Program Reviews

I have to wholeheartedly agree with the review left by Anderson, but will just add a few things about my time with ABCi. I volunteered in 2014. We worked hard in those three months, but I also got to experience a lot of Austria that I wouldn't have had the opportunity to see had I not done this volunteer teaching programme. Teaching could be stressful at times but then also such a joy when you had great rapport with the kids and this certainly got easier over time as I got to know the programme better. If we had any questions there was always a senior on hand to assist and advise us. If we thought we were putting in a lot of work they put it far more! Here are some excerpts from my diary from this time:

Written after week 1: My first week has gone well. We have had some early morning starts and long days. I have to get up for 6 am which for me is a bit of a struggle. On Monday I will have my own class of 15 children for the week but I still have a lot to learn before then. I will take the odd break this weekend but I will try and prepare as best as I can. This is the calm before the storm, but I am looking forward to the challenge. Bring it on!

This was written in month three: Whilst in Austria I celebrated my birthday and I went to the Johannes Strauss Ball, spent a lovely day sightseeing at Schonbrunn and went to the Opera House and saw the ballet Sleeping Beauty. In Vienna we had some early starts for teaching – were often up at 5.30 am to get the various trains and buses to the schools on time. In Altmunster (where I lived with a wonderful host family) I get up most days at 5.30 and am now fairly used to it. As long as I go to bed early. Last month I visited Salzburg. I hadn't been there since I was an au pair at the grand old age of 19. It was funny walking back over the bridge again taking in the sights after so many years. I also visited again a couple of weeks ago with six other teachers and showed them around. I also visited the Fortress and we did the Sound of Music tour. Very good! We also went to the Augustinerbrau which is where monks make beer and might have had a tipple:)

These three months have been so full on. I have had some really tough days and then others, like today, where the kids were so wonderful! We just fed off each other’s energy. I was quite sad to leave. We teach for six hours every day and the type of teaching we do is fast pace - certainly never a dull moment :) Life has been hectic over here but I am so glad I came. I have learnt so much and realised I do enjoy teaching.
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You work hard but there is also time to play. And now I have my TEFL certificate which I may use in the future. It is a wonderful experience, full of hard work and challenges but it will be up to you to make the most of it. With the work you put in you will reep so many rewards!

I volunteered as a TEFL teacher with ABCi in 2014 and it was one of the fondest experiences of my life. The opportunity to travel to so many places within Austria with such a great bunch of people was amazing. Every little town we taught in had something new to offer, and in my own time I was able to travel to a few extra places with money I had saved up to get to know the cities too. The all around travel-experience was so exciting and fun, you get to know the 'real' Austria rather than what you would learn from a holiday/tourist experience. Save up as much money as you can before you go to get the most out of your free time.

But lets talk about the work itself! I had previously taught English in the UK so I was coming with experience, but the ABCi programme is a very different kettle of fish - we didn't use books or photocopies or follow standard lesson plans, the teaching is really based on the teacher leading the class by playing games and managing new group activities every ten minutes or so. The lessons are well paced and planned, and once you've got a hang of the activities you will get into the flow. I loved this style of teaching because it was so much fun, and most often the groups of children we taught really enjoyed the lessons too. It is totally different from a normal school lesson, so I think teachers and students alike find it a breath of fresh air and for some, it may be the first positive educational experience in their life. The teaching felt a bit like acting sometimes, learning the scripts and repeating the same introductions again and again - plus the singing and dancing (be up for looking like a fool). I actually really enjoy being in that situation, but it could be stressful at first if you feel uncomfortable in front of people.

It is tough work, and can be draining, as is all teaching work in my experience. It requires every part of your brain, and your full attention. Be prepared for early starts in the morning - sometimes really early!! Plus you may have some long commutes to the schools every now and then. But don't let that put you off. I had always been the kind of person that couldn't get up before 8. After ABCi, I feel that I have become a tougher person because I know I can get up before 5 and still manage a days work (though I was glad to get my lie ins at the end!)

And lastly, the TESOL course. If you want to teach English, there is a lot to learn. Teaching methodology, lesson planning, classroom management, English grammar, phonology, etc. I really enjoy studying languages, so studying English in depth was fascinating for me. Be prepared to study hard to get the qualification. It is a very much intense 4 weeks. However, the best way to learn how to teach is by doing it, and after teaching every day for four months you will have learnt so many tricks and tips that you will be ready for wherever you want to teach next!

