Teach and Travel in Thailand: Volunteering TEFL Internship
About Program
Ready to visit the land of smiles? Start teaching English in Thailand on our 2 months teaching internship. This fantastic opportunity will take you to beautiful Kanchanaburi to embark on an amazing teach and travel adventure.
You'll start with an exciting orientation in Ayutthaya, which acts a great location to familiarize yourself with your new stunning surroundings whilst you get to know your fellow TEFL travelers.
Once you're settled in, you'll start 7 weeks of hands-on teaching experience in Kanchanaburi where you'll work in small local towns and villages. The children here may never have experienced a native-English speaking teacher before, so the impact on your students will be invaluable.
After you complete your amazing internship you'll have the chance to visit the exotic island of Koh Samet where you can celebrate on the beach with all the other your fellow teaching travelers on the program.
Video and Photos
Program Highlights
- No degree, teaching experience or specific passport required!
- 7 week volunteer internship placement
- 120 Hour Online TEFL course included
- Orientation & full support throughout
- Group 20+ interns
Response from
Hi Jamie, we are very sorry to hear that you feel this way about your Paid Thailand TEFL Internship and hope that we can resolve this as best we can.
Firstly, the application fee covers your accommodation, TEFL course (if you weren't already qualified), support from i-to-i and all the work that our in-country partners do. This includes assessing your application, supporting you throughout the internship, finding and placing you in a school, helping organise your visa and work permit and conducting your orientation - just to explain why this is charged.
Secondly, the money earned is a living allowance rather than a salary as is the case with most internships, TEFL or otherwise. Internships are generally paid lower than permanent positions as they form training in your field of qualification and help you gain experience for a future permanent position. For this reason, you would likely earn a higher wage if you were to get a permanent job in Thailand, rather than taking part in an internship but the internship is intended to give you teaching experience and a taste of TEFL life before you make the decision to apply for full-time roles.
Regarding the pay conditions (hourly rate, working back public holidays), these are laid out by the schools and the Thai government. We appreciate that this may be different to other countries and cultures but unfortunately, it isn't something that we have any control over and we can only comply to the law in Thailand.
If you wanted to leave the internship early, this would cause issues with the school as this would mean that they would need to advertise for and hire a replacement teacher part way through the term. This can also damage the relationship between the school and our partners as they rely on them to provide teachers who are willing to stay for the full term. In addition, the partners would need to keep your degree certificate on file for the entirety of your internship for the authorities to verify you and ensure that you could stay in the country if this was ever under question.
In terms of landlords, this again is something that we have limited control over. Our partners do their best to place our interns in accommodation which is clean, comfortable and in a good location, within walking distance of their schools. Private landlords are not working with us or our partners, they expect rent to be paid every month (from our partners) and can withhold deposits if they believe that damage has been done to the property. Our partners will help out with this as much as they can if any interns feel that this is being unfairly charged.
Regarding you being moved around schools, this does appear to have been a communication issue between the schools and our partners and we can only apologise on behalf of them. You are correct in saying that you don't need experience to partake in the internship so it shouldn't have been claimed that you were experienced, apologies again if this was the case. However, during the internship, the school you are placed in will expect you to hold your own lessons and this is what the TEFL training course is designed to prepare you for.
Furthermore, quick and informative communication is something that we pride ourselves in here at i-to-i and our Customer Team will do their best to respond to emails within 2 working days of receipt. They are also immediately contactable by phone during (UK) office hours. Apologies if our partners were not as quick with their responses, this is something that has since been improved upon.
As of May 2017, we have changed the partners that we work with in Thailand but we are still running a Paid Thailand TEFL Internship successfully and we have taken on board all of the feedback given by previous interns to improve on it as best we can.
We really appreciate you taking your time to raise this feedback and we sincerely hope that this reply has gone some way to explaining the issues presented.
Kind regards,
The i-to-i team