The Thrilling Life of International Teaching
Tuesday morning. 7:30 a.m. You yawn and blink your eyes against the overhead fluorescent lighting that won’t stop buzzing. You had a hard time sleeping last night because you were angry about a parent email you received leaving work the day before. “Where did I go wrong?” you wonder, sipping burnt coffee. A mountain of papers to grade threatens to spill off your desk, and the day hasn’t even begun yet.
Perhaps it’s time for a change. You’ve heard about international teaching from a former coworker. Maybe it doesn’t have to be like this. Maybe, just maybe, you could go live in an exotic location, make decent money, travel the world, and actually enjoy teaching again. Maybe, but not likely.
The problem is, it isn’t much better anywhere else. How do I know? Because I just returned to America after living and teaching overseas for over 11 years, and it’s just not the lucrative opportunity it once was.
What is International Teaching?
In case there’s any confusion, International teaching means teaching in an International School that caters to students from all over the world. It is not the same thing as teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) In an international school, you’re teaching the same thing that you already teach in your home country, just overseas. If you’re a Biology teacher, you’d be teaching Biology. If you teach 4th grade, you’d be a fourth-grade teacher in an international school. A little flexibility may be required to get the job (for example, teaching 5th grade instead of 4th), but that’s the general idea.
Curriculum
The most common schools you’ll find are American, British, or International Baccalaureate (IB) schools, but the bigger the international community, the more likely there’s a school that caters to them. For example, there are a large number of Indian curriculum schools in Dubai.
How to Find an International Teaching Job?
This is a huge topic that I’ll cover in a separate post, but first, let’s explore whether you even want this job. So let’s go over some of the pros and cons of international teaching, and then you can decide for yourself if it’s worth it.
Benefits of International Teaching
Salary
Can you make a lot more money teaching overseas? It depends. While there are some very high-paying schools out there, many international schools pay roughly the same salary as schools in America. However, taxes are often lower, so your take-home pay will be higher.
Housing and Utilities
Additionally, most overseas locations offer housing as part of their teaching package, and I don’t need to tell you how big of a benefit that can be. Often housing includes at least some utilities, another massive savings.
Affordable Healthcare
Healthcare is usually heavily subsidized, but you need to check those insurance packages. Do they include international care, or do they just include the country that you’re living in? You also need to check the quality and availability of that local healthcare, because that varies wildly. For example, you may get an entire ward to yourself when hospitalized, with a personal nurse who orders your choice of catered food. However, you could just as easily end up in a WWI-era trauma ward, complete with screaming amputees. A good healthcare package is priceless, though.
Tuition Benefits
Tuition benefits are pretty standard because your children aren’t going to attend Shanghai Experimental College #12. Therefore, an international school should offer some type of tuition benefit. Otherwise, that’s a major red flag. Understand that tuition benefits usually cap out at two students, though, so be sure to check.
Flights
That all sounds great, but how are you supposed to afford four flights to Thailand for the entire family to get to your new, exciting job? Yearly flights! That’s right, most schools offer annual airline flights to your country of residence.
All of these benefits can add up to you receiving much more take-home pay than you would receive in the United States, for example. This means that all those exotic trips are now on the table–especially since they shouldn’t be as far from your new location overseas.
Drawbacks of International Teaching
But not so fast! If it were this wonderful and easy, don’t you think more teachers would be doing this? Consider that once the excitement of moving to a foreign exotic location has worn off, reality sits in. If you don’t do your research and you get stuck working for a terrible school in a worse environment, you have little recourse. Then, if you decide to pull a runner and quit, you can say goodbye to your international teaching career, though it shouldn’t impact you domestically too much. Leaving early is a major financial setback, too.
But you’re tough, right? You can handle anything. What would possibly be so bad that you want to throw your international career away before barely getting it off the ground?
Housing Horrors
Subpar apartments for one. I hope you like mold, bugs, termites, poor-quality furniture, thin windows, lack of proper heating and air, and scorpions. The housing varies wildly, but often it will not be the quality that you’re used to. All housing has some issues, it just shouldn’t have all of them.
Harassment and Bullying
No, I’m not talking about the students here, but the admin. Administrators at international schools feel more emboldened to behave badly, probably because foreign teachers simply do not have the same level of rights that they have in their home countries. Therefore, they can threaten, backstab, and change contracts with impunity. They won’t pay for overtime, but your workload will demand it. And those benefits that lured you overseas? They can be changed on a whim because administrators know you can’t just stroll down the street to get another job.
The Myth of the Perfect Student
Spoiler alert: Just because you left your home country doesn’t mean your student problems will disappear. There may be different problems, but there will always be problems. Depending on the nature of the country you relocate to, if you have a student with serious problems, such as selling drugs or harming animals, they can be very difficult to discipline. Some countries even have laws against expelling students, and rich, entitled parents know how to work the system in a way that you can’t.
Utilities (again)
So you think you hate the cable company now? People underestimate how difficult it can be to live overseas day-to-day. If you’ve moved to a country where you don’t speak the language, even simple tasks can become infuriating nightmares. Have you ever tried to set up Wi-Fi in Chinese? Select a phone plan in Portuguese? Order food in Arabic? All while not getting ripped off?
Finally, consider that your world will become smaller in some ways. This may sound paradoxical, but moving overseas makes it more difficult to find friends outside of your workplace, so they’re going to be your initial source for socializing. This does mean if you have a toxic work environment, it infects every part of your life. Of course, it is possible to meet friends outside of work, but it takes time and language skills, and you’ll miss the support network of friends and family left behind.
Is international teaching for you?
Only you can decide. I know I painted a harsh picture at times here, but there are few options for someone who hasn’t done this to truly understand the full picture of the world they may be entering. Much like in America, International schools vary in quality. Some really are incredible. However, the golden days of international teaching are probably over. The schools, pay, and students have gotten worse, while the workload and duties have grown. Sound familiar?