Overall the course with ABCi is really good value and an invaluable life experience too. You will make friends for life and fall in love with the place. I highly recommend.

I joined the English Teacher Training College of Austria in December 2015. I worked for the now obsolete ABCi Volunteering Program in 2013 as a paid teacher. I was amazed at how much the organization had grown and how professional it had become. It's a non-profit started by Mr. Carle and Mr. Stone with the intentions of bringing native speakers into Austrian classrooms at very low costs to Austrians, while not taking advantage of the native speakers. I've worked in Austrian schools and businesses all over Austria and know how hard it is to find a teaching job that.

a) employs you as a salaried member of staff (including benefits)
b) believes in professional development and
c) isn't just out to get the most money from the students as possible.

Back in 2013 they had volunteers come over for 3 months and they got to see Austria while teaching. They then soon realized that the quality of teaching could be better and that it would be good to have a TEFL certificate to give the teachers.

Since 2013 they have implemented feedback from volunteers, staff and student teachers and they take feedback seriously.

There are no longer volunteer positions. Each native speaker is here on a course and the time they are in Austrian schools counts towards their certificate. I did a Deutsch als Fremdsprache certificate at the University of Graz where the hours were long, but only had 3 hours of observed teaching practice with students (not simulating with fellow student teachers).

This last course (Spring 2016) we were able to partner with Cambridge and are offering their CELT-P certificate. This is for people interested in teaching young learners. It is currently based out of Graz (my personal favorite city in Austria).

We have taken in a lot of feedback from previous courses and as the CELTP integrates online learning using the Cambridge VLE as well as face to face sessions, most of the time Student Teachers are finished by 2:30 with time in the afternoon to do the online course work.

I must admit that all members of staff are on a secret mission to "convert" teachers into active learning activists and we all believe in the mission of bringing education to all students / student teachers regardless of their economic background (English to Austrian school children in all schools and qualified training to those wishing to make EFL teaching their career).

The English Teacher Training College is NOT for those who just want to have fun and drink beer in the alps it is for those who are seriously considering making the move into the EFL career.

There are early starts (as teaching practice takes place within Austrian schools), coursework that is held to a high standard (please use references and answer all prompts), and great life experiences. Our graduates have gone on to work for private schools across the world, publishing houses in Italy and many other EFL jobs. We have a job placement program with centers emailing us to let them know when we have a fresh batch of graduates as ours are very well equipped to the real life of an EFL teacher.

About ABCi:

ABCi is a non profit organization with the goal of bringing English Language Immersion "Project Days" to every school in Austria. These project days are free to students who participate, and are taught by trainee teachers, who are not paid but are instead receiving training and experience along with a Trinity CertTESOL Certificate (equivalent to a CELTA).

The way these Project Days are funded is through Project Weeks. These project weeks cost 100 Euros per student and are taught by trainee teachers over the course of one week. Students spend one week of only English language instruction, and week culminates in an end of the week performance with songs and "dramas" invented by the students. This is the meat and potatoes of what ABCi does.

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Arrival:

The ABCi campus is located in Vorchdorf, Austria. Vorchdorf is a small but fairly nice town located in Upper Austria. The nearest city of significant size is the tourist lake town Gmunden. Most trainees arrived in Vienna or Salzburg and made their way to Vorchdorf via train using Austria's easy to use ÖBB system. There are 2 small hotels and the majority of us spent 1 or 2 nights there, before making our way to the campus for the morning of our introduction.

The first morning was unsurprisingly quite hectic, everyone introduced themselves and went through the introductions. Director of studies Ben Stone addressed us and gave us an overview of what to expect over the coming months. We then spent the majority of our day at the Red Cross of Austria learning the basics of First Aid.

After our First Aid seminar, we were split into groups and taken to our "posts" across Austria. One team in Vienna, one in Graz, and one in St. Polten. For upcoming intakes however, these will likely be different as ABCi is going through some changes regarding this system.

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Accommodation:

During my time with ABCi my experience with accommodation ranged from excellent to horrible. My group's first accommodation was a wonderful house in Graz. We each had our own bedroom and a double bed, a nice living room and kitchen with all the amenities one could reasonably expect. Our first month was quite stressful - 10 to 12 hour days each day - and having a nice place to come home to kept us sane.

