What is the health care like where she is? That would be a big one to me.

Search also doesn't make it that easy. You need to look school by school to see what they offer in terms of pay and benefits and they don't put it into a pdf for you, it's just webpage. (You could make this, school by school, but it would be slow and time consuming.)

I'm trying to find where it says every two years, but now all the documents on the OCC are new. I think I first heard that from a head of school, that the courses 'expire' after 2 years, but now I can't even remember who said that to me. At any rate, in the self-evaluation documents, that are a five year cycle, they ask who's gone on what training when.
And in the The Diploma Programme: From principles into practice, they also say:

"Professional development should be ongoing for all teachers in a school, irrespective of their experience. Professional development is needed to keep experienced teachers up to date with course developments.

At a minimum, schools should take advantage of workshops or online professional development opportunities when a new curriculum has been developed following the curriculum review cycle."

Maybe that head of school calculated that between the five year self-evaluation cycle and the review cycle for the different subjects (since it wouldn't usually happen at the same time) you wouldn't be longer than two years (2.5?) in practical terms. They do go on to talk quite a bit about all the other ways to do professional development, which I am pretty sure was not included in the old literature. It always seemed a handy money maker for them to have their courses be out-of-date, so to speak, after two year's time, especially given their costs.

Are you sure you want to do this? They don't have a very good reputation.

I've seen a few like this, but think it is mostly and American phenomenon. Other places naturally have more demanding science and math programs and design technology classes.

With respect, pauljorg doesn't know what he's talking about. Firstly, I can tell you that I teach at a school that charges 30,000$ a year for students to attend and it hasn't even plumbed all of our buildings with hot water. The idea that you get what you pay for when paying tuition made me laugh a little. There simply is no relation. The idea that there would be shows a mindset that is not very familiar with how the rest of the world can work.

To the OP, in my experience, schools look for teachers with a good philosophical fit to the IB and then send them to training. Think learner profile and how a recruiter might look to see if a candidate would be good to make the investment. (This is required, by the way, schools must send teachers to IB training every 2 years, so the idea of no on the job training is also a bit silly, it's completely incompatible with the ethos of the IB.)

I would say, DON'T go home for a 'certificate' or pay to send yourself to an IB training. It's a lot of money and the school should be paying for it when they hire you. If you sit out of working for a year to get more training, in my opinion, you make yourself LESS attractive in the international job market because you could have had that one more year of experience, which schools care about far more.

Get into an ok IB school that will give you experience, it will be far more valuable to you, personally, professionally and financially.

dragonguy, South America is known for some of the characteristics you refer to: shorter school day, lighter expectations, more laid back in general. Whether the students are motivated or well behaved probably depends on the school. My bets are that you are likely to see better behavior than the average US inner-city school, but not likely to find the motivation that is part of Korean culture in a SA school with other lax expectations of its teachers. Pay is reputed to be not good to horrible, although some teachers go there after they have saved their 'pensions' so to speak, and 'retire' (working) there, when they are not worried about money. You can find a lot more about South America in general and specific countries in particular on the TES forum.

Of course, there are exceptions to all of this, a little bit of research would show you the few well-paying (but more demanding) schools in SA.

It's been pretty quiet. You can go to your SA page and see if you are still signed up for email alerts. When I looked to see the latest schools posting for my positions, the dates corresponded with the most recent emails. Not an encouraging sign. :(
Still, better to be patient for a good fit than be stuck with a school or country you absolutely hate for two years.

Didn't make the cut
for university level did you?

After getting the terminal degree in my field and finding out exactly how much less university professors make, as compared to public school teachers, it wasn't a hard choice between the two. Jobs in both areas are scarce, in both you will have to work very hard, but the pay and benefits are so much better in public schools, as compared to the 3 adjuncts = 1 retiring professor... why deal with those working conditions? Horrible pay to run all over town to maybe three different campuses at three different colleges to cobble together one paycheck for what will work out in the end to be less than minimum wage. And then, not knowing whether you have employment until about a week before the term starts, when the enrollment is in.

Explain to me again, why the professor has the better job?

Honestly speaking, your average first and even second year students in US colleges haven't had to work as hard or learned as much as students who have been through the Diploma Programme in the IB and done the work to do reasonably well in it. Many students who complete the IB say that their first year at college was not as difficult.
Incidentally, we have a math teacher at my current school who does not know how to teach HL, with the result that even the students and their parents know about it.

Bij Bam, From what I have seen, the preoccupation with 'native speakers' is a bit of... caving to parental, shall we say, expectations? I've heard a head of school say, in his decision-making process, that he couldn't have three non-native English speakers in a row, that is, for a teacher of year three, because the year two and year four teachers already weren't native speakers. This HoS didn't have anything against non native speakers or the teachers already at the school, I'm sure he would have liked to have had greater freedom in hiring the best candidate. But the parental pressure and the circumstances at the school made paying attention to the way this little breeze blew important. At that same school, we had non native speakers of English with master's degrees in it, who spoke it better than some of the native (and monolingual) speakers who were teaching there. (They have since been able to leave local-hire serfdom for much more lucrative posts elsewhere.)

At the end of the day, I would say, don't give up. There are schools out there who truly do have an international ethos and actively look to hire as wide a range of nationalities as they can. Don't give up. Look to better schools. They're out there.

