wntriscoming wrote:
> On top of that, isn't Singapore one of those countries now taxing tuition benefits?
> I think some of my friends left because their school offered tuition, but it was
> now taxed.

I knew someone who taught at a Tier 1 school in Singapore two years ago. He had two kids and (I think) his wife wasn't working. He said that one of the normal IT benefits - I think it was housing - was taxed. They had to move for financial reasons.

I second Psyguy's advice. In my neck of the woods, I was told by a sympathetic management figure that if you shoot your mouth off about both parts of the couple getting a housing allowance from seperate schools, the (profit motivated) schools would collaborate by giving each person a smaller housing allowance. At the moment, I'm able to get a full housing allowance for a single teacher and a flight that includes dependents from a decent second tier school.

I'd expect the better school to cover dependents. I'd expect the husband's school to not rip him off because he gets some dependant benefits at another school, but I wouldn't fight for dependant benefits from both schools.

If you're in Asia, Europe or North Africa/the Middle East The College of New Jersey's Off-Site Graduate Program could be good. Among other things, you can take postgraduate courses culminating in New Jersey teacher certification. NJ uses Praxis for it's certification exams, which you can take without going to the US as they have exam centers everywhere.

https://offsitegrad.tcnj.edu/

It depends on the school. Specifically, it depends on how much that school values the input of a respected teacher over, say, credentials of the applicant or the impressions of the head of the applicable department or how Senior Management "feels" about it. The input of a respected teacher might mean diddly squat if she hasn't adequately sucked up to the person(s) in charge of hiring for the position you've applied for.

But again, depends on the school.

Not as favorably as certification from brick-and-mortar schools, but better than nothing.

I'm a secondary English teacher currently getting my US teaching certification through The College of New Jersey's Off Site Graduate Program. I'm already considering getting an MA post-certification, but I'm not sure whether I should go through TCNJ and get my MA in Education, or whether I should get an MA related to my field of expertise (English/linguistics/literacy/literature). On one hand, I could just add a couple of credits through TCNJ to up my teacher certification course to an MA. On the other, those courses are expensive and as an EU national I could probably get an online MA in a separate field for the cost of taking those additional courses.

If it helps, my long term goal is to get jobs in top-tier international schools easily. I'm not sure of longer-term goals career progression-wise, so I'm not sure if management or leadership-related MAs would be a good fit for me.

Thanks Psy. I'm currently teaching internationally; I am also a US citizen and a have ties to Florida. Would you recommend Teach Now over Teacher Ready?

I am an uncertified teacher who has managed to work in international schools for the past few years, and I'm looking to get proper certification. I am aware that one is British and the other is American (I've taught in both American and British schools). But I'm under the impression that iPGCEs aren't taken very seriously by international schools, British or otherwise. Is Teach Ready (or similar American programs) taken more seriously?

PsyGuy wrote:
> Any time you go to the ME you should negotiate like a mercenary.

Brunei's not in the ME.

PsyGuy wrote:
> Talk to your IS, an IS can make a lot of things happen if they want to
> expend the resources to do it. If they wont assist or sponsor a visa then
> they really dont want you.

I have recent experience with this. You have it backward - they won't assist with the trailing male spouse issue very much unless they REALLY want you.

@Thomas2711: Be prepared to negotiate hard on things like flight allowance for a trailing spouse - despite the fact that there's no government bureaucracy that says that that, specifically, isn't allowed.

Good: nice metro system, big expat scene, lots of amenities, lots of history. Guangzhou is a major travel hub within China, so if you want to do lots of travelling within China, you could start in a worse place. You can take fast trains to Hong Kong - I'm not sure how long the train/getting through immigration (HK is still technically a separate country in many respects) takes these days, but I'd say HK is doable as a weekend trip from GZ, but a bit of a pain as a day trip. If you like Chinese food (especially dim sum) there is great food. Regarding China in general, apart from lots of superstition wasn't reached by the maoist purges, it's a pretty secular place. It's also a place where parents take education very seriously.

Bad/ugly: Guangzhou is an industrial city, so expect pollution. The internet is lousy - you'll need a VPN to access things like Google, and it tends to be on the slow side if you're not visiting Chinese websites. Many Chinese people have social norms that are jarringly different from Western social norms; this is something that you'll see on a daily basis and will grate. Western products will probably be available in GZ but will be very expensive (many people in this part of China, both expats and locals alike, shop for Western products in HK for this reason). The government is infamously opaque; things could change dramatically in a day's notice without anyone you know being any the wiser. Cultural/intellectual activities can be limited. The belief that different races are inherently, biologically different from each other is strong here. The idea that one ought to be respectful of differences in race or appearance is not.

Sometimes schools don't want you for reasons that aren't necessarily related to the "quality" of teacher you are. For instance, if a school is looking for a new hire to teach a A-Level in particular, they may not shared this information with applicants (maybe they weren't sure what they were looking for when they posted the ad). This could easily result in you not making the cut but it doesn't have any bearing on the whether or not they think you're a good teacher.

If it's an IB American school, your nationality shouldn't matter as long as you're teaching an IB course. If the school does
Common Core, they may choose a teacher with Common Core experience over you.

But yeah, at least an automated response saying when you'll be notified of being shortlisted seems basic. It's really annoying to have to figure out whether or not you want to accept a position when you don't know when (or if!) you'll hear back from a school you really want...

@psyguy

It won't affect T1 schools, but it will affect any T2 schools affiliated with the Gulen Movement. They run plenty of T2 International schools outside Turkey as well, even charter schools in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if these are affected indirectly through the financial blow the group will take as a result Erdogan's purge.

@PsyGuy

Context - we've worked a stint at an 'own you' T1 school in a profitable location and have already saved a fair bit from that and previous IT jobs. We are also married. We want a more laid back school, even if it means going down a tier and being paid less.

Is the coin in Colombian/S American Tier 2 schools that much worse than Tier 2 schools in Eastern Europe? We've done the latter and didn't have that much trouble saving there. It obviously wasn't as much as we're saving now, but we still managed to do so while maintaining an upper-middle-class lifestyle for that particular country.

Why do you think Brazil is so much better? From my research, it seemed like the only viable options visa-wise were high-powered T1 schools that don't particularly interest us at the moment.

I'm an American who teaches English in a British school.

The biggest difference is English classes in America place a much greater emphasis on nonfiction writing (i.e. research papers). In British schools, research comes much later and is generally done in humanities rather than English. Other than that, there isn't a big difference between what is taught in English in US vs UK schools until you get to A Level (11th and 12th grade). But even if you get that far, I wouldn't say one better than the other - it all depends on the individual student.

I'd be less picky about the nationality of the school and more picky about the curriculum. A British school that does IB should be fine if you're worried about the school's British-ness clashing too much with the US system?