{"id":1825,"date":"2016-03-22T14:51:03","date_gmt":"2016-03-22T18:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/?p=1825"},"modified":"2017-01-12T10:11:51","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T15:11:51","slug":"how-my-tesol-certification-has-helped-me-travel-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/how-my-tesol-certification-has-helped-me-travel-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"How My TESOL Certification Has Helped Me Travel The World"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is the first in a series about an Oxford Seminars TESOL instructor meeting\u00a0the students he trained on his trips abroad.<\/p>\n

I have taught with Oxford seminars for nearly a decade.\u00a0 My favorite thing about training prospective teachers is meeting dozens of new, interesting people every year, each with their own compelling reason for obtaining their TESOL certification<\/a>.\u00a0 But a fringe benefit\u2014one that I hadn\u2019t anticipated\u2014is the fact that I now know at least one person in an astonishing number of locations around the world.\u00a0 I always end my courses by asking my students to keep in touch, both with their classmates and with me.\u00a0 Often, I follow this by saying, \u201chey, if you\u2019re lucky, I might just visit you once you\u2019re abroad!\u201d\u00a0 Most people chuckle, but I think few realize that as an avid traveler, it is a real possibility.<\/p>\n

\"Mountain<\/a>

Mountain View after Sunrise from my hotel in Santiago<\/p><\/div>\n

Just last month, I was fortunate enough to travel to Santiago, Chile<\/a> to attend a conference.\u00a0 Once I had booked my flight, I remembered that I knew of two former Oxford students that had gone off to teach English there. One, a young woman named Cecilia, and the other, a middle aged man named Thomas.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t corresponded with either of them in a while, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn when I contacted them that both were still teaching there.\u00a0 I happily made plans to meet up with each of them, eager to hear of their experiences.<\/p>\n

\"View<\/a>

View of Cerro Santa Lucia, Santiago<\/p><\/div>\n

My first day in Santiago, Thomas had the afternoon free, and was kind enough to join me on a free walking tour of Santiago.\u00a0 We later grabbed a coffee, and he told me more about his life in Chile.\u00a0 After applying for jobs all over the world, he settled upon Santiago, where his decades of experience in the corporate world proved a valuable asset.\u00a0 He has spent the past five years tutoring Chileans.\u00a0 Some seek out Thomas\u2019s services to refine their English for conducting international business, while others want to improve both their written\u00a0and conversational skills to pursue higher education in the English-speaking world.\u00a0 Thomas was proud\u2014and rightly so\u2014of the fact that many of his students have gone on to enroll in prestigious universities in Europe and North America.\u00a0 He continues to tutor, and has no immediate plans to move back to the United States.\u00a0 Chile is, for all intents and purposes, his home.<\/p>\n

\"Osorno<\/a>

Osorno Volcano, South Chile<\/p><\/div>\n

After a brief sojourn to the south of Chile, a visually stunning region with crystal-blue lakes encircled by volcanoes, I met up with Cecilia upon return to Santiago.\u00a0 While Thomas had gone to Chile after decades in the work force, Cecilia, rather, moved to Santiago in her mid-twenties to gain experience and learn some Spanish before beginning a career in earnest. \u00a0Over dinner (a delightful meal of Peruvian-Japanese fusion cuisine), she told me that she hadn\u2019t planned to live there for the better part of a decade, but as time went on, she kept finding more reasons to stay.\u00a0 After a short while teaching at an English school, she was promoted, and put in charge of curricular development.\u00a0 By that time, her Spanish had blossomed from a mere few phrases into outright fluency.\u00a0 Her current position there requires spoken and written proficiency in both English and Spanish.\u00a0 After seven years in Santiago, Cecilia plans to return home in the coming months to pursue a law degree.\u00a0 With her impressive resume of working overseas, she imagines she will be well positioned for a career in international law.\u00a0 (I quite agree!)<\/p>\n

Although I only had a few days in Santiago, I am confident that the city is a prime destination for teaching abroad<\/a>.\u00a0 After learning how successful Oxford Seminars TESOL graduates have been there, and how well established they had become there in both their personal and professional lives, I am thoroughly convinced that anyone, regardless of age or experience, who is looking to teach English in a large, global city in a country so rich in natural wonders should give Santiago a second look.\u00a0 You\u2019ll be glad you did.<\/p>\n

Written by Jeremy White<\/p>\n

\"J.<\/p>\n

Jeremy White has lived and worked in several states and countries, most extensively as a TESOL instructor in South Korea. He has a master’s degree in linguistics and has taught Oxford Seminars courses in both New York and Minneapolis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is the first in a series about an Oxford Seminars TESOL instructor meeting\u00a0the students he trained on his trips abroad. I have taught with Oxford seminars for nearly a decade.\u00a0 My favorite thing about training prospective teachers is meeting dozens of new, interesting people every year, each with their own compelling reason for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":2311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[348,24,56,343],"tags":[135,90,6,102],"class_list":["post-1825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bachelors-degree","category-getting-tefl-certified","category-latin-america","category-travel","tag-chile","tag-teaching-english-abroad","tag-tesol","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1825"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3265,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions\/3265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}