Fifty Shades of Teaching Overseas

Guest Notes from the Recruitment Manager by Matthew Peck

I saw my Mother at a family lunch last Sunday.  All was most pleasant, the usual family catch up until my Mum took great delight in announcing she had joined the masses and read the “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy and “loved it”.  Having a general understanding of the novel’s content I responded as only a son could “Yuk Mum, too much information”!  The very thought of my own Mother reading so called Mummy porn was obviously not one I relished – but perhaps I should not have been too surprised to hear that she had joined the “Fifty Shades” bandwagon.  Like any popular craze, word of mouth (not to mention the anonymity of reading it secretly on a Kindle!) has helped sales of the books rocket in to the stratosphere….. and it’s clearly fulfilling a need!

At Teachanywhere we have witnessed similar popularity explosions when it comes to location choices for our international teachers.  Dubai being a prime example.  And why not?  Dubai has everything a modern westerner might need.  Bright lights, big city, - affording teachers an ease of living.  I visited Dubai for the first time last year and was similarly dazzled by its various attractions.  Who wouldn’t want to live here?  Well, erm – me actually…  - great holiday destination but not enough substance or traditional culture to sustain my interest – but hey that’s just me – we are all different after all and I am certainly in the minority.  Here at Teachanywhere, our goal is to help teachers be as flexible as possible when it comes to location in order to afford them many more chances of securing a great teaching role (after all there are only a certain number of reputable schools in one location like Dubai and a huge number of people are vying for them!). 

Like Fifty Shades, Dubai clearly has a market and its wealth of western style malls, restaurants and facilities will always attract large crowds and word has very quickly spread.  But what about the rest of the Middle East region?   Likewise – could there be a more gripping, better written book out there that deserves success on a par with Fifty Shades but has perhaps suffered from poorer marketing and lets face it a slightly less tantalising hook!?  Undoubtedly.  Similarly, are teachers missing out by going for the obvious location (when we ask prospective teaches “Why Dubai”? the answer is so often “because I have heard it’s nice”)?  What of Kuwait – the cultural gem of the Middle East where close knit expat communities enjoy a more traditional international experience?  Or Qatar – host of the 2022 Soccer World Cup, the Dubai of 10 years ago where smoky souks merge with the latest glitzy nightspots? Or even mysterious but stunningly beautiful Oman – where white sand beaches, mountainous terrain and tropical splendour all combine to provide a top class destination to live and/or holiday?  The Middle East has so much to offer so many and we want to make sure everyone is suitably informed.

Of course Dubai deserves its reputation as I am sure does Fifty Shades.  But as I remarked to my Mother as we battled with Auntie Sheila’s Pavlova - “why not read a first time novelist next?  Look beyond the most popular – imagine the joy of discovering a great writer unknown to others” (plus I selfishly prefer to imagine my Mum reading about 18th century romance rather than 21st century bondage but thats son's for you!)  and this I urge to all prospective international teachers.  It’s a big wide world out there – certainly with more than fifty shades!  Don’t just limit yourself to the obvious (because it’s nice!) .   Go for broke and try somewhere new…….  You might just become the trend setter!

Teaching Abroad: Apron Strings

Notes from the General Manager by Diane Jacoutot

I know what your parents feel like.

My sixteen year old son left this morning for Tanzania to work in a village building a playground and then to climb Mt Kilimanjaro. I'm simultaneously anxious, bereft and proud.  It's a strange combination of emotions.

At first when he told me his intentions over a  year ago, I was bursting with pride. A travel group had come into his school and presented to them the idea of 3 weeks in Africa - a combination of community service and physical fitness... and my son took to it like a duck to water. Ha! I thought.  This is my DNA in action. (every parent loves it when a child takes after them in a good way). I have a son who sees the benefit of reaching out to help those less fortunate and also does not shy away from challenges. So I went along to the information session and signed the cheque.

But as time has drawn closer, and the reality of what he will do - literally climbing a mountain and then living in an African town where water must be purified and rabies shots are essential- has dawned on me and my parental danger sirens have been flashing red. The nagging questions - what if something happens to him? what if he gets ill? what if he forgets to take his malaria tablets? what about altitude sickness?  and a hundred others have haunted my quiet moments.  I have not shared my concerns with my son, though I will readily admit my husband has heard quite a few and thankfully he's a patient man.

