Professional Development Opportunity at Missouri State University

By Jennifer Johnston

While the COVID-19 pandemic has made much about our jobs as ESL/EFL professionals challenging, it has also opened the doors to a wider variety of professional development opportunities, with many conferences, webinars and other training moving online. At the English Language Institute at Missouri State University, we now offer the Cambridge CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) fully online, making it much more accessible to working teachers.

The CELTA  is one of the most widely accepted TEFL/TESOL qualifications in the world. Missouri State University is proud to be one of only 3 universities in the United States to offer the CELTA. This 120-hour teaching certification program includes workshops on a variety of topics related to teaching, observations of other experienced teachers, assisted lesson planning and assessed, supervised teaching of international students. While it was originally designed for pre-service teachers, many in-service teachers, including those with years of experience, find the CELTA at Missouri State to be an incredibly rewarding and enriching experience.

According to Chaz Miller, an EAP instructor for over 10 years, “Perhaps the most valuable takeaway from CELTA for me was that it really drove home the idea of thinking through my teaching practice from a student perspective rather than focusing primarily on the learning objectives. As a result, I am now much more mindful of trying to limit teacher talk time and creating student-centered lessons that better attempt to consider how language learners will experience those lessons in the classroom.”

Mohammed Sulaimani, a practicing high school English teacher in Saudi Arabia reflects on his CELTA experience: “This program opened my mind to understand the way of teaching. It helped me to understand the way students are thinking, how to deal with students inside the class, how to manage time—actually how to be a good teacher. Honestly, I think anyone who takes the CELTA will see a difference in the way of teaching before and after this program.”

Missouri State offers the CELTA in two formats—an 11-week part-time 100% online course and a 5-week face-to-face course. Here are our upcoming courses:

Current Midtesol members receive a $100 discount on the CELTA!< Just mention you are a member on your application!

To apply or for more information: click here.

For questions, contact ELIteachertraining@MissouriState.edu.