Reviews of Teaching House

4.6 Rating •
257 reviews
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Description

Cambridge Assessment English approved the opening of Teaching House in 2007. With the aim to expand quality English-language teacher training in the United States, Teaching House has opened over 15 center locations and trained over 3,000 new teachers. Teaching House is now the largest provider of Cambridge CELTA courses in the world.

Ensuring the high standards of education that are set by Cambridge English, all Teaching House CELTA courses have a maximum of only 6 trainees working with each trainer. To fulfill this trainer/trainee ratio, the Teaching House staff include over 20 Cambridge English-approved teacher trainers as well as a strong support team based at our headquarters in New York.

In addition to the standard four-week CELTA course format, Teaching House has developed two new formats:

  • a 10-week part-time course run on two evenings a week and on Saturdays;
  • a part-time blended course over 14 weeks allowing people to work online during the week and do teaching practice on Saturdays.

We also offer in the USA a two week compressed teaching practice option with online content, for those who are only able to take two weeks for their teaching practice component.

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Courses

Course Types

Combined TEFL Courses
On-site TEFL Courses
Online TEFL Courses

Course Lengths

Standard (120-140 hours)
Long Courses (150+ hours)

Certifications

Cambridge CELTA
Cambridge DELTA
TEFL / TESL / TESOL

Additional Features

Online Practicum
Part-Time Study

Locations

Canada

Toronto ON

England

London
Oxford

USA

Boston MA
Miami FL
New York NY

Teaching House has received 257 student reviews and has an overall rating of 4.57 out of 5 stars based on the following criteria.

Overall Rating
Course Content
Practice Teaching
Quality of Feedback
Lesson Plan Guidance
Instructor Competency
Job Assistance
Facilities/Resources

257 reviews of Teaching House

Review 200 of 257 Teaching House

Written by Max B on July 24, 2020 3:41 pm
80%
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Not Applicable
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I recently finished the online CELTA and am mostly satisfied.

The instructors are competent as teachers of teaching. I learned a lot from the instructors during individual feedback and guided lesson planning, but not so much from the lecture-style inputs in the morning — which were generally bloated and could’ve been cut to around 30-45 minutes instead of the full 90 min.

Additionally, the course modules through Cambridge were more than tedious and mostly checked for common sense.

The organization system online is dreadful, with the full syllabus only half-revealed at the beginning of the course (you don’t get your Teaching Practice topic until a couple of days before you teach). All of the course materials are poorly scanned and hosted on dropbox in a byzantine and only somewhat intuitive system of folders within folders. Organization is by far and away the most difficult part of CELTA.

BUT, I can’t stress enough how helpful was the amount of critique and instruction from your dedicated TP instructor and our peer group. At the end of the day I can say that I really learned how to structure and present copacetic lessons on most any English language topic. I know this will be immensely helpful to me in my future teaching applications. This is NOT just a certificate that gets your through the door. It is a foundation for those who’ve never lead English language studies.

No regrets. A *vomits on my lap* $2,500 well spent.

Review 199 of 257 Teaching House

Written by Stephen Cottingham on June 24, 2020 11:08 am
80%
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Teaching House was recommend to me via a school named ELS in Portland, OR at Concordia University. The Director there gave high praise to TH for their comprehensive care for the development of their students in terms of both availability in course options and leads to job opportunities afterward. Having been through the program now, I can attest to this and furthermore add a highlight to the high caliber of the staff at TH. I really enjoyed my experience and feel that TH does a great job to set up it’s CELTA candidates for success in their budding careers.

Thanks TH,

~Stephen

Review 198 of 257 Teaching House

Written by Asriya on July 29, 2019 4:05 pm
90%
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The course is amazing!

It helped me to discover my strengths and areas that need improvements in my teaching

Although I have years of experience in teaching English to adults, I have discovered many new and fantastic ways of teaching . I am really enthusiastic to teach as soon as possible and to apply all what I did in the celta teaching practices!!

All what I like to say that I am really happy and more confident now !!!!

I advise all the great English teachers to take this certificate because it is a qualification for life!

