Diane Menga's List: Practicum Placement Options

ELIC is one of the premier English-focused cross-cultural placement options available to you. You will receive training, and an excellent curriculum to teach from that is adaptable to your students and teaching style. Because ELIC is so strong on encouraging professional development for its teachers, it is likely that your mentor will have a good deal of experience, and will be well-trained.

This organization offers a variety of teaching placements, but requires a greater degree of "do-it-yourself" work than some other organizations. (In terms of what the staff and funding covers/supports you with, vs what you need to plan and take care of on your own.) Teaching placements cover a wide range of teaching environments.

Christar does not focus specifically on English teaching, however, they do have a number of placements (and summer teams) that involve English teaching. Many of the summer teams may not offer enough teaching hours or direct mentoring for your practicum. However, Christar has worked with us in the past to customize a placement just for a student to go and join a long term team that does English teaching for awhile.

Check out the "Find Opportunities" link and go to "English teacher," to get an idea of some existing opportunities. You will most likely need to connect and collaborate with the organization a bit in order to find a placement that might work for you. I have not had anyone travel with this group, but know that in the past they've coordinated TESOL trips for other colleges. The leadership seems willing to work with individuals to customize placements,

Again, this organization does not focus exclusively on English teaching. However, some of their teams engage in English teaching and have the qualifications to mentor interns. Check out the link to Crossworld Opportunities Worldwide to explore some of the current options.

While Pioneers does not focus on English teaching as its sole mission, they do have qualified English teachers and programs in several locations. While they do have summer teams, you may need to work with the organization for a more individualized option in order to fulfill practicum requirements.

There are sometimes a few teaching opportunities in Europe through Greater Europe Mission. The easiest way to see what's currently available is to refine the opportunity list by passion (TEFL). Check out the opportunities in EurAsia in particular as they would be great entry level positions following graduation as well.

OMF International focuses on serving in Asia and includes a variety of ministry options. Click on current opportunities to explore what is offered. In order to meet practicum requirements, you may want to explore the "specialized individual opportunities" option. A nice thing about OMF if you are considering continuing with them longer term after graduation is their Partners Program which allows you to partner with them for ministry, but doesn't require support-raising as you are earning money as a teacher. (In some instances you are able to earn enough for living expense and to make some payments on school debt. Unfortunately, paid positions are usually only for longer-term placements for college graduates.)

This site allows you to search a wide range of different opportunities and sending agencies to locate short term teams around the world.

This is actually more of a post-practicum placement. Greater Europe Mission has teaching opportunities in Eurasia for 6 months to 2 years. Housing and tickets provided along with monthly stipend.