| Teaching in Chiang Mai | Those schools that have some international endorsement and foreign management tend to have a much more favorable environment for effective teaching, providing decent course books and resources, placing the students at the right levels, monitoring your class preparation and paying on time.
Let’s talk now about age groups. Female teachers are preferred for younger students and little ones can be a nightmare to control if you speak no Thai at all. The majority of students are teens, though some schools also have outside contracts for corporate evening work.
Despite the good command of Thai language is not a must (in fact some schools insist that you only use English in the classroom), it might be useful for you at times for giving instructions and drilling.
Ability to entertain is the best quality a teacher should have while working in Thailand, because students can get bored very easily and seek for fun. High educational results are impossible to reach without imposing the play conception.
If you are serious about teaching English in Thailand, you are also strongly advised to take a decent TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) course, as there is more to teaching than simply walking into a classroom, and it will greatly improve your confidence and smooth out the lesson direction. In many teaching courses TEFL is considered a little bit generic term, but in Thailand there exist different places where these courses are offered (two weeks is the accepted minimum).
Or you can go the whole hog and sign up for the CELTA qualification which is an intensive 4 week program, monitored by a UK institution and recognized the world over. In Chiang Mai the best available option is a commendable four week TEFL course run by Teach in Paradise which trains you in classroom methods and skills to give you the confidence and right tools to start teaching English.
You can turn the process of teaching English into a fun and entertainment while working in Chiang Mai, provided you treat it professionally. There are a lot of good students there, they are well behaved and respectful, appreciate fun in the classroom and don't have raised expectations.
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