Like "The Real World" and army boot camp mixed together

I'll just start this review by saying I left 1 month into this 4 month experience.

This course was very disorganized from the get-go. I was given incorrect or downright false information about where I would be living/teaching, and what these arrangements would be like. This program felt like a constant bait-and-switch, and just seemed to get worse and worse.

Our first week, there were 27 of us living in one "house". I slept in a room with 5 other people in uncomfortable bunk beds in the summertime. It was mosquito infested, and worse, BUG BED infested. The place needed to be fumigated in the middle of our first week. We also did not get any food delivery until the middle of week 2, had no cleaning supplies, and the trashes were overflowing with flies everywhere.

As for the Vorchdorf campus, you will essentially be in the middle of nowhere if you are unlucky enough to get stuck based out of here (which my group did- Unfairly, we only got 2 weeks near Vienna and spent almost the entire remainder of the course in Vorchdorf). The town Gmunden is nearby, but the last train is at 8 pm so forget doing anything on weekend evenings.

As for the teaching, in week 2 you will be teaching for 6 hours per day for a class of usually unruly teenagers with no supervision. There is only one 15 minute break per day. At one point, my students got in a fist fight in my class and I had to scream out the door into the hallway for help, and nobody came.

The grading is extremely harsh. Failing grades are common. Instead of giving the new teacher confidence, we are often torn down. Written assignments are extremely tedious and it is also common to fail or get a D on these assignments. You will be working your butt off and feel like you are constantly on the brink of failure. Some of the course tutors are very nice and helpful, but the overall feel students had on the course was fear that they were not good enough.

The days are long. The commutes were sometimes over 1.5 hours one way to each school. School starts at 7:45 am, sometimes earlier. You will be up EARLY. After teaching 6 straight hours, you will have another 1.5 hour commute, and then have to go to campus for 1-2 hour input sessions.

You will have to walk to campus each day, sometimes with all of your luggage, as the staff refuse to pick us up or drop us off at our accommodation. Why go 2 minutes out of your way when you can make the student teachers suffer? It will be pitch black outside and you will be asked to carry all of your suitcases, teaching materials, and bedding down a long, twisting hill. When I asked the welfare team why we were forced to walk when there were 7 ABCi cars parked in front of the campus, I was ignored. By the way, several of my other emails to welfare were also unanswered. If they do answer, they will do their best to divert the question or deny any wrongdoing or blame.

On our first day, we were lectured about all the different ways we could get kicked off the course and given examples of previous students. You will get at LEAST 1-2 emails per week addressing a "student teacher warning" for things like "someone left the door unlocked", "you had 2 mattresses on your bed", "the garbage wasn't emptied" "you were 1 minute late today". If you get 3 warnings, you get kicked out. There is VERY little appreciation for your hardworking volunteers.

This place is constantly short-staffed but continually expanding, adding more strain to the remaining staff and volunteers. Why keep expanding? One answer: $$$$$$$. Teaching English is supposed to be fun. If you sign up for this, know that there is very very little fun to be had.