About our Partner TEFL School

Florence is a centre of learning, so you will be well served if you choose to follow our teaching practice programme here with our Partner organisation in Tuscany. The teacher training centre is located in the zone known as San Jacopino, a ten minute walk from both the central train station, Firenze Santa Maria Novella, and the Fortezza da Basso, a former fortress. You will be working with a group of other trainees in the middle or towards the end of a 4 week intensive teacher training course in a friendly, supportive environment. You’ll be teaching mainly Italian adults (of all ages and English language proficiency levels), with other students from Eastern Europe and a few from North Africa. Many of the students come in for low cost English lessons and class size will vary from 1-20 depending on time of year, weather, size of classroom, and time of day. It will be an authentic teaching experience in a living language school, where you will be supported and encouraged in equal measure.

There are 4 classrooms at the language and cultural centre site.  The English language learners are friendly, participative, energetic, fun, and very interested in learning English from the teacher trainees. Most of the teaching practice is done directly at the training centre site, but depending on time of year, requests from other venues for teaching become available. These requests give trainees more experience and in some cases the opportunity to recycle a lesson that they have already received feedback on from trainers, which allows them to apply the feedback and redo the same lesson for a new group of students.  Past venues have been other language schools, photography school, community and/or social centers, elementary schools, etc.


About Florence

In the heart of Tuscany, Florence is the capital of the renaissance. It contains many of the world's treasures in its glorious piazzas, world renowned museums and important historical sites. It is close to other well-known Tuscan cities such as Siena, Lucca, and Pisa.

Nearby the teacher training centre you will find Italian cafes for drinking Italian coffee and several affordable restaurants. You will be learning in a real Italian neighborhood where you can meet, eat lunch with, and socialise with Italians who actually live and carry out their daily lives in the vicinity. As a result, you’ll be exposed to an authentic Florence, not the Florence that is created for tourists. The school, and its location, will prepare you to succeed in an Italian community if your objective is to live and work in Italy, whether it be in a small town or big city. 

Course dates

Course dates are available at the bottom of our course Contents page. Click on the tab above to view these for 2011. 

Teaching here

Global English graduates have rarely found difficulty in finding work in Italy, and with the 1 or 2 week teaching practice under your belt, it will be even easier to land that first position. You’ll see several positions advertised on websites like www.tefl.com but you can also arrange work from within Italy, depending on your residency status (very easy for EU residents).

Accommodation is not usually offered with most positions, but salaries here are often good and outside the main cities life will be considerably less expensive.

Teaching Practice Prices –

1 Week - 530 Euros 

2 Weeks - 770 Euros

Apply today:

If you are ready to apply, then please click on the brown 'Visit site' button towards the top of this page to complete the online form at the TEiI website. Along with the form, you will be asked to pay a 150 USD deposit to hold and guarantee a place in the course for the dates of your choice. This amount has already been included and converted to Euros in the Teaching Practice Prices above.  

Bookings are made under TEiI Terms and Conditions. Please note that you will need to have completed a TEFL/TESOL course of 150 hours or more prior to starting your Teaching Practice programme. However, you can sign up for a Global English online course at the same time. You would need to have completed at least 2 modules of your GE online course before commencing the TP programme.

I found it an excellent experience and would have missed out on so much had I not gone. I sat as an observer with a Diploma group of 10 TEFL students, already in their second week when I arrived.   TLC seems to follow a US version of teaching TEFL (different terminologies and American texts/scripts/scenarios) – possibly because four of their five tutors are North American - so I had to re-interpret what they were saying into the format I had been used to with British TEFL.  However, by the end of the second week I was so used to their way of doing things that I’m now going to incorporate them into my own teaching practices.

Of course, the reason for going to Florence was to experience TEFL teaching – and I found this exceeded expectations.  My first task was to teach a group of 14 post-graduates at Firenze University.  The topic was ‘Job Interviews’ and I was given 48 hrs to deliver a lesson plan in the TLC format and do the actual teaching.  Everything went according to plan and I was even able to answer random questions with no hesitation, maybe because I’ve always been interested in word definitions and could explain the meaning of words and how to use them.  (I even wrote a word definition section as part of my Ph.D.)  My other classes included Beginners, Elementary and Lower Intermediary, plus 90 minutes of unmonitored teaching.

I found all the TLC tutors highly professional, very knowledgeable and dedicated.  I enjoyed the lesson planning and teaching demos.  I wish my time there had been longer.

Outside TLC I practiced my (elementary+) Italian at every opportunity - in shops, restaurants, etc. - and all the Italians I came in contact with responded well to it.  I also noticed that I seem to ‘absorb’ words without ‘consciously’ learning them through everyday exposure to the language – thereby validating the teaching methods used by TLC!  I’ve already started to capitalise on this and am now following a BBC online course to get myself up to a higher standard.

Kirstin said that she (and TLC) will give me a reference, so I am delighted with this as it means I now have a referee from someone inside TEFL.
Alastair MacDougall

"Great mixture of excellent training and teaching practice. The school organized on excellent program that gave us experience at a variety of levels, ages, and environments."
Karen Pitcher

"Everything was great. I really enjoyed the variety of teaching opportunities given to me. The rapport with staff members and other students was really good, supportive, and fun."
Laura Kincey

"I have progressed quite a lot throughout the course between improving my directions to effectively managing the class. This has been a great learning experience in every aspect. I feel like I am ready to teach my own class!"
Kate McArdell

"The staff is always available and helpful, and the observers are positive and supportive."
Ciara