This morning was T-day- The day he left for Tanzania. And finally my son's nerves got the better of him.  I found that by letting him tell me about his anxious feelings, they were instantly less acute and I shared with him how nervous I felt before I went to Africa and to various other previously unknown countries in my travels but how wonderful were the experiences when I got there. This didn't stop me from tearing up, of course, as my husband drove away with Matt in the passenger seat, going to meet the rest of the expedition but at least I held it together when my son was around.  I thought this was an accomplishment because what part of me really wanted to do was grab onto his ankles and not let him walk out the door.

I felt better knowing that in his bag, I put a little secret note. It was stashed away in one of the many pockets of his enormous backpack. It said:

Dear Matthew,

By the time you find this note, you will hopefully be in Tanzania. I wanted to let you know how proud I am of you for going on this adventure and for having the dedication to make it happen. I am sure during your trip you will face many challenges but I can tell you from personal experience that the harder something is, the more you feel a sense of accomplishment in having done it.  It is the hardest challenges I ever faced that I am most proud of having faced down.  It's not easy to remember that when you are feeling tired, overwhelmed, stressed, exhausted and you can think of nothing more instantly rewarding than leaving it all behind. So I am telling you now that you should persevere wherever possible. It will be worth it when you can look back and say, "Wow. I did that!".

All my love

Mom

ps. I hope I don't find this note unread in the bottom of your backpack three weeks and 1 day from now. It would be just my luck. :) 

pps. Take lots of photos.

So I know how your parents are feeling.  No, you are not a 16 year old kid going to climb a mountain in Africa. You are embarking on a much longer journey that will impact many more people and will change your life all the same. Just remember, when you are awash in packing, visas, flight changes, passport renewals and medical checks that your parents and I (and the entire team at Teachanywhere) know it's not easy.

But nothing worthwhile ever is.

Teaching Overseas: To have and to hold....

Notes from the General Manager, by Diane Jacoutot

A woman in New York City splashed out $250,000 on a wedding for her dog. In case your invitation was lost in the post with mine, I can report that Baby Hope Diamond, a pooch belonging to Wendy Diamond of New York, married her paramour Chilly Pasternik in an event that included a $15,000 seven piece orchestra, a $5000 custom made dress (Not much of a market for off the shelf dog wedding dresses then?) and $5000 of sushi. For the human guests I hope. The wedding was planned by Harriet Rose Katz (ahem) who planned the celebrity wedding of Billy Baldwin and Cheyenne Phillips.  Proceeds from the nuptials went to the Humane Society of New York but methinks that’s not the point. Diamond said. "I never need to get married, now, because this wedding has everything." Exactly.

It’s been a week of wedding talk for me. Nick, in our office, is off getting married in the Caribbean as I write this, and Lisa in our office is planning her wedding next year. Yesterday I met with some candidates who were interviewing with a client from Abu Dhabi, and quite a few of them were getting married shortly. One in fact said she was only getting married IF she got the job in Abu Dhabi after being engaged for 3.5 years (so far). Her mother, as you can imagine, is really hoping she gets the job! Me too.

Unmarried partners are quite a thorny issue when you go abroad. Because marriage creates a legal bond between two people that is verifiable and internationally recognised, going abroad as a married couple is far simpler than going abroad as an unmarried couple.  Besides the fact that it’s illegal to live together as unmarried partners in some countries, if you are not married each person must have their own work sponsorship and each must secure their own job before going abroad whereas when you are married, one person can often sponsor the residency of the other ....although in some countries a man can sponsor his wife but not the other way around!

In addition, schools get really twitchy about uncertainty – what if your unmarried partner does not get a job or their job falls through? Will you pull out of the contract and leave the class without a teacher suddenly? It’s not something they or you have control over. And I understand this concern. It is not like a TEFL school where you can cancel class for an evening or two- we are talking about a class of 9 year olds who are there for the day or a bunch of 16 year olds studying for their exams. And you have a raft of demanding parents who are paying for the best education their money can buy.  The stakes are quite high and when the stakes are high, most people try to minimise risk.

So what should you do if you have a partner and you want to go abroad? We usually recommend that your partner get a job first and obviously target places that have lots of international schools, then we can look for a job for you nearby. Make sure your relationship is secure, and your partner’s job is secure.  Ideally, your life will be FAR easier if you get married so do consider that. (No I have not been lobbied by a group of mothers to say that- it’s the truth!)  If you do not wish to get married, then certain parts of the world will be off limits.

