Putting aside classroom experience (the best teacher), what professional development have you felt most aided your career, either through its applicability in practice, or marketability in career movement?

helloiswill wrote:

> 2. A nice perk of TNTP is I get to do my Master in Education at Johns
> Hopkins next year. JH has a great name but the tuition comes in a just
> about $17,000. Will a degree from JH be worth the steep price on the
> international school market or should I settle for a more modestly priced
> state school? I think in North Carolina (where I am currently living)
> tuition would be about 5,000 - 8,000)


From what I've read around on here where you get your masters is of little importance compared to what you're getting a masters in (Educational Leadership, Instruction, etc). Internationally (unless they're an alumni) there won't be much of any difference in someone seeing you got a M.Ed. from the University of Virginia compared to a M.Ed. from say, Virginia Commonwealth University. If you want to make a career in the states the JH degree might get your foot in a few more doors, but for an international career I don't think it's worth it.

For what it's worth, here's a copy-paste of one of Psyguys 'tier dumps', as I have now decided to call them.



TIERS:

Tiers certainly exist. While its true that you should pursue ISs that match your needs and wants, the tier system is not a means of comparing an IS to your criteria, but a metric of comparison between ISs. You can be very happy or content at a third tier IS but it is still a third tier IS.

Tiers arent official but they are more or less formalized, as a profession weve been using the system for between 5-10 years. As a profession their is a lot of consensus on the top, middle and the bottom, where we disagree is the boundaries and the margins.

Japan is a "highly preferred" region, lots of people want to relocate there, and will do anything to do so. Singapore is one of the little tigers (along with HK, JP).

The tier system reflects IT/educator predictive experience, not quality of education.
There is a correlation between learning quality and outcomes and tiers, mainly that lower tier ISs reflect talk and chalk, drill and kill, rote memorization, and other "direct teach" meds/peds. Students are more or less pushed through the process with little regard for actual performance. A significant population of these students are successful in lower tier ISs because their parents are paying tuition, and thats it.
Upper tier ISs do produce considerable learning and growth outcomes, the issue is that these students are well resourced, and come from affluent backgrounds were education is valued, and were disruptions within the IS are minimized. In such cases it is questionable if the IS and the program it provides was a significant contributing factor to the students achievement, and with the inability to test alternative hypothesis, we dont know if the student would have been as successful in another learning environment.

Below you can find the PsyGuy Applicant Assessment System:

PsyGuy Applicant Scoring System:
1) 1 pt / 2 years Experience (Max 10 Years)
2) 1 pt - Advance Degree (Masters)
3) 1 pt - Cross Certified (Must be schedule-able)
4) 1 pt - Curriculum Experience (IB, AP, IGCSE)
5) 1pt - Logistical Hire (Single +.5 pt, Couple +1 pt)
6) .5 pt - Previous International School Experience (standard 2 year contract)
7) .5 pt - Leadership Experience/Role (+.25 HOD, +.5 Coordinator)
8) .5 pt - Extra Curricular (Must be schedule-able)
9) .25 pt - Special Populations (Must be qualified)
10) .25 pt - Special Skill Set (Must be documentable AND marketable)

IT CLASSES:
1) Entry level ITs have a score around 2
2) Career ITs have a score around 4
3) Professional ITs have a score around 6
4) Master ITs have a score around 8

My reactive response is that your competitive for a tier 1 IS. That means that many of the people int he room will have resumes with comparable marketability.

The following is the aforementioned extended treatise on the Tier System:

There is no objective definition of Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3, and as such there is no "master list" of who is in which list, and to that end even if there was no one would agree on it. Youd have some consensus with schools like WAB (Beijing), and ISB (Bangkok), but there would still be a lot of disagreement. As a community we tend to agree achieve consensus on the top and the bottom of the tiers. Our biggest disagreement is the margins in-between and the middle. Though if your on the international school circuit long enough you get a feel for which schools are at which tier. School quality also has a lot to do with where you are a tier 2 school in Hong Kong, might be a tier 1 school in mainland China...

There is no "definition" of Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3. Its all subjective, There are several models generally applied to dividing of the tiers, the teacher model is:
Elite Tier: Top schools in the first tier usually 1-2 schools.
1st Tier: The top 5%
2nd Tier: 75%-95%
3rd Tier: Bottom 75%
Upper tier is typically the elite, first tier and some portion of the second tier. Lower tier is the third tier and some portion of the second tier.
In general when teachers describe a tier 1, etc school from one another it comes down to

1) Compensation package
2) Work environment.

Historically the compensation package is the priority, not because of greed or anything, but because its easy to quantify. If your in Brazil, $30K is better then $28K. Schools that pay more for a given region tend to have more stable finances (a sign of longevity, given enrollment, and reputation), and have larger endowments, meaning they have been around long enough to develop efficiency and have well planed capitol projects. Better schools can charge more in fees, and be more selective in their admissions. This creates more "cash" on hand for salaries and benefits.

