TEFL

Teaching English is still the most reliable way to fund a long stay somewhere. It's the only job on earth where the qualification is having grown up speaking a language, and that's both why it works and why so much of the industry around it is selling you something.

The certificate is a paperwork question, not a teaching question

Every course provider will tell you the certificate makes you a better teacher. It might. That isn't what it's for. What it does is get you past a school's hiring rule or a country's visa rule, and whether you need it is a question about a specific place, not about you.

In parts of Latin America a native speaker who is already in the city and can start Monday gets hired without one. Across most of Europe the school wants the paper on file. In much of Asia the load-bearing document is a four-year degree in any subject at all, plus a criminal record check and a medical, and the certificate is the tiebreaker rather than the gate. Work out which of those you're walking into before you spend anything.

The weekend online course and the four-week in-person one are not the same product sold at two prices. The expensive one includes observed hours in front of real students, which is the only part that changes how your first month goes.

Pick the contract, then the country

People choose a country and then take whatever contract that country offers. It goes better the other way round. Two jobs in the same city at the same headline salary are different jobs once you know which one provides an apartment rather than an allowance, which one pays the flight home, and which one holds the end-of-contract bonus that turns a year of work into travel money.

The questions that actually separate offers are unglamorous: who sponsors the visa, how many contact hours versus hours you have to be in the building, what happens to your pay if the school loses students, and whether the school will still exist in ten months. Ask them in the interview. An employer who won't answer them in writing has told you the answer.

The year is harder than the brochure

The part that catches people isn't the work. It's being the only foreigner in a small city, being visible every time you leave the apartment, and discovering that immersion is exhausting somewhere around month three. Teachers who had a great year and teachers who counted the days often had similar jobs in different sized towns.

If that sounds like a reason not to go, it isn't. It's a reason to weight city size in your decision as heavily as salary, and to read someone who didn't enjoy it before you sign.

A year isn't the only unit

The standard contract is twelve months because that's what suits schools. Government and NGO volunteer programs run from about four, some with a stipend and a host family, and they put you somewhere a private academy never would. Less money, more of the thing you said you came for, and a much cheaper mistake if teaching turns out not to be for you.

The flight is the part to think about twice

A teaching contract is a one-way ticket out and, if it works, a very long way home. Most people book the one-way, finish the year with savings and a map, and then buy the expensive version of the trip they meant to take. Pricing the whole loop before you leave is usually cheaper, and that's what AirTreks does. The job you find yourself.