So for reasons that are based in international practicality I am a fan of marriage. And for this reason, I raise a glass ..well a mug of coffee actually as it’s only 8am... to Baby Hope and Chilly. I wish you a long and happy (and puppy-less because let’s face it you are both neutered) marriage!  Let the very expensive wedding bells ring.

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

Teaching Overseas - righting my wrongs!

Notes from the General Manager by Diane Jacoutot

When I worked at IBM in PC development (yes it’s a long story how I ended up in teacher recruitment. That’s for another newsletter. Or three) one of our jobs was to test new releases of the Microsoft operating system on our hardware. And we would find bug after bug and report them back to Microsoft. Some of them would get fixed but from time to time a resistant bug would be found and Microsoft, in their haughty way, would turn to us and say, “You know what, that’s not really a bug. It’s a feature.”  I use that terminology today. Our new TV turns itself off on occasion and our doorbell doesn’t work when it rains. Interesting features. 

So I need to point out a few features from last week’s newsletter which actually got quite a bit of feedback, and that’s really great. At least I know that people are reading it!  So here are a couple of the inaccuracies last week’s discussion about the educational standards at secondary/high school around the world.

·         Feature number 1.  In New Zealand , School Certificates are not given out at 16. This is apparently very old news that just took a while to make it all the way around the world to me here in London.   Instead they get National Certificates of Education Achievement levels 1 through 3 as they rise through years 11 through 13.

·         Feature number 2. Australia is in the process of adopting a national curriculum called ACARA. It’s in consultation at the moment. And Australia doesn’t have provinces, it has states/territories.  Doh.

·         Feature number 3. Pursue is spelled pursue not persue. Ahem.

·         Feature number 4. For the US, I mentioned AP exams but didn’t mention SAT or ACT. These last two are standardised tests that universities use to measure academic success because there are no national standards.

So for today, I will think of myself as better than Microsoft, at least in this one little way-I can admit when I’m not entirely right. (don’t like to use the words ‘ I was wrong’ out loud. You don’t know who might be listening.... my boss or maybe my husband. )

“We made too many wrong mistakes”  - Yogi Berra, baseball player and very  funny guy.

“I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong” – Benjamin Franklin, American inventor.

“Darling, of course your directions were correct. It’s just someone must have moved the hotel we’ve been trying to find for an hour several blocks north when we weren’t looking” – my husband, right before I swatted him with the map.

Worldwide Education Systems and Teaching Overseas

Notes from the General Manager by Diane Jacoutot

My 16 year old teenage son has been hanging around the house lately.  He doesn’t go into school much, or have a job and he watches a lot of TV.  He disappears for long stretches of time in his room and I have to admit that he sleeps quite late.

 No, he’s not in training to be on the dole- he’s on official leave from school and studying for his GCSEs!

A GCSE is a subject specific test in the UK (stands for General Certificate of Secondary Education) that a student takes at 16 years old (or 12 if you have pushy parent and/or you are a genius). Most students take 5 to 12 of these tests in core subjects plus other subjects of interest.  Those who want to go on to University go on to take a smaller number (usually 2 to 5) A levels in subjects that interest them further, usually done at 18. Teaching A levels requires both a deep subject knowledge as well as knowledge of what the exam board wants to see.  You might know the subject inside and out but there is always a skill to knowing how to take a particular kind of test on it.

Because at Teachanywhere we recruit from many different countries, I thought I would give you a little fly-by on secondary educational systems in countries from which we recruit and how they generally mesh with the UK , IB and US systems – the systems most international schools use. It will be handy for you to be able to translate what you have taught to what international schools want to hear.

Country	National Curriculum?	Testing at 16ish	Testing at and result at 18
UK/England Wales and N Ireland	Yes	GCSE (Subject Specific)	A-levels (subject intense)
USA	No		No testing by government. High school diploma.  Requirements vary by state.  Can take externally moderated AP exams (subject intense)
International Baccalaureate (IB)	Not applicable	Not applicable	IB Diploma (subject specific/intense)
Canada	No		High school diploma. Requirements vary by province.
Ireland	Yes	Junior Certificate (subject specific)	Senior Certificate (subject intense)
Scotland	Yes	Intermediate exams (subject specific)	Highers and Advanced Highers (subject intense)
Australia	No, but they are talking about it		Senior Certificate of Secondary Education (varies by province)
New Zealand	Yes	School Certificate	National Certificate of Educational Achievement
South Africa	Yes	Matriculation exams (subject specific)	National Senior Certificate (subject intense)