Search Associates would be the best place for you to look. After you get past the 'front gate', you can search the jobs currently available by content area. I've been seeing a lot of special needs positions (relatively speaking, a few a month lately) posted. You're right, special ed is very different in international schools. In my experience, teachers overseas are not as interested in being inclusive or making accommodations as in the US. I would put that down to a cultural difference, in that there is no pressure in particular to be inclusive in international schools, it is pretty well up to the individual teacher's comfort and interest level. Some utterly don't make accommodations and dislike even having those students in their classes. Sad but true.

The hogwan experience doesn't give you salary steps BUT it does speak to your ability to adapt and adjust to another culture without doing a runner. That's not insignificant, and it's often your foot in the door. Because it is so expensive to bring in expat teachers, schools want to be sure that who they hire isn't going to decide the place isn't up to their expectations and then up and leave. I would play that part up in your cover letters.

Check Search Associates, check TES (the Times Educational Supplement, search your position under SEN). Some people swear by joyjobs and teach anywhere, but I haven't much used the last two and can't really speak to them.

Flyingpigs wrote:
International schools have to have teachers that know about the assistive programs out there, and have computer access to them.

I would disagree with this... international schools don't HAVE to have... anything. They don't even have to deliver whatever they might say on their website. They don't HAVE to adhere to anything. Some don't. They only have to know how to work within the laws of the country they are in (NOT the same as North American laws) OR know how to get away with not working within them. There's a lot of room for differences just from those two facts there.

> So--bottom line--knowing what works for your kid stateside, has to be replicated
> Internationally--which requires parental involvement and savvy--
(This begs the question, if you are trying to replicate what you have in the states... why are you trying to leave?)

Many international schools have selective admissions. When parents are diplomats or CEOs of multinational companies, they want their child's school to have strong academic results. Those results will be brought down by special needs students. (I don't say this because I am against inclusion. I am conveying the viewpoint.) Schools that are not selective often end up with the students who have been expelled from the selective schools in the area for seriously disruptive behavior simply because their parents have paid tuition. Those schools have their own challenges.

If you expect the same assistive services that you have in the US to be as easily found in an international school, you are in for a great deal more disappointment than just regarding this issue. There are A LOT of standards that are taken for granted in North America that simply don't exist elsewhere, not just in terms of assistance for special needs. Sidewalks. They're not everywhere. If you're in a city with horrendous traffic and no sidewalks, guess where you're walking. Breathable air and drinkable water. Not everyone has that either.

I recognize that I am coming across as being harsh, but it is better that you investigate this much more fully than get into a situation in another country where you might not even have the choice (saying you have the savings ready) to pick up and leave if things are horribly wrong. In some countries, you don't keep your own passport, your employer does. In others, you need an exit visa, obtained from your employer, in order to leave. If these two scenarios haven't at least given you pause, please, read more in the archives of this forum.

Having said all of that, it is not impossible for you to find what you are looking for in a school overseas, but it does limit the field considerably.

Teaching in a school with nothing,
> and making a go of it is the most rewarding teaching you will ever do, because the
> joy on the kids faces is worth its weight in gold.

When I taught in a school that did not have those resources, in spite of my best efforts to hide what we were lacking, the students KNEW what they could not do for want of tools and materials, they had been to other schools before. Their parents paid a lot of money for them to be there and still their work was limited by very basic wants. I actually did NOT find that experience rewarding, giving 5 times the effort because of simple, easily solved and unnecessary problems.

Lack of supplies, tools and dedicated working space have also been cited as evident when they occur in the subject reports for what I teach in DP. Examiners can spot it too.

So if you'd like to get in some choice last words,
> here's your opportunity.

I'd just like to say, I am generally whole-heartedly in favor of being free and clear of debt by paying it off as aggressively as possible. The one exception I would say to this, seeing that you are also from the US, is if you think you will want to refinance or otherwise take out another loan in the nearish to medium-term future. It is making more sense for me to drag out my by now few thousand dollar loan with very little interest because of the advantage it will give me with the credit score and the cost of refinancing a house note. My record of good payment will go away after a given amount of time; being out of the country, time seems to pass pretty quick.

This might be the only exception I'd make to the pay it down and make it go away guideline. It's a stupid game, but if you can make the stupidity work for you...

** I'd also add that I wouldn't delay paying down a loan in which I was paying a lot of interest. That's just silly.

"Its easy to do a lesson with a smart board, the internet , kids who are all motivated, entitled keeners from rich families clutching their macs....its not so easy to do a lesson with no chalk, no books, no electricity and no desks."

I'd just like to suggest that if you work from the premise that what is best for students is to have a healthy, happy community around them, this will automatically mean that teachers have what they need to have in order to teach. If you accept the premise that good teachers teach because they find it rewarding to help students learn, then it will be pretty important to have on hand the tools, materials and supplies needed to do one's job. Avoids the distraction of how to teach science with no beakers or chemicals, how to plan art lessons around only a ream of paper and how to teach PE without a dedicated space. There is all of this and worse. To my way of thinking, the phrase 'tier 3' is a form of short-hand for problems of this scale. We can debate 'tier 2' but to my way of thinking, there should be no doubt as to answering the question of "What's it like to teach there?" in terms of the types of challenges you are going to face at a 'tier 1' versus a 'tier 3'. One set of challenges should have some reward to it. The other is very likely to leave you feeling sucked dry with neither results nor cash to show for it.