The reverse is true for us brazilians abroad - having a brazilian BA or MA does not entitle you to do a course abroad. When applying for the University of melbourne, they said my BA wasn't the equivalent to their Honours - couldn't get it cause all public brazilian unis offer honours courses, we can't get a diploma without having a specific thesis year. After having sent lettes from uni, brazilian gov (I had a grant from them) and etc, they gave me a big no and i gave them a big F***, hahaha The requirements vary from uni to uni, my classmate,who happens to be a great friend of mine, ended up at Sussex with ALBAN scholarship - and, lol, we basically did the same stuff at uni, including the grant from CNPq (we worked under the same project)

After such digression, so that you know I sympathise with you guys, lol, I gotta tell you that depending on the university it's not that simple to be part of its staff. For example, at public unis you gotta go through a public examination, which is time-consuming and hard; at my uni dpt, English language and Literature, all the vacancies which were open 2 years ago were for people who had at least a PhD and 5 years of uni teaching experience. Plus publications etc etc etc.

As Denise said, in order to teach at High School and Primary School you gotta have licenciatura - diploma of education. Some schools may accept the "licenciatura curta" or as we commonly say, "complementação pedagógica", that is, you majored in any area and went back to uni to take specific education subjects in order to be a teacher. Others will only accept "licenciatura plena", that is, you took the education subjects plus other  subjects related to your teaching area. For example, I have "licenciatura plena" because I took education subjects such as didatics, psychology, phylosophy as well as educational subjects related to English teaching (as I have a BA in Language/Lit): teaching english as a foreign language, reading in foreign language, english for specific purposes... If you wanna teach at public schools, you have to have "licenciatura plena"

Certified ESL teachers - maybe you saw an ad from an English language school, right? I assume they're talking about accredited certification such as CELTA, DELTA, ICELT (issued by the uni of cambridge). I reckon they don't necessarily require a language degree holder but someone who's got expertise and related training.

In order to be a uni teacher you don't have to have a diploma of education, which sucks, as I had great researchers before me who were awful teachers, they didn't know how to lead us into critical thinking.  

Hi Akutyger,

Yeah, I pretty much feel the same - I have a BA in English Language and English and North-American Lits plus graduate certificate in Education and I get really mad when I find out a colleague of mine, who holds a CELTA and majored in law has as much value as I do. What is a CELTA compared to what we study at school of education? Maybe your "problem" is being "overqualified", as anyone who's lived in Miami for 6 months is entitled to be a "qualified" teacher as you are

This new law, well, it's not so new does not apply to what we call "curso livre". For example, Cultura Inglesa, CNA, Britannia, ICBEU are are "cursos livres" not regular schools. In order to teach at schools you have to have either "licenciatura plena" or "licenciatura curta" aka "complementação pedagógica".Both "licenciaturas" mean that you went through a higher degree course on education being the difference that in the former you had educational subjects related to your field (approaches/methodologies to teaching English, Teaching English as a foreign language, Teaching English for Specific Purposes) and the latter is less specific, just focusing on core subjects like Didatics, Psychology, Ed Tech, etc.