Review 197 of 257 Teaching House

Written by Mina Yang on July 27, 2018 9:01 pm
75%
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I have 3 years previous teaching experience and have also completed an “intense” summer program before, so I knew what I was getting in to. To get the most out of it you will have to sacrifice for 4 weeks; no going out or having fun. You should be working your butt off researching, reading, and thinking about the techniques the instructors teach during the class. All this should be applied to your lesson plans, and your teaching should then improve. That’s the idea, and I think it is a good program to learn quickly. But you need to be the kind of person that learns this way and is OK with sacrifice. For me, I learn best actually practicing, and this format has you practice skills in an actual classroom with actual ESL students. The instructors are very good; I never felt any of my time was wasted. In our particular class, the location could have been better, but even with the limited resources (meaning only 1 working printer, no library, barely any air conditioning, and only 4-6 ESL students due to the location) I did not feel the quality of the instruction or material to be lacking. I feel I learned a lot, and what I learned will be very relevant to teaching in an ESL classroom.

Review 196 of 257 Teaching House

Written by Johnny Lacoure on July 17, 2018 10:48 am
95%
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Quality of Feedback
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Instructor Competency
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Pros

– constructive feedback

-practical teaching experience

-friendly instructors and students

-instructors in general were knowledgeable and highly experienced with ESL teaching

-instructors were available every morning 1.5 hours before class started

-teaching demonstrations were solid and instructive

-ESL course taught as ESL course in methods and teaching style

Cons

-initial set up was rough with technology

-some classes were inconsistent or with only 4 people to teach

-set up for course seemed very rushed for first day/likely due to using a temporary set up for course.

Review 195 of 257 Teaching House

Written by Brent Hendrix on July 6, 2018 7:11 pm
93%
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This was an amazing experience overall. I chose Teaching House because of the reviews and it didn’t disappoint. Now that I have completed the course, I feel confident in my ability as a teacher and prepared to start my new career.

The course is only four weeks so you will be overloaded with information about teaching methods and practices. You will have to plan lessons and complete homework assignments that overlap, and thus you will have to manage your time well and stay organized. Most of us trainees were only getting a few hours a sleep at night so prepare accordingly.

You will be teaching every other day and you start on the second day of training. When you aren’t teaching, you are observing. After all lessons have been taught for the day, you have feedback with your peers and your tutors. Your tutors will provide you with the most amazing and constructive feedback that will make you a better teacher.

For each lesson you teach, you have to create a lesson plan. You will learn how to write a lesson plan and your tutors will give you plenty of opportunities to ask questions and provide guidance for your plan. Your first few lesson plans will be laid out almost entirely for you and your last few plans will have to be created entirely on your own.

The best part of the course was how amazing my tutors were. They were extremely knowledgable and pleasant, and made themselves readily available to help me when I needed it. This course is intense but if you work with your tutors, they will get you through it.

Teaching House will not land you a job, but they will provide you with a ton of guidance and resources to help you with your resume, job search, and interviews.

I completed my CELTA with Teaching House in Houston, TX. The course took place in the Bilingual Education Institute, which was a nice facility. We had everything we needed, primarily printers.

Review 194 of 257 Teaching House

Written by Rusty Cruz on July 3, 2018 9:28 pm
95%
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This course was one of the most difficult, yet rewarding and insightful times of my life. I learned more here than I have during all my classes at college. The instructors were amazing – they guided us extremely well and provided varied and thoughtful feedback on our teaching practices.

Our input lessons were engaging and informative. We had plenty of opportunities to express both our questions and our thoughts. Our instructors answered our questions truthfully and to our satisfaction.

The only negative thing I would say is that some of the students that we taught didn’t seem to be in their proper level class (some higher level students in the pre-int class and some lower level students in the upper-int class), but this wasn’t too much of a problem, since in the real world things like that can happen. It was still a good learning experience for us.

Review 193 of 257 Teaching House

Written by Pam Dimich on March 9, 2018 1:36 pm
93%
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I successfully completed the CELTA certification offered at Teaching House in New York City, February 2018. The course was very thorough and intense. I had to work hard to complete all that was being asked of me. My tutors were very qualified, helpful, and supportive. I always felt like I had the support I needed to understand what I was expected to do and the encouragement to dig inside myself to see what I had to offer. I believe that the course adequately covered all aspects of TESOL.

Another outstanding aspect of the Teaching House CELTA program is the opportunity to work with the international students. They came from all over the world and had varying motivations for learning English. Being able to work with these wonderful people was very rewarding.

My only frustration with the course is that I felt like the handbook we were given was organized in such way that it was often a barrier. It was hard to find the information we needed at a particular time. And, if we were given additional material from the tutors, it was difficult to find a place to put it without it getting mixed up with different topics. I’d love to help someone reorganize the handbook so that it can be a more useful tool to students.

I am so happy that I took this course and am so proud to have successfully complete it. Thank you to Crystal, Sarah, and Lauren (and Jackie).

