Being as ESL teacher requires the same amount of work as a regular classroom teacher. You must have a four year degree in education. At this point you don't have to be certified in ESL in the state of South Carolina, but you must be certified teacher in some area. The state department is working on a certification program for ESL. One aspect of the position that is different from that of a regular classroom teacher is that as an ESL teacher you will most likely have more than one school to go to. Even though the number of ESL students continue to rise, the number of students at each school is not high enough to have one ESL teacher per school. ESL teachers are paid the same as regular classroom teachers in South Carolina. The pay scale usually begins at $30,000 a year.

    There are no special  qualifications to be an ESL teacher, as long as you are a certified teacher. It helps to speak a foreign language, but it is not necessary. ESL in South Carolina is based on complete emersion in the English language. Since an ESL teacher can have students from many different countries one foreign language would not be that beneficial. We have students from many countries including, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Vietnam, France, Iceland, Japan, and many more.

     An ESL teacher our main job is to teach English to students who speak another language. Sometimes we help with other class work as well. We do a lot of vocabulary practice, reading and writing. Another part of our job is to work with other teachers, teaching them techniques for working with ESL students. They usually need to know what kind of assignments to give ESL students, so that they can get the most benefit out of each assignment. 

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