I've touched base on this before and my opinion on this matter still stands. When I say that I don't recommend it this is based solely on the lower-level jobs the like of which anyone with a degree in anything can get a job as a teacher. It doesn't really matter what your degree is in, if you have one at all, you can get a job teaching English at a school in Thailand.
The Kingdom of Thailand, in the past, has attempted to change the requirements so that foreign teachers were going to be required to have a degree in something education-based, but they quickly found themselves with a massive gap between supply and demand. This has everything to do with the salary that is paid at most ESL jobs - meaning that it is too low to attract actual qualified teachers. In the private schools where a more reasonable salary of 2,500 to 5,000 dollars a month is the norm, these are great jobs.... and also jobs that you are not going to get unless you have a very specific educational background and are able to legally teach in your own home country as well.
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When the jobs are being presented to prospective applicants, it is normally shown as being easy, rewarding, and filled with respect from dedicated and well-behaved students. The reality of the situation is very far from this. Generally speaking, classrooms in Thailand are crowded, under-funded, and pretty chaotic. The administration at times appears to not really care if the students can actually learn anything and this lack of concern is reflected in the fact that no student, regardless of how poorly they perform, is allowed to ever fail. I've had students in my classes over the past 3 years that after a year of daily interaction with me and 5 years of other teachers in the past, somehow manage to not be capable of understanding even the simplest of conversations. They just hang out in the back of the classroom doodling and not having any idea about what the hell you are talking about as their educator.
In a real education environment that was truly interested in the progress of their students, these lessor students would be put into classes based on their abilities, not on their age... and they certainly wouldn't be moved on to the next level simply because they completed a previous course that no one is allowed to fail.
This is obviously very problematic for the students, but it is also an impossible task for the educator who end up being people like me or others with similar educational backgrounds. I don't think that my own education limits my ability to teach English... in the cases of students that are many years behind in their education, there is no magic teacher out there with any background that would be able to turn this situation around unless it was a one-on-one situation.
I know that this folly in the educational system is true and should (but wont) be addressed. In my own educational background I had studied French at one high school then transferred to another school that must have had a far more advanced system in place. In the very first week of French 2 at my new school, the teacher was able to determine that I was woefully out of my element and transferred me back to repeat French 1. This wasn't done in a patronizing or humiliating way, it was done as a matter of fact. Had they left me in the French 2 class I would have failed every single test because I honestly had no idea what was going on around me. Was this the fault of my previous teachers? To some degree yes, but at least the educational system was willing to address it. I ended up being one of the better students in the French 1 class and rightfully so, seeing as how I had already taken the class once.
As humbling as this process would be for Thai students, it would benefit them immensely if they were to follow this procedure, even if it meant putting students into a classroom with other students who they are older than. The idea isn't to humiliate students, but in a classroom environment the ultimate objective is actually achieving education, isn't it?
I fear this will never be done in public or even lessor-funded private schools in Thailand since the "everyone passes" model is nation-wide. I've never heard of any student in this country ever failing and being required to repeat a class due to lack of performance. It kind of makes me wonder why it is that we bother with having grades in these schools since the grades themselves don't really seem to matter all that much unless the students are the top students.
This all ends up being very frustrating as an educator, but this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as issues in being a professional teacher in Thailand is concerned. Your years of experience aren't going to mean a great deal should you ever decide that you want to leave Thailand to work elsewhere, since there are very few countries that are interested in a "teacher" that doesn't have a teaching background, regardless of how much experience you have in the trade. Therefore, the only option that someone like me has is to continue to be part of the broken system that they are currently working in....and for very little money at that.
In the end what this results in is someone like me spending probably serving too many years in a fake career that isn't actually going to benefit them at all professionally. There might be a person or two out there that would see this part of our resume and be impressed by the sense of courage that it would take to uproot oneself for a job on the other side of the world, but for the most part this work experience doesn't have any relevance as far as almost any other job is concerned.
The people that I know that fall into this trap...one that I am trying to avoid myself at the moment, almost always end up in one of 3 categories:
- They tuck tail and run, hopefully with some good memories of the adventure they were involved in for hopefully less than 3-5 years.
- They take a leave of absence for a year and go home to acquire a teaching certification and this enables them to get the "real" teaching jobs that are actually like a career
- They fall into the trap and just go with the flow, making very little money or difference in any student's life. They eek out a living while maintaining almost no savings and then probably enter some sort of alcoholic depression in their late 30's
At the moment I have already transitioned away from teaching in person and am on a volunteer visa where I go to a school that has no foreign teacher a couple of times a month. This is purely so I can maintain a visa. I entertain no notion that I am actually making any difference in these kids' lives educationally speaking.
So let this be a warning to any would-be teachers out there looking at Thailand. Unless you actually ARE a qualified teacher, this is not the correct country to travel to if any sort of career advancement is an objective. It is a playtime job that will almost certainly be very frustrating and should be seen as a method of increasing the amount of time that you get to be on vacation. Just need to make sure that you don't see it as anything else because the system here is designed so that it is a near certainty that it never will be.