lostineu wrote:Hello there!
I am a 25 year old student living in North America and graduating with my BA in German for secondary education (teachable minor in psychology) this December. I have my 100-hour TESOL/TEFL certification through Oxford Seminars as well. I have experience tutoring both English and German and will have much experience in actually teaching German in high school as a student teacher. I am curious what my chances are of obtaining a work visa in Germany (Berlin, namely) as a teacher of English as a foreign language. I am aware the differences between searching for jobs in smaller vs. bigger cities. Because I will have my BA in education and a TESOL certificate, are my chances relatively good in obtaining said job? Any thoughts/advice on this topic would be greatly appreciated.
vielen Dank,
Brittany
I am assuming that you are American? Do you hold an EU passport? I think generally, national laws of EU countries have a requirement to show that there is no EU citizen available to teach English to the German population. This will be very hard, considering the UK is in the EU and the population of both Ireland and the UK are major threats to your work permit application. Companies would question why they wud hire an Americsn english teacher over an English or Irish one - there are plenty if people to teach the german people english. Apart from this, english is built into the german curriculm at schools, and they all speak pretty good english, especially because of the institute of Europe, where germans can spend every weekend in London and move to the UK as and when they please. As you probably know, there is free movement rights within the EU and british or irish citizens do not need permission to work or live in each others country. Bearing all this in mind, i doubt that you can prove that your skills are in dire need in europe and that you should be hired and sponsored instead of say, a British citizen who can just start working without formalities. Language exchange is plenty and there is no shortage. Considering this, you wud have a hard time finding a company to sponsor your visa and second, i doubt the german would grant a work permit easily to an american who wants to teach english. In the US, they would never give a work visa to a spanish person to go and teach spanish to americans in california - simply because there are more then enough hispanics who cud do the job. Good luck to you though and I hope you find something. It might not be impossible, but it will be very very hard to prove that your skills in particular are unfounded in Europe -
