Foreign Language Trainee Program

The FLTP is a professional development exchange program. Trainee will have the opportunity to enhance their teaching career through participation in a structured training program. The FLTP aims to improve the participant’s knowledge of American teaching techniques and methodologies, at the same time they will serve as Cultural Ambassadors.

Role of Participants: IIE provides participants in the FLT Program, both trainees and institutions, full administrative support throughout the academic year.   IIE assumes responsibility for preparing the Terms of Appointment (which serve as the contract between the candidate and the host institution), completing all necessary visa documentation, and providing candidates with orientation materials (i.e. housing, assignments, insurance and immigration issues).  Additionally, IIE supervises and monitors teaching trainees throughout the academic year.

Trainees:  Trainees are assigned diverse duties at their host institutions and are not limited to working exclusively in a formal classroom setting.   The ability of the teaching assistants to engage their students informally is quite often the key to successful language learning; therefore, faculty sponsors often program extracurricular activities into the teaching assistants’ work schedules such as sponsoring community lectures, hosting social events, and leading conversation groups.  These types of activities expose Americans to other cultures and serve to fulfill IIE's mission of promoting mutual understanding among nations. 

Selection of Participant: Your institution will receive a panel of 4-5 candidates that IIE determines match the profile you have requested. Candidates are frequently submitted to more than one host institution, in order to provide them with a multiplicity of opportunities for placement. Your institution perform the final review of the candidates and determine who you believe would be the most successful FLT for your school. Your institution submits the ranking to IIE. IIE subsequently notifies our overseas partners of a candidate’s final selection for the program.

Financial Provisions: All trainees must receive stipend.   Housing and meals arrangements will vary from institution to institutions.  Some may provide full room and board as part of the award offer, while others may expect the trainee to pay for these services out of the stipend money.  If trainees are housed with a host family, most often, they will not be responsible to pay for the housing or for meals. Trainees are assigned a work load consisting of teaching, assist teaching, leading conversation groups and related activities.  Trainees may not be assigned a workload that exceeds 32 hours per week.  Additionally, trainees are required to work exclusively at the host institution indicated on their visa documentation.

Training Programs are for one academic year.   One of the main objectives of the Foreign Language Trainee Program is to offer to as many teachers as possible the opportunity to spend a year in the United States.   Since this number is small by nature, renewal would be unfair to the many highly qualified candidates seeking these relatively rare posts.

Please contact the Program Officer for more information