Maximo Nivel

Traveling is usually great, but traveling and coming back with a new skill is better! At the Máximo Nivel TEFL course in Cusco, Peru, I had a terrific time, met some great people, enjoyed the city and all of history and majesty surrounding it. The best thing, however, was the amazing TEFL course itself: wonderful instruction, teaching beginning on the second day with real non-English speaking students, Practical Teaching Week, the extra help that's always available, the dedication of the TEFL team and the support from the entire Institute. Our teachers, Sean and Wayne, were incredibly kind, generous, knowledgeable and experienced. There's a lot of work, but I feel prepared to take my first step and begin a new career as a teacher now, and I can't imagine feeling ready without everything I learned in classes, observations and practical teaching. I cannot emphasize enough how dedicated and professional this course is. If you really want to learn to teach, then go to Máximo Nivel, where they will put you on the path to become the best teacher you can be. I stayed for a few extra weeks and taught classes after my TEFL program ended, and I will be going home from Cusco in April with both an excellent education and real teaching experience. I've fallen in love with my students, and it's hard to imagine that others won't do the same thing.

I cannot recommend the TEFL course at Maximo Nivel in Antigua enough. It has been such a fantastic experience. Challenging yet fun. I have made some great friends, in the classroom and outside of the classroom. The TEFL was taught so well by our TEFL trainer Mackenzie with endless amounts of support and guidance to get us through and prepare us for the teaching world. The school is a wonderful learning environment. All the teachers are great people and offer support themselves. Definitely do it.

Maximo Nivel provides optimum support to not only make the greatest impact possible in my community volunteer experience, but they also provide the best ways possible to experience the culture for both personal enjoyment and growth. I spent a week teaching English in an after-school program for underprivileged children. I believe I had an impact on the children, but they also had a tremendous impact on me. In between the volunteer work, I was able to take in the culture through a coffee plantation tour, a walking tour of San Jose and a Volcano tour, all of which were worth it!

Mackenzie was a quality teacher. He made each lesson interesting and enjoyable but most importantly he teaches you using the TEFL teaching methods. This means that by the time you get up in front of students you have seen hours of the methods in practice. I would 100% recommend this course to anyone. All the teachers very friendly and will give you all the advice you will ever need. Maximo Nivel also provide all the resources that you will need both for the program itself and for your teaching in the future.

I took private one-on-one Spanish language classes 4 hours/4 days/4 weeks at Maximo Nivel Costa Rica (Curridabat location) in Feb 2023. The school administration is very well organized, from the online inquiry stage before I registered, through registration, arrival and orientation, and departure. The admin team is very friendly and professional; I felt they were there to support my learning and also my stay in Costa Rica. They switched my teachers 3 times in 3 days (I'm assuming because of their personal situations), but I understand things happen with people's schedules. Luckily the changes happened all in the beginning. The instructor was great; she tried to tailor the sessions per my interests, focusing on conversation and reinforcing with grammar/practices. She took the time and energy to bring in material we could discuss, based on our conversations in class. In addition, the school offers various activities that are included with the class price--weekly salsa dancing class, weekly cooking class, and tandem conversations (they pair up an Eng-learner and Spanish-learner and they split 1 hour speaking in each language. Great practice). The cafe was awesome to have coffee/tea (free!) and snacks (for purchase--you'll smell them baking brownies). Great value to have all these included with the class price. Location is outside the main San Jose downtown area, near a university, so it's still busy but less hectic than downtown--it's walking distance to train/bus stops, many restaurants, grocery stores. The school is also linked with a small travel agency, so it was really easy to book day trips on the weekends. Highly recommended.