A ten-week TEFL and TESOL course based in Udon Thani, run by two people who teach in Thai classrooms — one American, one Thai. You will stand in front of actual learners, be watched, and be told the truth about it. And the classroom is not a room.
No degree? Read the degree section before you spend a baht. We take trainees without degrees, and we will not pretend that changes Thai immigration law.
January 2027 is our first course. As of November 2026 there are no graduates yet, no testimonials, and no wall of logos. If that matters to you, wait for the second one — that is a reasonable thing to do and we will not argue.
What we can tell you is what is in it, who is teaching it, what it costs, and what it will and will not get you. Everything on this page is the truth as it stands today.
One thing we will do differently from the start: we tell you the truth about the degree requirement, even when it costs us the sale. That is the whole section below, and it is the reason to trust anything else on this page.
This site is one of five run by the same family: USAEnglish.com for the Isan storytelling championship, EnglishTeacher.com for pronunciation practice and a Thai–English dictionary, ESLteacher.com for the open Thailand job board, the visa checklist, the village volunteer track and free classroom worksheets, and USAEnglishTeacher.com for verified American teachers. All free, all still free.
The things a course should tell you before it asks for money. Here they are.
US$900 (about ฿30,400) is the whole thing — the tuition, the materials, and the observed teaching practice. Not a deposit, not a "from" price, not a figure that grows an exam fee later. One hundred and fifty contact hours is well above the 120 most Thai schools ask for, and it is contact hours in front of real learners, not videos watched alone.
Based in Udon Thani; the January 2027 classroom and the practice schools are announced to registered trainees by December 15, 2026.
Accommodation is not included; we send a list of nearby guesthouses with prices when you register.
US$900 (about ฿30,400) covers tuition, materials and observed practice; it does not cover lodging, food or transport.
Three hours a day, five days a week, for ten weeks: 150 contact hours.
| Unit | Hours |
|---|---|
| A day | 3 hours |
| A week | 5 days · 15 hours |
| The course | 10 weeks · 150 hours · January 15 to March 2027 |
Each week mixes classroom input with observed practice; the exact split is published with the timetable.
| Included in US$900 | Not included |
|---|---|
| Tuition | Lodging |
| Materials | Food |
| Observed teaching practice | Transport |
Payment: by bank transfer after you register interest and we confirm your place; no refunds; if you cannot attend, you can reschedule to a later course. The due date comes with the confirmation.
This is not the kind of classroom you have been to before. One week in our classroom can change your world. One week in most classrooms makes a new teacher plan the escape.
Most TEFL courses put you in one fluorescent room for a month. We do not have one room, on purpose. We rent empty classrooms from public schools around Isan for a little — real desks, real chalk dust, and, when the school day is on, real children next door. Between them, the course moves.
where you teach observed lessons to actual Thai learners — the whole point of the course.
quiet, shaded, and the natural place to plan a lesson and talk about what went wrong in the last one.
a morning where the vocabulary teaches itself and nobody forgets the lesson.
where the seminars happen, over food, because you teach better fed.
the reflection sessions — the part where the teaching actually settles into you.
Eat well first. The teaching comes easier on a full stomach, every day.
Why this way. The job you are going to take is forty children in a government school with one board and no air-conditioning, and a timetable that changed this morning. A course taught in one comfortable room in Chiang Mai does not prepare you for that. A course taught across the real places of Isan does — and it is, plainly, a better ten weeks of your life.
This is the part that matters, and the part a cheap online certificate cannot give you. You will plan lessons, teach them to actual Thai students, be observed, and get feedback you can use the next morning. Not peer teaching to other trainees pretending to be children. Real learners, in a real room — or under a real tree.
Why this decides everything. Anyone can sell you 120 hours of video and a PDF certificate. What a school actually wants to know is whether you have stood in front of forty children and held the room. A course without observed practice cannot tell them, and it cannot tell you — plenty of people find out in week one of a real job that they hate it, and that is an expensive place to find out.
Not a European language school with twelve motivated adults. A Thai government classroom: forty to fifty children, one board, no printer some weeks, a mixed ability range of three years inside one room, and a curriculum you do not choose. We teach to that.
Taught by Ploypailin Moonsri and Ben Cunningham. Ben's own teaching certificate is in progress (see usaenglishteacher.com/certified.html); the course is delivered under the Rennert license.