You can see how different all the countries are, and this is exactly why you should never use country specific acronyms on your CV and why it’s important to explain your system to interviewers who might not be from your country. How is a Head Teacher from  Australia at a school in Kuwait going to know what is an NSC or  the difference between Highers and Advanced Highers? (answer: they won’t).  But hopefully this gives you an idea of what level of knowledge a school is looking for when they say they want someone who can teach IB Maths or English to GCSE.

Testing of course is a contentious issue – every educator has an opinion, and a different one at that. But remember that international schools are  almost always focussed on academics – this is what parents are paying for and why many have entrance exams.  Testing and results orientated culture is a  fact of live in international schools.

Question: why is an examiner like an optician?

Answer: they both test pupils.

All the best,

Diane Jacoutot

Teaching abroad and the cost of living

Notes from the General Manager by Diane Jacoutot, General Manager

I hope you are sitting down as you read this shocker, but it appears that there is very little market in Vancouver Canada for $450 pizzas.

This surprising news was discovered by Canadian Nader Hatami when he offered a pizza named C6 on his menu that features black Alaskan cod, lobster thermidor and a side dip of Russian Caviar. So far he has only sold one. On the other hand, his second priciest pizza- the $120 version (a relative bargain I suppose) with Icelandic scampi and lobster ratatouille has flown off the shelves to at least 7 people.  Who would have thought that there is any market at all for super gourmet pizza?  The Canadian economy must be doing better than I thought. Perhaps $120 is not a lot to spend on a humble meal which got it start when southern Italian bakers decided to approximate the Italian flag in food – red tomatoes, green basil and white mozzarella on flat bread.... What did you say? That $120 is not chump change in Vancouver?

No, I thought not.

Cost of living is something which is really hard to explain to people and doesn’t really impact you until you live it. When we live at home, we instinctively know how much something costs.  You know what a can of Coke or a bottle of water costs. You know about how much a taxi ride to town costs. And you know about what percentage of your take home pay you lose to taxes and rent and electricity and phone bills. All of this is subconscious, really. It’s the air you’ve been breathing for years.

But when you go away all of these costs change.  And often they go down. So you might get free housing – wham! There’s several hundred dollars each month that’s not slipping away. Food might be 50% cheaper so bingo, there’s another hundred. And taxes might be 10% as in the Far East and Kazakhstan or 0 in the Middle East so whoa – there’s an extra 30% of your salary you can pocket. And so on...  It really adds up.

This is the answer to the Big Question we get at Teachanywhere from those who are new to the international circuit. “Everyone says you can save money when you go abroad. But I don’t get it because I’m making so much less money on this salary”. 

Of course it does depend on what you spend your money on. Those of us who have been on holiday abroad and have wandered into a shop looking for a favourite snack that is common at home but clearly must be imported to this foreign country have had sticker shock. I will never forget when I found a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in England for £4.50 ($6.75) and my jaw hit the floor. (And no, it was not even the deluxe kind.) In the US the stuff goes for $1.25 – it was highway robbery.

But then again, I reasoned, someone went to the trouble of getting it all the way over here and frankly, since most Brits have no idea of the cheesy (?) goodness that sits within a box of this highly addictive foodstuff, it is not going to be a big seller, hence the markup.  So if you live abroad and eat like a tourist, it’s going to cost you more. But if you live abroad and eat like a local.... well this is where you save big money.

For those of you who want to play around, the cost of living calculator on Expatistan does the job fairly well. But keep in mind that it includes housing which is often free to teachers living abroad so take that out of the calculation. You really care about food , travel and entertainment.  It’s HERE 

Finally, in other fascinating Canadian pizza-related news (sorry Canada, it’s one of those days) the Winnipeg Sun reported that 22 year old pizza delivery man Justin Labrie is going to jail for 6 months after an overzealous attempt to get a pizza to the customer on time at all costs. Apparently he led police on a high speed chase where he forced two pedestrians to dodge to safety, ran a red light and gave the police the finger as they signalled him to pull over before he sped away with his precious cargo. 

There is no mention of whether he received a good tip for his efforts.

All the best

Diane Jacoutot