After our first one month "rotation," my group (Graz) as well as the other groups (St. Polten and Vienna) were transferred to one "large" flat in Vorchdorf. For many of us including myself, accommodation became the biggest thorn in our side during our time in Austria. We were asked before the course if sharing a bedroom was okay, although none of us expected to be living in a barracks-like environment. The accommodation supposedly fits 30 people, and at our peak we had 21 which was, to be frank, hellish. 21 people in one flat in the middle of summer, all of whom work 10 to 12 hours every day, sharing 2 toilets and 2 showers was truly the low point of our experience. In fact we all had some questions about whether the situation was even legal. My room had 4 bunk beds (3 filled) and no closet. 100% of the space was filled with our belongings and was brimming with mosquitoes. Every room in the house was boiling all night long and even though we all got along, a complete lack of privacy can begin to wear people down, especially people who work extremely hard all day long.

To ABCi's credit, after a meeting was called to discuss the situation in the house, steps were taken to improve the situation. An air conditioner was purchased, mosquito nets installed in the windows, fire extinguishers positioned throughout the house (yeah, we had none), and the flat downstairs was opened up to allow us to spread out more. The situation definitely improved for the second half of our stay in Vorchdorf.

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The Day to Day:

The average day for an ABCi Trainee is a long one. You will regularly be expected to put in as much as 12 hours per day, including drive time, and you WILL be exhausted at the end of the day. You will adjust to the schedule and it will seem normal after some weeks, but it is truly a shock to the system.

An average day looks something like this:

START
0500: Wake up
0600-0730: Collected by your Senior Tutor and driven to school
0730-1330: TEACH
1330-1500: Drive back to campus
1500-1730: Seminars - English Grammar, Teaching theory, etc
1730-???: Lesson plan, work on assignments, homework, etc
END

But hey, at least you have weekends off.

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The Certification(s):

The course that I took was the Beginner Course. Don't let the name fool you. It's not a cakewalk. The Beginner course consists of 2 certifications. The Trinity CertTESOL, and the TEFL-YL. You will start by only using the standard ABCi lessons, but after attending seminars every day you will eventually begin to create your own lessons and implement them yourself. You will be graded on these lessons, given feedback on your teaching style, and expected to take that information and improve your teaching ability.

The classroom side of this program is truly excellent. It's well thought out and implemented intelligently. You will learn how to teach. Period.

BY THE END OF THE COURSE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO TEACH ENGLISH WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED AND YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK. If you take this course and you still aren't a good teacher, teaching just isn't for you.

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The staff:

At any given point during the course, you and your team will be assigned a Senior Tutor. There are several Senior Tutors and they will be rotated amongst your groups. All of them are excellent. They each have a different style and different perspective and all of their input is valuable. If you take their advice and follow their lead, you will do well, simple as that. The Senior Tutors are the best part of this course and their value cannot be overstated.

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Other notes:

I highly recommend purchasing an ÖBB Vorteilscard as soon as you arrive in Austria. Use it to travel on the weekends and see Austria! It's a beautiful country with a lot to offer.

Time off is very hard to come by. Don't count on it.

It is likely that you get shuffled around a lot during the course. People do fail and holes do need to be filled as a result of that. Your group may be split up or you may be reassigned to a different city. Don't get too comfy.

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Overall:

Let me make this clear. This is NOT for everyone. If you don't have the energy to do this every single day, you will not make it. If you can't manage your time in an effective way, you will not make it. If you can't balance the academic side of the course with the practical side, you will not make it. If you are not up to the standards of this course YOU WILL BE SENT HOME. You will be dropped off at a train station, and you will be on your own.

I know this sounds scary, but don't let it deter you. Living with your teammates means you have a support system around you at all times. You will learn to work together and to help each other. You will commiserate together after horrible days and you will celebrate together after good ones. This experience is transformative one. You will leave with new relationships formed and a new perspective as well.

You will be well trained and have TONS of experience. You can leave Austria and go teach English ANYWHERE. As a result of this course I now have friends all over the world. In my group alone, you can find us in France, Italy, Cambodia, Japan, Spain, Latvia, South Korea, Morocco, and more.

ABCi is not always easy to deal with and this course is NOT a vacation, but it will open doors for you in ways you didn't even realize were possible.

I find the mark of a good course is usually that it makes you realise how much you don't already know. If you are sitting there and everything is old news, then it's probably a waste of your time. That is not the case with this course. For someone new to EFL there is a lot to learn. And this course exposes you to wide areas quickly and intensively. Luckily, the tutors are adept at both explaining and demonstrating the concepts and everything is explained in a way that made it easy to get your head around.

