Hi,

I posted a not-too-dissimilar topic a few weeks back. It doesn’t answer all of your questions but if you haven’t come across it yet in the ‘teaching English’ section then you may find it useful to browse some of the replies I got. Best of luck with it all:

http://www.gringoes.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=16122

you don't need any cert to teach here. do a search in the teching english forums and you will find a number of threads about this. try getting experience before you come, most language schools will simply be happy that you are a native speaker...

Originally posted by jworld34 Can one make a good living teaching English? At an English business school, private class, translating, etc. Jack of all trades, persay?

Yes and no.

If you expect to make money just because you are a gringo, don't prepare lessons, and treat English classes as a way to just make beer money then it will be difficult.

If you plan things out, treat teaching as a business, and work hard you can be successful.

I can't speak about other cities, but I lived in BH for 2 years and I had little trouble finding work and getting a large number of private students. If you want to make money for yourself, get experience there then when you move to Brazil only teach private students

a word about poaching....
in many cases you'll have signed a contract saying you won't poach for a period of time (my last one was 12 months). While i wouldn't consider it legally binding (the typical school is likely screwing you on payment and would probably not withstand scrutiny at a labor tribunal if you were inclined to sue them on multiple counts), if I signed it, I wouldn't poach.
Yet if you do a good job networking will pay off much more than direct poaching will. Those students you can't take will refer their family, their coworkers, their bosses. There's really no need to directly poach.

As for contracts- I've found them to be totally useless, toothless, and a waste of time. Watch your payments carefully and don't worry about it. If someone doesn't pay regularly, dump them like a hot potato.

Also, to voltando, respectfully, i can't agree with this.
"the requirement to teach is that you speak fluent, the rest is up to you. "
Maybe for the short term gringo teacher, yes. You can quite easily teach at all levels without being fluent. Beginners and intermediate, being a good teacher and a learner yourself gives you a great advantage over native speaking teachers. For advanced people, the best teacher for a concurso, vestibular, etc is definitely a non-native speaking teacher who knows what the test is looking for.
People seem to lump all language folks together- teacher is translator is interpreter is conversation coach- and assume that just because you can speak the language you can do it all. Yet often they are really different people with really different abilities. Without classroom experience, you'd be a conversation partner. Get the experience and you can be a teacher too.

Edited by 3casas - 21 August 2012 at 09:11