Hiring and Retaining ESL / EFL Teachers

Let's look first at an overall view of good hiring practice. Remember that your teachers are moving from the known to the unknown and need a good support network to enable them to deal with the challenges of teaching students well. A basic package should include the following: a nine month/ year long contract (depending on the circumstances of your school), a paid return airfare, a reasonable number of paid holidays, comfortable accommodation (employers should either provide this or make it easy for teachers to find it), Internet access and a reasonable working week. The recommended maximum number of hours teachers should be asked to teach is 25. If you ask teachers to do anymore than this, they will not have time to prepare effectively and their teaching will suffer. This is the absolute minimum you should offer to attract and retain good teachers. There are many add-ons which you should also consider such as in-house training through seminars, language lessons and cultural support. These will be addressed in detail in the near future. It is also crucial that teachers have access to good medical support.