Teaching English in Cuba. TEFL, TESOL and Volunteers

Considerations

One of the first things to consider if you are interested in teaching English in Cuba, if what you are hoping to achieve from spending time in Cuba.

There are many countries in which you can have an amazing cultural experience and also do fairly well financially from the work, some examples being by teaching in South Korea, Japan, or in the Middle East.

I spent two years in Seoul, Korea, and if you want the combination of income and cultural experience Korea is a great choice.

If you are willing to give up on making any money or at least accept that you will make very very little and are happy with the cultural experience being enough to make teaching English worthwhile to you, then Cuba can be a great place to spend time in.

The other thing to consider is that despite the glamorous idea of teaching somewhere on a Caribbean Island in a tropical climate, many people in Cuba are very poor and the people here do live under certain rules and regulations which you may not agree with.

If you wish to teach here, you need to understand that you are unlikely to make any real money and that you will experience a lot of real people in poverty.

Of course, if you are aware of the experience you will be getting into, this can be an incredibly rewarding country to spend time in and you will meet many wonderful people.

Teaching Opportunities

Even though the embargo by the United States has not stopped people from traveling to Cuba from many other English speaking countries, the hardships resulting from the embargo, combined with the internal laws from the Cuban government, has resulted in a real lack of English languages as a foreign language as a market in Cuba.

There are very few opportunities at this time (BUT keep checking back on this page as this page will be updated as things change in the country). Of the opportunities which do exist, you can consider the following:

GeoVision

Personally, I do not consider this a true job teaching English as a foreign language i.e. a TEFL or TESOL role but I will list this because some of you, for whom money is not an issue, might simply want the cultural experience of being in Cuba and consider a couple of thousand dollars or pounds, worth it.

Some companies such as Geovision offer jobs teaching English but these roles are temporary i.e. often between two and four weeks, and I would suggest that they are simply glorified holidays on a commercial basis, albeit a great experience nevertheless, for those who are able to pay a large sum to be a teacher or volunteer abroad. You can find more out about Geovisions here.

Other Opportunities

Unbelievably, there seem to be no other options at the moment for taking up a teaching role in Cuba but I anticipate that this will change in the future.

What I will be doing is adding updates regularly onto this page, so you might wish to bookmark this page and check back every so often. More coming soon on this subject!