COMPENSATION:

Typically includes (in this order of importance/priority:

1) Salary (based on number of contract or teaching hours per week)
2) Housing (including utility costs)
3) Tuition (If you have kids. In addition if you have a non teaching spouse, how easy is it for them to find a job)
4) Transportation (Including Airfare, moving, and settling in allowances).
5) Insurance (Mostly how good the medical is)
6) Retirement (Including end of year bonuses).

WORK ENVIRONMENT:

Working conditions is the far more subjective of the two. It means something slightly different to everyone. But can include as a general principal (and these get more "fuzzy" the lower I go):

1) Staff/Faculty/Parents:How qualified are your co teachers? Do they know what they are doing? Do the aids, secretaries try and help you? Is the PTA crazy helicopter parents? Are the parents really the ones running the school?

2) Admins Management Style: Biggest reason for a school to go down hill. Does the admin back the teachers? Are they just a spokesperson for the owners? Do they yield to parent pressure? Do they value faculty input? Do they care?

3) Organization: Does the front/back office run efficiently? Do you get reimbursed in a timely fashion? Are salaries paid on time? Is the school relationship with the local immigration bureau good, can they process visas, permits, etc quickly?

4) Resources: Do you have a projector? Access to computers, internet? Can you make copies when you need too. What about textbooks, are they old and out dated, do teachers even use them? Whats the library look like? Whats the cafeteria look like (do they feed the teacher lunch?) Do you have a classroom/department budget, or do you have to ask for everything?

5) Academics: Do they have a curriculum? Do they use the curriculum? Does the department share a common curriculum or does everybody teach what they know and prefer? What are the assessment/grading policies and procedures?

6) Community: Are the people nice, friendly, helpful? What's there too do in the area? Is it safe? Clean? Is transportation easily accessible? Availability of shopping/groceries? Medical Care? This could be a long one....

JOB SEARCH:

1st tier schools are typically non-profit private prepatory schools that focus on an international student body. They are very westernized, and would be very similar to a private school in western cultures.

2nd tier schools are private private non-profits that act like for profits. They are predominately domestic students, who are affluent. They are equivalent to a "good" public school in a western culture.

3rd tier schools are for profit schools that are run as business. The purpose is to make generate revenue, and provide the owner with some level of prestige and status. Education is just the product, the students parents just the consumers.

Most 3rd tier schools advertise on TIE Online, Joy Jobs, and with SEARCH. You can also find them on Daves ESL Cafe (They advertise everywhere, except the "selective" recruitment agencies, such as ISS)

Tier 3 schools either pay very well because the only reason someone would work there is the money, or they pay enough to get by. Most of these schools are in the middle east or africa. There are some very "beautiful" schools that Dante could use to deepen the levels of hell a bit, and the only reason they have faculty is because 1) The money, 2) Desperate teachers who cant do any better. Of course one issue that i see common with Tier 3 schools is related to "safety" either the regional culture is very very rigid, with serious consequences for what you might consider "minor rule infractions" or the region/area could become quickly hostile and dangerous...

Your typical "ESL School" is right around the border between tier 3 and tier 2 schools.

"Elite" (also called prestige or premier) schools are a subset of tier 1 schools, that represent the top school(s) in the region.

An "elite" or "premiere" international school is simply the top (or contested top) tier one school in a region (or city). What differentiates them is they usually have the best reputation in an area as "THE" school, and you see that in a compensation package that is substantially higher then the other tier one schools in the area, as well as in their staff support, resources, and facilities.

For example; ISB (Bangkok) is typically seen as the elite school in Bangkok. ISB (Beijing) is usually tied with WAB (Western Academy of Beijing) in Beijing/China. SAS (Singapore American School) is seen as the elite school in Singapore. ASP (Paris) is the elite school is France. IS Frankfurt is usually (lot of debate on this) considered the Elite school in Germany. ASIJ is well thought of as the elite school in Japan.

Tier status is only comparable to other schools within a region. Local economies, costs of living, cultural differences make global comparisons unhelpful. For example; most european schools dont provide housing, and taxes are high so even though salaries would rival many that you would find in a place like China, the savings potential and lifestyle you can live are very different (and often better in asia).

Elite (also called premier) doesnt equal easy. Elite schools typically expect a lot from their teachers. Some teachers thrive in that environment, some dont.
Why a separate category? well there is typically a substantial and significant increase in work and compensation between the "elite" school and the other tier one schools.

I guess thats 4 levels. Is there a lower level, some people throw tier 4, and lower levels around, but i have to think that is really just an individual adding insult to injury when they call a particular school a "tier 4" school.


