Falsely advertised as an Internship

Although I had an awesome time on this Internship, that was in spite of the programme not because of it.

Anyway, here are some pros and cons of the internship. Hopefully some things have changed for the better since we did it.....

Pros

1. I was placed in a nice modern hotel building with 12 other lovely interns. It was so nice to have the support.

2. The city we were placed in was in the middle of nowhere but I loved the place, the people were so kind!

3. Thailand is an awesome country. It is likely that you will be placed off the tourist trail too which is nice.

4. It is only for 6 months so is a good tester if you have never taught before or are nervous to commit to a whole year.

Cons

1. Upon arriving in Thailand we quickly found out that this wasn`t actually an internship . In fact our schools were actually lied to and told that we were all already experienced teachers! We were put in the classroom with 50 screaming kids from day 1 with absolutely no guidance or support.

2. You get ripped off. Let`s face it! The schools paid a wage of 27000 baht a month. We would see 12,000 of that, maybe 4000 would go towards our accommodation. The rest would all go to i To i (again, the schools are lied to about this and think that all the money is going to the teacher. When my school found out they were really upset).

This would have been fine if we had been receiving the ammount of support that had been promised to us but that was not the case at all. After the 1st month we were more or less on our own. In fact, we even had to go to the hospital alone several times including my friend having an operation there without any help from our supervisor. I don`t want to blame my supervisor though, she was lovely. It was just that she was so busy with other i to i volunteer jobs too that she had little time to help us.
At my school there were 8 foreign teachers. 3 of us were with i to and got paid 12,000 a month, 5 had the exact same job but were from another company and they got paid a full 32,000 a month for the exact same job!!!! Do your research first!

3. The orientation is fun but doesn`t prepare you for the realities of the Thai classroom. In the orientation we learned heaps of fun pair and group activities but on arrival to my classroom of 6 and 7 year olds i realised this was impossible. So we basically had to discard all we were taught at orientation and learn on the job.

4. You may have a long commute. It took one friend over 1 1/2 hours to get to school everyday.

5. Think that at least all your visas and paperwork will be sorted out properly? Think again! I had a huge issue with my visa (My passport date was stamped incorrectly on entrance into Thailand) that my school noticed that my supervisor said over and over again was fine. Then all of a sudden one day she said that I had to get it fixed ASAP or i could get arrested and have to pay a hefty fine! It got sorted out in the end but was handled poorly.

All and all I would say DO NOT join the i to i internship. They were too dishonest and didn`t care about the local people or their teachers. They just want to get as many people on the progamme as possible so as to make more money.
I know teaching overseas for the first time is scary but this is not the best way to go about it.