Thai. Born and raised in a village outside Surin, in Isan, in a family that spoke Isan Lao and Thai at home. She taught herself English from cassette tapes from the age of nine, and in 2010 she stood up at Ban Han Hee School in Rattanaburi and told a story in English well enough to win gold.
She teaches Thai children English for a living. She knows what a Thai classroom expects of a teacher, what a Thai parent expects, and exactly how it feels to know hundreds of English words and freeze when you have to say one out loud.
American. Volunteer English teacher at Ban Han Hee School, Rattanaburi district, Surin. He built the free tools on the sister sites because the ones that existed were made for classrooms that look nothing like the ones here.
He takes the trainee calls himself — before you enroll, and after.
One Thai teacher and one foreign teacher, on purpose. Most of what goes wrong for a new foreign teacher in Thailand is not language teaching. It is not understanding the room. Half of this course is taught by somebody who grew up in it.
Most TEFL schools avoid this question because the honest answer costs them sales. Here it is.
A bachelor's degree — in any subject — is required for a teacher work permit in Thailand. A TEFL or TESOL certificate does not replace it, and no course, ours included, can change that. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either mistaken or selling you something.
If a school offers you classroom work without a degree, be careful. It usually means no work permit, which means you are working illegally, on someone else's decision, with the risk landing entirely on you. That is a bad trade however good the school seems.
Because a degree is not the only door, and because the people who ask us this question are usually already doing one of these things, or about to.
If you come to us without a degree, we will say all of the above to your face, on a call, before you pay anything. If your plan depends on walking into a Thai government classroom on a work permit next term, we will tell you it will not work and we will not take your money.
We would rather lose the fee than have you find out in Bangkok.
Before you spend money on any course, including ours, know what the job legally needs. Rules change — treat this as the checklist to ask about, and confirm the current position with the Thai embassy in your country, the Immigration Bureau and the Ministry of Labor.
| What | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| A bachelor's degree, in any subject | Generally required for a work permit as a teacher. The original certificate and transcripts are usually needed, not copies. |
| A TEFL or TESOL certificate, usually 120 hours | What most schools ask for. This course is 150 contact hours with an in-class component, which is worth more than an online-only one, and some employers say so explicitly. |
| A criminal background check from your home country | Often needs legalizing. It is slow. Start it early. |
| A Non-Immigrant B visa and a work permit | Arranged with the school. Never start work on a tourist visa on a promise that it will be sorted later. |
| A Teachers' Council (Khurusapha) license or waiver | Schools normally handle the waiver. Ask who is paying for it and who is doing the paperwork. |
The full checklist, including the order things happen in and the questions to put to a school in writing, is free on our sister site: the visa and work permit checklist at ESLteacher.com. So is a guide to your first week in a Thai school. You do not need to buy anything to read either.
Our course material is licensed from the Rennert New York TESOL Center, an ACCET-accredited institution. TESOLteacher.com itself is not accredited by ACCET or DEAC, and we will say so until it is. Check any provider's claim in the accrediting body's own directory before you pay.
The material is delivered under our own name, taught by an American and a Thai in a Thai classroom.
How to check any of this: accreditation is a public fact, not a logo. Every accrediting body publishes a directory of the institutions it accredits; look there for Rennert's ACCET accreditation, and for every other course you are considering. A provider who will not tell you which body accredits them, or whose name is not in that body's directory, has told you something.
Not for the course. For a legal teaching job in Thailand, yes — read the degree section before you spend a baht.
Only with a bachelor's degree: it is required for a Thai teacher work permit, and the course cannot change that. Without one, the honest options are in the degree section.
Ask us. January 2027 is our first course, so there are no earlier trainees whose route we can point to; we will tell you before you book.
We check on a short call before you book. Ben takes those calls himself.
18 or over.
Schools may require one; bring it if you have it. A legal teaching job in Thailand needs one anyway, and it is slow — see what Thailand actually requires.
Udon Thani; the classroom and the practice schools are announced to registered trainees by December 15, 2026, and lodging is not included — see Where, exactly.
By bank transfer after we confirm your place; there are no refunds, but you can reschedule to a later course; the due date comes with the confirmation — see what the fee covers.
No deposit, no commitment. Tell us where you are, whether you have a degree, and what is making you consider teaching in Thailand. Ben reads these himself and will answer.
That opens an email to ben@usaenglish.com with a few questions in it; if it does not open, write to that address with the same four answers. We do not sell or share your details, and we will not add you to anything you did not ask for.
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