MODELS
We first need to explore the four models of the tier system (which are the parent, owner, admin, and educator). Starting with the easiest is the parent model:

The Parent model, or "Prestige" model is a two tier system that can be described as the "wanted school" (upper tier) and the "waiting school". Parents have a school they want to get into (the wanted school), but for various reasons (no places, not enough pull, wrong organization sponsor, etc) can not get a place, so they then move to their next school down the continuum, until they secure a place for their child/children, this school is the "waiting school", they are waiting until the scenario changes and they either get their top wanted school or they move up the chain to a better school. This system is almost entirely based on the reputation/recognition/popularity/affiliation of the school. Westerners are going to aim for the appropriate embassy school, and then having to invest more and more research will identify additional schools as the need arises.

The Ownership, or "Point" model is based on determining standing and tier level based on a single "point" criterion, usually either compensation (they can buy their way into upper tiers, if they pay enough) or curriculum (were tier 1 is we have IB, etc). This allows school ownership to focus their resources on bettering a single criterion, allowing them to maximize their potential to whatever point they can afford. A lot of the "upper tier" schools in the ME employ this metric. This is often a result of ownership understanding business more than they understand education, but frustrated educators of all types when faced with numerous descriptors, many of which are simply unknown, can and do resort to this tier ranking metric to reduce frustration.

The Admin model or "Divisional" model (Ive also had is described at the Equality Continuum and Linear Equality models) divides the continuum of schools into equal divisions along a continuum. Rank order all the schools and institutions and if you want 3 tiers divide them into the bottom third, the middle third, and the upper third (if you want 4 tiers divide into quarters, and so on). There are two issues with this model. First, what admins love is that because the lower tier schools are so numerous, that any respectable "REAL" IS gets pushed into the first tier. Second, it artificially skews the top and the bottom, while compressing the middle.

The Educator, or "Curve" model (because it approximates the normal curve). takes those same schools on a normal curve and putts the upper 1stSD, lower 2ndSD and lower 3rdSD (Standard deviation, under the curve int his case) and classifies those as the 3rd tier, thats a lot of schools. It then places the upper 80-85 percentile too 95-98 percentile in the 2nd tier. With the remaining upper 5-2 percentile as the 1st tier (the elite school/s are a sup population of the first tier, and is just at or under the 100th percentile). What this means is that schools must truly demonstrate exceptional characteristics befitting the title of "International School", not simply a local, or municipal schools that are characterized as average or slightingly better than average compared to the surrounding market.

Admins hate this model, or as they call it the "depressing, why bother trying model", because the elite schools like palaces of kingdoms of old are very well established and unless your in a region (such as Japan) you often dont have room for more than one palace, and its not likely going anywhere. Meaning that a school and ownership has to do a massive amount of work, and expend tremendous resources to compete with other ISs to get into that very small percentage (top 5% at best) to be considered 1st tier, because the range doesnt change, you have to beat another school out such that their ranking falls so your schools ranking can gain. This leaves the practical outcome that most new schools or re branded schools will expend considerable effort and resources just to get into tier 2, and thats how it should be, because competition is good for the market and the consumer. This isnt some warm fuzzy, and cuddly everyone can get an "A", no this is more like medical school or low school where no matter what you do or how well you do it, there is a forced ordinal ranking from bottom to top. An admin can think their performing at the 90 percentile but if everyone else is at 92% or higher, your still in the bottom, and the bottom is the third tier.

whoamI? wrote:
> I'm also a China freak, there
> are perks to breathing metallic air!


Ability to talk to robots and other machines?

Anyone with knowledge of what countries in South/Central America offer the friendliest tax agreements for ITs?

So essentially that's the list of the 'accredited IB schools' for VA and beyond that there could be a few more in VA that are in the 'candidate' status that I'd need to look up through other means?

I probably should've included the actually link. *Face meet palm

http://www.ibmidatlantic.org/VA.html


What do you mean by IB candidate schools?

Doing some research on IB schools stateside, wondering if anyone can confirm this as an reliable list for Virginia. Much appreciated

Great stuff, thank you

Great stories guys, keep em coming.. by my count, we've got 3 in SE Asia, 2 each for the Middle East and Europe, and 1 for China

Out of all the different job fairs out there, is the UNI fair the best for candidates who lack experience (either domestic or abroad)?

2 in the Middle East and 1 in Europe... surprised not to see South East Asia

bump.. any updated input/opinion on Top 10 schools in the Middle East?

2 for the Middle East; Anyone in Asia?...Africa?...Europe?

It does, thank you. So their hiring period is roughly December-February, correct?

Won't be getting my certification until December, but QSI seems like a reasonable option (depending on placement) for a first IT posting