Dear Dr. Zack,

I´d like to hear your opinion on how feasible it is for a non-native speaker of English to get a job as an ESL Teacher in the USA.
I´m a 36 year-old Brazilian man and have been teaching English at one of the best language institutes in Rio de Janeiro for more than ten years now. Being fluent with perfect accent and great command of grammar, which can be attested by an A on the Cambridge Proficiency Exam, I thought I might be a suitable candidate for a teaching position at some school for immigrants or so.

I have just started considering this possibility and I would be very grateful if you could share your opinion and suggestions on which steps to take toward this goal. If there are more details you need to know about me to form a more solid opinion, please don´t hesitate to ask.

Yours,

Publio Furbino.

Dear Publio,

Thank you for a very well written question. First, I want to commend you on skills you have acquired in your studies in order to become an effective ESL Teacher. If you want to teach in the USA in a private ESL School, I think that the qualifications that you hold, i.e. your Cambridge Exam Results, would be more than sufficient. However, if your goal is to teach at the Community College Level, I need to let you know that there it would be difficult to teach ESL with the qualifications you currently hold. In order to teach at the Community College Level, most Colleges within the United States have adopted a policy where Teachers must hold a Master of Arts Degree within the field they want to teach. Thus, in the area of ESL, you would need to obtain a Master of Arts (M.A.) Degree in TESOL- Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, or a Master of Arts {M.A.) Degree in Linguistics. Either of these two Degrees will enable you to teach full time at the Community College Level and Part-Time as an Adjunct Faculty Member in a School of Education at the University Level.
Dr. Yanni Zack