The College packs a tonne of content and practical training into the course. By the end of it all, you'll probably be surprised by how much you've managed to pick up in just 16 weeks. You're launched straight into the course on the first day with First Aid training and the first session of the Unknown Foreign Language Unit. The tutor for the UFL walks into the classroom and instantly starts running off a spiel in a foreign language (they don't even tell you beforehand what the language will be!). It starts off quite confusing but this is actually a good thing because it gives you a lot of insight into how the students in the schools will feel when you walk into their classroom and start speaking English at them. It reminds you how important other forms of communication are like body language. As the lesson continues, things should become clearer. The teacher plays games that will be used in the classroom during practical hours (this part is really fun!). It definitely starts things off on a high and sets the tone for the rest of the course, i.e. it's gonna require lots of energy, enthusiasm and concentration, but students feel like they've learned something by the end of it all.

There are more sessions for the UFL several weeks later. In the meantime, you will have already learned a lot about the course and the teaching programme, so at this point you get to do the activities ourselves that are being taught in schools from the student's point of view. This helps you to see what works and what doesn't, and it will definitely give you some ideas of how step your game up in the classroom, just like with the feedback from the senior teacher observations. Since you are treated as 'young learners' for the purposes of the UFL, i.e. have no prior knowledge of the language, the teacher uses flashcards, body language, singing, etc. and even though she never speaks a word of English for the entire course. Even though you only use the target language, first time students seem to understand all of what is being said because of the teaching techniques and methodologies employed.

The College tutors are all themselves really good teachers in a practical sense (I really appreciate that after dealing with some pretty clueless lecturers at uni in England) so I feel like this is a huge bonus alone that you get the opportunity to tap into all that knowledge and experience.

The English College really puts you through your paces. Don't expect to come to Austria and just enjoy a holiday... although I definitely recommend exploring the place a bit on weekends. Expect to work hard. But the more you put in, the more you'll get out of it. I definitely recommend this course. You're not just absorbing information, you're also developing skills for the classroom. Places fill up fast so sign up early!

If your learning style is more laid back or slow, this is probably not for you. The College packs a tonne of content and practical training into the course. By the end of it all, you'll probably be surprised by how much you've managed to pick up in just 3 months. You're launched straight into the course on the first day with First Aid training and the Unknown Foreign Language Unit. The tutor for the UFL walks into the classroom and instantly starts running off a spiel in a foreign language (they don't even tell you beforehand what the language will be!). It starts off quite confusing but this is great actually because it gives you a lot of insight into how the students in the schools will feel when we walk into their classroom and start speaking English at them. It reminds you how important other forms of communication are like body language. The teacher plays games with the students that will be used in the classroom during practical hours (this part is really fun!). It definitely starts things off on an exciting note and sets the tone for the rest of the course: it's gonna require lots of energy, enthusiasm and concentration, but you've feel like you've really learned something by the end of it all.

Hello potential ABCi-er. Below is just a few thoughts on my experience here. I'll start with some positves but then draft in some negatives too at the end. Just as an introduction, I completed the beginner course having never taught before in my life. It was a summer course (this is very important given how the seasons change quite drastically in this part of the world). With the completion of this course and the gaining of my CertTESOL, I have been appointed to work at a language school in Spain (my desired location!). So was hard but well worth it...!

I had never taught much before, and I have found that I love it! Absolutely love it! And it had a lot to do with the wonderful course tutors who you will be travelling to the various schools with. So we do project days and project weeks. There are advantages to both these styles of teaching. The project days you have two classes only for three hours each and you never see them again. This is great for learning how to build rapport and change and adapt activities. These classes can have up to 28 students from ages 10 - 16.

Project weeks I prefer, because you are with the students for a whole week, you get to really build a relationship, learn their traits etc. You do a whole week using the ABCi program and then a big performance. Okay you'll learn about all this, but it's amazing. I've never quite had that feeling with any other work I've done.

The experience you'll get is like no other place. When I'm applying for jobs now people are just so impressed by how much I've learnt in this time and how well the course prepares us as teachers. The course tutors have so much experience and are able to really guide. Lots of conversations in the long car journeys about grammar and teaching...

There are so many observations so you will have all that experience and you learn from everyone you watch. And you get filmed and can watch yourself and send this to employers etc.

