Would I Recommend a TEFL?

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I did a TEFL in 2014 in Chiangmai. At the time my mum had told me I should do a CELTA but one of my friends had recommended this course and I really liked Chiangmai so I went with that. The course was pretty expensive but I had a great time and learnt a fair amount on the course. After I had completed the course I did not necessarily think I had learnt a lot and did wonder maybe I should have just done a cheap one on-line. This feeling was compounded when I started my first job and when showing off my brand new fancy TEFL and the interviewer laughed and said "we only need to see your degree" (for work permits.) However when I started teaching I was very glad for having done the TEFL. My school provided all lesson plans so we were pretty much robots who just had to smash out the lessons. What the TEFL had taught me was how to productively waste time when the computer was not working (contrary to popular belief not just cracking out the jazz hands!), how to deal with kids and it removed that fear of your first class. Do I still regret not doing a CELTA? Not really the only job I have heard that would hire me with a CELTA and not a TEFL was the British Council, who do sound like a great employer. However I would also have needed 2 years experience after having completed it and by that time I had started a PGCEi. Since then I have moved to China, where for my work permit I needed to have completed a 120 hour TEFL course so it did come in handy! Would I recommend someone to do a TEFL, yes for sure. It is a great idea to get started and find out if teaching is something you want to do, would I recommend it over a CELTA, probably not, but at the same time I haven't seen or heard many teachers with CELTA's getting better jobs. I think if you are interested in teaching abroad long term though a TEFL will only take you so far...

If you are a qualified teacher in your home country and you are moving to a an international school with a high % of native students, it may be worth your time doing a TEFL just to familiarise yourself with non native speakers. What do you think? CELTA holders, do you disagree? If so let me know in the comment section below! As a note my experiences are from Asia, from what I have heard Europe looks a lot more favourable upon CELTA's and TEFL's.