they require some kind of teaching qualification. In my opinion you will find Callan boring and repetitive especially for 20 hours a week!

I teach in a school which teaches Callan, textbook and conversation, i do approx 6 hours of Callan (a week) and it gives me a headache, Also you depend on being able to speak loudly and clearly at all times, impossible if you get a cold or have a headache, resulting in no classes!.

Early Aug is a good time to start looking. If you are sure you want to teach Callan, get on the Website and track down the Callan schools in Wroclaw, but bare in mind Wroclaw has many Natives with teaching qualifications willing to teach Callan. with no qualifications they will want to pay you a minimal amount, which will make it tough to live a good live in Wroclaw!

Bare in mind the point in Callan is that you use no Polish, You teach them to speak and think in English.. if they understand or not!

Good luck!

Callan in Warsaw hired people right off the street as long as they were native English speakers and somewhat clean.

I heard it is a really weird program but it's a job I guess.

This is the most important thing by far - you won't need a work permit, or indeed any hassle.

Be warned that you're obliged to obtain a PESEL and a Polish ID card as soon as you land in Poland. This should be your first move - I can almost guarantee that you'll confuse school directors if you don't actually have the ID card.

Not all Callan schools are that bad - if you find a school that uses Callan as a base for learning, but allows teachers to add additional material, it can be quite good fun. I'd advise you to steer well clear of any school that teaches by the book and nothing but the book - it's a good sign that the school in general is awful.


I've got this image now of you saying "Is this a book? IS THIS A ******* BOOK, YOU MORON?!" and proceeding to launch the idiot in question through a window :D

Callan try to be professional by asking for a degree and teaching quals but the reality is that they, like other schools here, don't check them and the work offices are too lazy to conduct any enquiries too.

This is why I object to all the talk of "needing credentials" and so on - the truth is that personality matters just as much in Poland. There may be a few jobs only open to those with the qualifications - but given that the job is ultimately about keeping people happy, good references and reliability are what people are looking for.

Absolutely. Rarely blowing my own trumpet for a second, I have all those but I feel that personality is the most important. Without this, lessons become stale and overly mundane. They go to Polish teachers for the systematic, methodical lessons.

To teach Callan you do not need qualifications, or be able to teach, or be a native speaker.

Callan is a wasted opportunity of a native speaker.

An actor or very outgoing person is ideal for Callan no matter what their native language is.

That's about the stretch of it :) My third year was a waste of my time there. 2 years should be the max.

Seanus, was it you that said about how Polish teachers often lapse into their "natural" accent when teaching Callan?

I overheard a Polish teacher giving a Callan lesson done "properly" the other day - my, my, my. It was awful - and proves that speed isn't everything!

The Callan method makes it inevitable that the teacher will end up speaking in their natural accent. It's impossible to force a clear accent in the speed that they insist you speak.

My accent is originally Scouse, with 20 years of Yorkshire thrown in for good measure, pity the poor Polish kids that have to decipher what I'm saying at 240 words per minute.

Yeah, the ones who truly feel English naturally (some bilingual teachers) at any speed are the ones that can wheel out lessons with great tempo and gusto. Some of the Polish teachers lack zip and are rigid/mechanical.

I think I made that comment, yes. When you are not afforded the luxury of 'modelling' your English with RP and all that bull, you just have to get on with it and I heard some funny pronunciation.

In my experience, Polish teachers explain more systematically. I can do this when teaching grammar but I tend more to give examples and use shortcuts, sth Callan helped me with. I can teach almost anything to their satisfaction in a short time using letters. S V O, those very 3 letters, go a long way towards simplifying concepts like active/passive, transitive/intransitive and just basic tenses.

Perfect for any students which want to move to the north of England!

Although speaking at "required" Callan speeds means that most southern English folk wont understand you either! :)

I teach 4-6 hours of Callan a week, gives me an opportunity to relax from noisy children :)

Although if i have to ask "Whats this? It's a pen" ever again i may flip and go crazy!

Can anyone tell me more about callen? Moving over to warsaw very soon and have been offered a place on a training course for it, I'm a native speaker and TEFL qualified and looking for work

Rob

My accent is a mixture of north welsh and a little scouse as I've lived in liverpool for a while now, should be ok though right?

Rob

It's a joke of a "method" that relies on false advertising to gain gullible clients. It doesn't work, except for absolute beginners who need to break their fear of speaking a foreign language.


Hahaha. The training course will be somewhere between "a joke" and "a total joke".


No. A mix of Welsh and scouse is going to be very unfavourable in the job market - it's just not what people are looking for.

I think that's a bit harsh calling it a joke...!!!

I taught this for four years when and it does have its place in teaching English up to a pre-intermediate level, but, as many have said before and do themselves it should be dropped after say stage 7, because the rest of it is written as an after thought with no clear direction.

I do know however of many students who have become successful users of English through this method and doesn't deserve the label of being classed as a 'joke'.

Now I do not teach for a living and haven't done so for five years and I finished teaching Callen seven years ago, but I still remember some funny moments from teaching it.

There is a question in stage 11, which goes something like this:

I asked, "would you like the job of a priest, would you like the job of a priest".
The guy sat there thinking for a while, and replied, "no I wouldn't like the job of a priest because I enjoy sex too much", and a girl sitting in the group piped up saying, "well that shouldn't stop you".

The scouse accent thing was a joke, and I am North Walian not a south walian! I talk the proper queens English! and pronounce my words fully and clearly! and whats more I have taught Polish people English in the UK for 7 years along with some filipino's and believe it or not taught a few English people how to talk properly and pronounce certain words!

Hi,
I have been posting CV's for the last 2 months and I am very sad to tell you that tyhe response rate has been very poor as yet.

:(

I dunno, look at the state of some of the vocabulary and language used - it's just completely out of date. I suppose - it's not absolutely dreadful if you can laugh at it and point out obvious nonsense.


I wouldn't even go so far - stage 4 would be enough in my book. You can see that he had the right idea for the first couple of books, but then he had the obvious "oh ****, now what?" moment - the way the grammar is presented/taught is just mindblowingly idiotic and confusing.


From what I've found, it's good for people who want to use it as a base for learning - but the claim that "you don't need another book" is just widely inaccurate. When I had the misfortune of using it, I used to supplement it with all sorts of extra materials - and that worked quite well for beginners.

Mind you, I think it's a good way to judge a school - if they stubbornly insist on sticking to "the method" - then the chances are that they'll be utter crap. And the less said about Callan training "courses", the better ;)

(I had the misfortune of being convinced to go to one because the school wanted to appraise them - resulted in a full day of me and a couple of Polish teachers abusing the trainer by asking difficult questions)

It can't be taken seriously as a method if you don't contextualise it. You have to paint pictures for students and that means giving them real-life, natural applications. I got fed up with students asking me about dated expressions which have no real relevance in the modern world.

Well there is always the exception to the rule :)
We had a girl from Birmingham in our school and most if not all of the students came out of the room totally confused - needless to say she didn't last long.

Search for "anglicka skola" on Youtube lol :)