I guess the best thing though has to be the people. I'm actually away at the moment teaching in the south and was so upset to have to leave the others for even a short while. I've made such good friends from all over the world, people of all different ages and from different places. On the weekends, we've been able to travel around Austria, and although I'm not a fan of the cities so much (except Graz), the rest of the country and countryside is stunning.... I mean I just sit in the car and stare at the snowy mountains and rivers. Austrians are so friendly, the food is great, there's plenty of good places to visit.

Okay, for balance, some negatives! - If you are not happy about getting up at 5 o'clock for 2 weeks in a row then you might find it tough. But then I thought I would never get used to it and I have. You will always likely be sharing rooms with people for all the four months, which has been tough for such a long time if I'm honest. I'm a little older than most of the volunteer trainees so a little past the whole sharing thing - Also, the course is incredibly difficult. Sometimes, especially during the CertTESOL component, we were working 14-15 hour days perhaps.

This was testing for everyone and the atmosphere and mood can be really low during these times. Also, ABCi have one accommodation where up to 20 people live together in this big flat. It's fun up to a point but then so hard to keep clean, but if you are with cool people then it's so nice having so many people around. Communication at times has been a little poor but for a fairly new organisation I can see that changes are being made to curb this problem.

Okay that's enough! To summarize: It's tough but one of the best things I've done. It's set me up for a new career. The course asks a lot but everything you did will be rewarding. If you're bored of sitting at a desk in an office, if you want to gain confidence in all kinds of ways, if you want to meet dozens of great individuals... DO THIS COURSE!

ABCi changed my life.
I arrived in Austria on the 29th of August at the ripe old age of 18 thinking I knew everything about the world.
Quickly, I became accustom to the ABCi way of life including getting up at 5:30 in the morning, living with others, teaching in schools that open ridiculously early, all day, before resting for a hour and completing essays until late at night.
BUT I WOULD'NT HAVE HAD IT ANY OTHER WAY?
I got to live in 4 beautiful towns/cities while gaining quality experience in what I now know is my my chosen vocation. I was supported fully through the course, given feedback on lessons and even extra support for the grammar test (which is tough if you have no background in linguistics). The company provided free travel to and from schools, free accommodation and food basics which many other companies do not provide. I met life long friends during my short stay, joined a rugby team and grew in confidence. Although, most importantly it gave me the experience and ability to teach in a fun engaging way allowing me to pursue a life as a teacher where without ABCi this would not be possible. For example, I am now a teaching assistant in Manchester using very similar skills to what I learned in Austria. I would recommend this course to anyone. Don't think it will be easy but it will change your life because it changed mine.

I'm a Senior Teacher on this course and I have been blown away by the quality of trainee teachers as they come to the end of their 4 month placement here in Austria.
I was already impressed by this group initially but seeing how much they have improved with their teaching skills in a matter of months, is quite a proud moment for my colleagues and I because we see the results in the quality of the course and our implementation of it.
Yes there was a heavy workload at the beginning of the last course, but this has been adapted for the winter course, so that trainees can become familiar with the basics before getting theory heavy assignments given to them.
Yes the mornings are early and trainees need to be flexible, but we are a small NPO that works with tens of thousands of Austrian school children every year, so obviously the logistics of this can be hugely difficult to manage. But this aspect is forever being improved so that trainees and staff alike are informed many weeks in advance of schedules and special projects etc.
And yes, the active learning approach that we introduce to our students can be tiring when you are doing activities and playing sports and singing songs. But the personal and professional rewards from spending such a huge amount of hours IN THE CLASSROOM are invaluable. No other course I know of can provide trainee teachers with so many practical hours in a classroom - over 300 hours in the 3 month placement and approximately 400 hours in the 4 month placement. With approximately 40 of these hours observed, this leads to a huge amount of practical experience accompanied by detailed feedback from Senior Teachers and peers.
And as for spending all of that time in the company of (mostly) angelic Austrian school kids, that's just plainly good for the head and heart.

As a Senior Teacher for this course I believe that it offers a real advantage to those wishing to gain ESL teaching employment upon completion. The idea behind the course design is to offer real practical experience for trainee teachers and embed essential teacher skills that are transferable to a variety of teaching environments. Units have been carefully selected and designed to create a well rounded 360 degree teacher with sufficient 'in class' experience. The practical component of the course not only ensures that the trainee has constructive feedback from experienced teachers and peers; but also has the opportunity to trial activities and lesson plans without the pressure of formal observations. This is something I feel is essential for teachers to find their own style and delivery. As well as the important 'trial and error' with self reflection.