Review 192 of 257 Teaching House

Written by Anne Miller on March 9, 2018 5:56 am
88%
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Quality of Feedback
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Instructor Competency
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Lesson plan guidance was indeed good but at times I found that it could have been a little more detailed. Pertinent information for finding jobs was given during class time but individual tutoring for job placement was somewhat lacking. It would have also been helpful if the requirements for different computer and telephone applications had been specified beforehand. The photocopying facilities were not very functional.

The quality of the teaching was excellent. The amount of subjects covered and methods used during the course were above standard. Following the course, I feel prepared as a teacher and also interested in learning more. The staff, tutors and teachers were very friendly and helpful. In general the school was a very pleasant place to study and learn as well as being very centrally situated and easy to get to.

Review 191 of 257 Teaching House

Written by Dan McSweeney on February 13, 2018 8:27 pm
95%
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This was an excellent course all around. I chose this course from the many that offer ESL training because it seemed to be more demanding and to offer a deeper experience than other courses – and it didn’t disappoint. I can’t say enough about it.

It can be thought of as a four-week boot camp, and – fair warning – you really need to put as much of your outside life as possible on the back burner for the duration. (There is also a part time, ten-week course that provides exactly the same material.) The class consists of a maximum of twelve trainees. You’ll find yourself teaching two separate groups of students, each consisting of 12-16 people, and generally classified as Pre- and Upper-Intermediate. Thus, all of your students will already be able to speak at least basic English.

So how do the days look? Very briefly, each morning consists of two “input sessions”, where trainees learn some particular aspect of teaching English. (Each course has two trainers, and they take one input session each.) The afternoon starts with a two-hour teaching session – ie, where you, the trainee teacher, teach live students who are there to learn English. Most days, three trainees will teach for forty minutes each, and you teach on alternate days. After the teaching session, the students you’ve taught go home, and the trainees remain for an hour or so to give each other feedback on what they’ve seen, and to receive detailed feedback from the course tutors. In the evenings, you either start looking ahead to your next lesson and sketching out how you will tackle it; or, if you’re teaching the next day, you develop the actual lesson plan. (You get detailed, individual help with this from a tutor on the day before you teach. You explain how you plan to approach your lesson, and he/she offers suggestions for changes, draws your attention to points you might not have thought of, and answers all of your questions.)

Each lesson you teach focuses on some particular aspect of language learning, for instance: Grammar; Reading; Reading and listening; Speaking; Vocabulary; Writing. The course requires that you teach a variety of different class types.

On top of this, there are four written assignments of varying lengths that have to be completed.

Teaching House has many trainers, and they lead courses on a rotating basis. Our two were terrific, and I have to believe this would be true of all other trainers. Each has a lot of personal experience in teaching ESL, and has deep practical and theoretical knowledge to call on. I had never taught before and found the experience both scary and bewildering, and, especially in the early lessons, often felt like I’d completely blown my assignment. I think other trainees felt the same way. But every single time, the trainer we were with pointed out the positive aspects of our lessons, offered creative and helpful suggestions for what we might have done differently, reminded us that we were grappling with something often very foreign to anything we’d done before, and made sure we always left feeling good about ourselves.

Standards are very high. The CELTA certificate is issued by Cambridge University (England), and detailed records are kept of the lessons you teach and your overall progress. Cambridge is protective of its brand and towards the end of the course, an outside assessor comes to observe a few lessons and to go over student portfolios. This is not in any way something to be worried about – it simply shows that Cambridge U. makes an effort to ensure that Teaching House is not diluting its standards in any way. In turn, this guarantees that your CELTA certificate truly represents something of value and is something you can be proud of.

In case any of this sounds forbidding, please don’t be put off. The school wants you to pass, and the failure rate is extremely low. If you’re in any danger of failing, you’ll know it well in advance and you’ll be given every chance to work on whatever might be the issue. If you’re accepted into the class, then as long as you’re willing to put in the work, you’ll be fine.

On a personal note, I took the CELTA class in order to kickstart a career change somewhat late in my working life (I’m in my sixties). I’d never taught before, and actually had hated school with a passion. It took quite a while before I became completely comfortable with teaching a lesson, but it was exhilarating when it finally happened. I really learned a lot. Clearly, in four weeks you’re just scratching the surface when it comes to teaching, but you get enough here to move right into a classroom and start teaching live students. If you think you might be interested in ESL, I can’t imagine there’s any better short-term introduction than what you’ll find here.

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