Finding a TEFL job in Barcelona, Spain

How do you find a job teaching English? We talked to former CELTA course trainees at IH Barcelona about how they'd had set about it, and with what degree of success.

Debbie Krupski (that's a Polish surname, though Debbie herself is from Leicester) did the part time CELTA course (November-March) and in fact has since succeeded in finding herself quite a lot of work.

Typically for someone in her first year in TEFL, she now finds herself with three different employers, which include the IH Company Training Department, for whom she teaches a small group of beginners.

One advantage of a CELTA course at IH is that International House is also a big employer of English teachers: prove you've got lots of potential on the course and you just might land yourself a job - though it's not quite a simple as that. "In fact it was by pestering people consistently," Debbie said, when we asked how she'd managed to find herself not one but three TEFL jobs.

Persistence - and just plain getting lucky

Perhaps we might say it was really determination and persistence, rather than "pestering", that really got her the job. "I literally trawled the city with my CV," she says, "and then went back to places again." When she walked back into one language school, another teacher had just left - and the job was hers. "I just happened to be there at a lucky time," Debbie says. Persistence and good fortune - those are two big factors, though it should be noted that neither of those had managed to land Debbie bar work, when she'd looked for that.

Debbie left no stone unturned in her search for work. "I looked on the Web, in shop windows, on noticeboards everywhere. In fact I got my first teaching job by leaving a message on an answering phone after spotting an ad in a bookshop window," she says.

A couple of private classes had also come up, one from someone in the language school who knew someone who was looking for a private teacher. Another class involved trying to teach a very advanced student the Queen's best RP; I guess there are jobs that in the end you're happy to see fall through!

You've also probably - until you are lucky enough to then land a full time job in a language school - got to be prepared to travel. In the morning Debbie can be in the city centre, in the afternoon up at the top of town, the next morning out beyond the Besòs River. Bet you didn't know Barcelona has a river, did you? Right - that's how far Debbie has to travel.

The traveling (if you're really lucky you'll get paid a bonus to cover it) is something Debbie seems to take with a smile. "Anywhere under an hour, I walk or go by bike," she says. "It's a great way to get to know the city." Talking to her, you get the impression that she found work at least partly because she took the right positive attitude to the whole business.

And is she making enough to live on? "Yeah, just about," she says. "I'm paying my rent and eating, but I'm not making enough to have the kind of life here I'd like to have." By which she meant? "Oh, just being able to go to everything!"

Oh, come on, honey - this is Barcelona! No one can do that!

See also

Teaching English in Spain

TEFL jobs on the Internet