Teaching Overseas: Goodbye and Hello!

Notes from the General Manager by Diane Jacoutot

It’s been a week of goodbyes. First Bob Diamond stepped down as the head of Barclays bank after his initial anaemic response to the latest banking scandal to merely go without a bonus for 12 months (ie downsize from his typical magnum of Cristal with Sunday Brunch to a mere 75cl bottle this year. What will the neighbours think?) almost caused a riot in the streets. Then Katie Holmes bid farewell to Tom Cruise and his friends from Xenu. And finally in Florida USA, lifeguard Tomas Lopez was bid adieu (aka fired) for saving a drowning man because the man was drowning in a section of beach slightly outside that which Mr Lopez was paid to patrol.

Saying goodbye can be easy, as in the case of Mr Diamond with his hubris and ethics-free lifestyle, but in most cases it’s hard when you say goodbye to people you care about and familiar places to which you have become accustomed.  When you work abroad, saying goodbye is a fact of life. 

Probably the hardest goodbye is when you leave for the first time because you know what you are leaving but don’t know where you are headed and you are less practiced at easing your way out the door.  Family and especially parents often sneak in that special kind of guilt-laden goodbye that only caring parents have access to (do they teach this at Parent School? I wonder). 

“Oh  Diane”, my mother said last time I left, “It was so good to have you home. It’s a shame you live so far away”

With friends you get more of a mixture of sadness because you are leaving and jealousy because they secretly wish they were going too. But this is tempered with promises to visit... and usually they do.

 Of course the flip side of saying goodbye to those you know and love is saying hello to your new school and your new friends.  It may be comforting to know that, on average, international schools change 20% of their staff every year. So you will certainly not be the only New Kid in class. And it also means that international schools are set up to greet you and help you settle in because staff movement is normal and welcomed as a source of fresh ideas. Those who choose to teach in international schools are people who love travel and are unafraid of meeting new people, so you can be assured that you will be saying hello to some very interesting and welcoming people indeed. One of the reasons I really love working with international schools and organisations is that the clients I get to work with and the candidates we meet are so open-minded, bright and balanced that the whole working abroad thing, whilst difficult on one hand because of who you leave behind, is so easy because of who you get to work with.

Goodbye is hard but you cannot have goodbye without hello, just like you can’t have happiness without sadness and light without dark. 

Of course actually saying hello and goodbye and being understood is another matter when you go abroad. So below is a handy cheat sheet for you to start you on your way:

	Hello	Goodbye
Chinese	Nin Hao	Zai Jian
Russian	Zdravstvujtye (zdrah-stvooy-tee)	Do svidaniya! (duh svee-dah-nee-ye)
Arabic	Salaam Alaykum	Ma salaama
Malay	Hello	Selamat tinggal