Overall A Great Experience and Value

I wanted to start my TEFL career with a strong strong foundation and as in-depth knowledge as I could reasonably afford to do at the time.

This left me with two options: Teaching House Chicago (CELTA) and International TEFL Academy (Level 5 TEFL). I spent quite a while comparing programs and the curricula seemed remarkably similar, but ITA offered lifetime job placement help, while Teaching House offered nothing. Additionally, ITA was half the cost of CELTA, while offering the same amount of course hours. ITA was simply a better deal than Teaching house.

Overall, ITA helped me review teaching methodology and pushed me to be creative in my lesson planning. The teachers, Jan and Gosha, were patient, caring, and provided thorough explanations. Moreover, they were very experienced ESL teachers and were able to provide two different perspectives and styles of teaching. They were attentive to students' needs and were fully capable of answering students' questions.

The practicum at ITA was an invaluable experience which made me much more confident as a teacher. One of the best aspects of the practicum was being able to work with students of all levels and being forced to design a lesson plan from scratch. I also really enjoyed the final project of the course, developing a three-day lesson plan showing growth and development of a concept over time.