"I think you have to love talking and meeting people to be a TEFL teacher and it’s the perfect job for making friends"

I left university with a Biology degree and a plan to go to Costa Rica. As I didn’t speak Spanish and a lot of the working with wildlife I wanted to do was volunteering, I decided to try and teach English while I was there. That’s when I heard about the CELTA. I did the course in April 2006 at the Training Center in London and I have never looked back.

My first job was in San Jose at an EFL college teaching adults, then at a local high-school. I found it very challenging but immensely rewarding and I loved living so close to the sea and the forest. I’ve since worked in Uruguay and Rome and am now back where I started at the Training Center in London. I did my Delta here a few years ago and am now teaching and training on the CELTA course.

I think you have to love talking and meeting people to be a TEFL teacher and it’s the perfect job for making friends. For me it’s also a nice balance between using my brain and trying to be creative on the one hand and on the other, being very practical seeing real results.

CELTA provides teachers with a toolkit of key techniques and skills. The course is like a good language classroom: challenging, interactive and fun. As you plan, teach and get feedback on your own lessons you are continuously developing on a very practical level but at the same time on a level of principle and understanding too.

Now that I have the Delta, my aim is to provide the CELTA trainees I am training with a solid foundation in language teaching for them to go and build a career on.