Vietnam - Sai Gon. Part II

Indeed those who manage to survive their first week will start to discover an amazing place to teach and a rewarding life style; but first things first... let’s find a job.

As we mentioned before in our first post about HCMC, loads of new schools were opened due to the high demand. Good schools, bad schools, big, small, cheap, expensive, the options go on and on; so, let’s focus on the ones that are worth a try. First you have to decide between international schools or language schools. In this post we are going to talk about some of the best language schools in the city, because those seem to be the ones that offer better short term contracts and appear to be more suitable for the wandering ESL teacher. In general all of them work with adults on weekdays and children on weekends; therefore, you are very likely to teach kids.

Apollo-International House is one of them. It is a long established school with two branches in HCMC. The management team is very approachable and the school environment is totally friendly. Apollo offers 90 to 120 hour courses in general English and exam preparations. On weekdays the school receives adults and teenagers and on weekends the school boils with children from 5 to 13 years old.

From the big schools, VUS is probably the school with more branches in the city and probably the one that employs more teachers. If you work for them you will certainly be teaching in different places and because of this you will not have the opportunity to meet many of their teachers. However, it is definitely a place you should consider applying.

Finally we have ILA, probably the biggest of them all. They tend to give preference to native speakers, but a qualified ESL teacher will not have problems. The main branch is a tall building close to the backpackers’ district and it is one of the first places to go when applying for a teaching position in HCMC.

All of the three schools mentioned above also offer international certification courses for teachers, like CELTA. In general all three of them offer similar benefits and salary for their teachers and they require either a university degree (any course) or documented proof of 5 years professional experience in order to provide a work visa. It’s also recommended to have a TEFL/TESOL/CELTA certificate, along with a police check.

On Part III we are going to throw a great survivor's guide for ESL teachers in HCMC.