Teachers must be native English speakers, in excellent health, with at least a bachelor’s degree in any field. Enthusiasm, stamina, flexibility, and cultural sensitivity are also important. It is not necessary that participants have any professional teaching experience, although experience facilitating any type of group discussions is helpful. Some of our best teachers have had no formal teacher training beyond the training sessions, materials, and on-campus support we have been able to provide.
The following is the process that we employ leading from your application submission to the receipt of the appropriate visa.
Once we have received your application form we will contact you by email to set up a date and time for a short interview.
We often have more qualified applicants than the number of places available. Teaching invitations are based on criteria established by the inviting universities and TFF. These criteria include, but are not limited to, education, previous teaching experience, flexibility and health. Each applicant is reviewed each year, even if he or she has been a teacher whom we have accepted in the past. Although the final decision regarding acceptance is the prerogative of the host institution, the status of applications and the recommendation process is the responsibility of TFF.
Please understand that it is our policy not to give individualized reasons why a particular application is accepted or denied.
The application deadline for 2010 teaching positions is February 5th. Any applications received after that time will be placed on a waiting list.
- Fill out the application on the website and submit it to the secure server. Please be sure to fill it out completely.
- Once the application is submitted, the Teach for Friendship Foundation’s Screening Committee will review the applications and set up a time when the applicants meet with the Committee for a brief discussion. Those who are too far away to meet personally will be contacted by telephone. We hope to have all of this completed by the end of March.
- Successfully screened applicants will then have their applications sent to China for final approval by the University.
- Once the University has approved the applications, ( which we expect to be by the end of April), it will issue an “invitation” to the successful applicants. This “invitation” is just a list of the teachers and a request to the Chinese Consulates to issue the appropriate visa. We will advise you regarding what type is necessary.
We will notify the successful candidates just as soon as we can.
- TFF will help with the visa process. For those making private arrangements, please let us know and we will fax or mail the “invitation” list since it must be included with the visa application.
- We will not begin the visa process until about 45 days prior to departure date. For 2008 the Chinese government has raised the cost of a visa to $150. Visas must be done in person or through a representative. We will do that for you.
- The visa process will require you to send your passport – we will give you mailing instructions at the appropriate time. In the meantime, please be sure that your passport is up-to-date. China requires that passports must be valid through January 2011 for July teachers and March 2011 for September teachers (six months after your scheduled return).
Our goal is to finish local processing of all of the applicants by the end of March. We will send the applications to China in the first week of April and hope to hear from the host university by the end of April with notification to applications the first week in May.
It is our expectation that the University will be able to move quickly on the materials once they have them in hand and that we will have a confirmed list of successful applicants within two weeks after receipt in China.
We will hold orientation classes for the successful July applicants in May. The location of the classes will be announced later. A video summary cannot attend.
|
HOME
