ILA Vietnam

I loved the CELTA and love working at ILA. The resources are solid, the freedom to develop your own lesson plans is great and if you're out of ideas there is a whole shared drive with everything other teachers have created.
During Covid I think ILA handled very fairly. Everyone was paid for hours worked, management took a temporary pay cut and every bonus and supplement was reinstated as soon as possible. HR has been working tirelessly to get teachers who were stuck abroad back into the country.
I definitely recommend ILA for the professional development, but if you want to teach pre-planned dime a dozen lessons with minimal effort, this is not the place.

After landing in HCMC, I was thrown into my CELTA a whole 24 hours later. (In hindsight, not the best idea I've ever had. You should leave at least 36 hours). The CELTA itself was as full-on as I expected it to be, I feel more so for people with zero teaching experience, such as myself (perhaps due to confidence in front of a class, lack of ideas for activites etc). I feel there is more to be gained from the CELTA at ILA if you already have even a tiny bit of experience teaching. The CELTA program seemed well organised and efficient. The teacher trainers where always on hand to help if you asked for it. Not much slack is given for any mishaps, family deaths, muggings (about a 1/3 of us got mugged at some point in that first month of naivity about D1 of HCM), it has to be said. I can't say I ever made it out of D1 in that month of the CELTA - long days at and evenings full of lesson planning where the main focus. Anyway, we all survived, we all passed, and a fairly large proportion of us went on to work for ILA around Vietnam. Still here, truly having a ball!

I did the CELTA course back in Feb 2013, It was a challenging course. The programs started at from 7am to 5pm in the afternoon and homework was given. This kept me busy for the duration of the course. The course formatted so that the student teachers would practice theory in the morning and teach all afternoon. As the program progressed the amount of hours for theory would be reduced until we were teaching all day long. There was support available if one didn't understand but being independent was a key aspect of the program. Funny story, I broke my leg before the course started, the handicapped facilities are limited in Vietnam are limited, so every morning was a painful commute. I had to drag myself up the stairs to get to the elevator. That wasn't too fun but it happened, now that I look back on it, it made me stronger, now I complain less when problems arise.

I started working for ILA after doing the CELTA. They told me about all of the documents I needed to work there, and I happily provided them, incurring all of those expenses myself without reimbursement. However, they were never able to get me a work permit, so they could not set up a bank account for me. Eventually I was denied renewing my visa because it turns out that their HR department lost my BA, which would take me three months to replace. I had to leave the country on short notice and pay a large fine at the border because they indicated that everything was alright with my visa and that it was just being "processed." Unfortunately they had done nothing and by the time my passport was returned, I had overstayed my visa. They now refuse to send me my final pay because I was never legally employed by them. I'm worried that I may have been scammed, but there's nothing I can really do about it. I'm working in Cambodia at the moment until I can save up enough to buy a plane ticket home.

Having worked in a few countries in Asia teaching English I was sure that Vietnam was going to be the same; overcrowded classrooms, no support, no resources and no pressure to deliver a good lesson.

In Cambodia I was teaching upwards of 40 students with no help and no air-con. In Korea they only cared about having a white person standing in front of the class.

When I got interviewed for ILA I was told that some centers did have classes at government schools and that these would be busier than those in ILA centres. I was given a choice of whether I wanted to teach these classes or not. I decided after teaching so many students in the past I would like to experience a different style of teaching.

I had 14 students, a fantastic teaching assistant and enough resources to take on cover classes with little preparation. The cover was optional and a good way to earn overtime.

If you've experienced teaching in Asia before then this is a nice surprise as the cost of living in Vietnam is very low and the quality of life is high for a teacher. There is pressure to perform good quality lessons and there are a lot of observations and workshops which you must complete but for the career teacher this is a goldmine. For those just looking for short term jobs to fund travelling this is probably not the place for you. There are plenty of schools in Vietnam that don't care about their standards and pay cash in hand. If quick money is what you are looking for then these schools are probably a good bet.

As with all big companies there are some issues but the ones I had were always dealt with, although not always in a timely fashion. Once again, if you've worked in EFL before this is nothing new and at least you get paid on time.

Working in VN can be hard as the work permit process is a nightmare and can take a long time.