It's been a hectic few years, and I dropped the ball on renewing my DC teaching license (obtained via Teach Now). I just realized my license will expire March 18. I tried applying for QTS, but the application process seems to no longer accept licenses obtained via TN.

So I guess my question is, what are my options? I'm nowhere near an ETS testing center to re-take the Praxis. Any advice appreciated.

I've decided I want to move into administration at some point in the next few years. I know the consensus here is that an MA is an MA - unless it's from an elite uni, in which case it can open doors.

I want to look into MAs of the door-opening variety. I looked into Oxford but sadly my undergrad GPA is below their 3.6 threshold.

Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but are there any MA options out there from 'Global Iveys' that
a) Can be done partially or completely online
b) Might accept someone with work experience and a mediocre undergrad GPA ?

About me: From US, undergrad degree in unrelated field (3.2 GPA), teaching license in middle and high school math. Taught 2 years in the US (+1 as a paid intern teacher), currently on my 4th year of teaching in China.

Did you accept? Which country out of curiosity? (noticed you just said it's in Asia)

Actually, I glossed over the part where he mentioned the child as it wasn't in the OP. Yeah I kind of agree in that case, a lot less likely he can get a leadership position in a school he's going to want to send his kid to.

Not sure the age of the child but FWIW I know that sometimes parents with the means to send their kids to an IS opt for Chinese schools when they're younger because they want them to have the Mandarin immersion, then switch to an IS when they're older. I have no personal experience with this so it's not a a recommendation per se, just an anecdote.

PG, I assume for the purpose of this discussion you're including the many bilingual schools in China that hire foreign teachers and not just the "expat schools"?

I think with the latter I'd be more inclined to agree with you. But the former as you know has more overlap with the ET world, and they tend to count ET experience for a little (or sometimes a lot) more than expat schools do. Basically, I don't think Chinese bilingual school hiring criteria has the level of uniformity necessary to conclude he has 0 (or close to 0) shot at landing something in junior management somewhere.

The challenge might be that the types of schools that may consider him for some type of leadership position are less likely to be willing to hire outside of China right now than some of the more reputable international schools.

My advice to OP would be to download WeChat and find some job groups/add some recruiters, and try to remember all the reasons you love Chinese culture for when they ask why you want to go to China.

There's definitely schools that will consider you for leadership positions, it's just a matter of which schools and which positions.

I agree with PG you're most likely looking at HOD/Coordinator type roles at 3rd tier schools, I think you can aim for more than $40-50k though. I've seen a collection of ads for junior leadership roles at ~3rd tier schools paying from 35-45k RMB/month (pre-tax and not counting housing etc.).

35k RMB/mo. works out to the following in USD/year: $62.3k gross, $53.7k net.

45k RMB/mo.: $80k gross, $66.6k net.

Since it's 3rd tier China it's possible some of them are trying to inflate the salary appearance by including housing and everything else. In any case I wouldn't take less than 35k RMB/mo. gross with your experience.

edit: I should add that I've also seen bottom 3rd tier schools offer less than that range for junior leadership, but I don't think they're schools you need to consider.

I'm hoping to get some input from the collective experience of this forum about effective strategies for teaching math to ELL students - particularly at the middle/high school level, but also interested in input for younger ages.

In my experience, when the English level is not too much lower than normal, it's usually sufficient to just emphasize vocabulary a tad more without modifying the lesson that much. But what if you're teaching a Pre-Calc class where it's normal for students to either not know or forget the difference between, say, the words 'division' and 'multiplication'? What is your approach to situations like these? Strategies, tips, tools, etc. - all ideas welcome.

I'm also curious what makes you say it's a tier 3 school (I'm not disputing it, just genuinely curious). i.e. What would the package roughly have to be for it to be considered a tier 2 school?

PsyGuy wrote:
> Roughly, thats about USD$44K/yr net. The bonus is another USD$4K. About
> USD$1K for inbound travel, leaving you about USD$2K for shopping allowance,
> but if youve got to pay all the visa and document costs out of the
> relocation its more an even split of USD$1500 for travel and USD$1500 for
> shopping. This also depends on your quarantine costs, which if you have to
> cover that out of your relocation your not going to have much of a shopping
> allowance left. You may be spending a good portion of that shopping
> allowance in initial housing costs even if your comfortable with the
> housing allowance. I would think utilities are going to come out of salary.
>
> What are the conditions of the completion bonus? Is it make it to the end
> of the year or is it tied to attendance, etc.?
>
> For an IT with 5 years experience in a high needs subject in a tier 3 IS in
> China thats is an okay above the mean package, but that would be with
> positive or neutral work life balance. Youre not likely to get the
> performance bonus, and if the completion bonus only requires end of year
> completion and you can pocket about USD$2K of the relocation thats a
> USD$50K. As you say though they really work their ITs hard, so anything
> approaching 1.5 FTE (around 1.25 FTE) and the comp they are offering is
> below market especially if you cant bank any of the relocation or the
> completion bonus has a bunch of strings attached. Out in the provinces you
> can bank better coin doing ESOL with privates than you can putting it into
> your IS. Very roughly you can make 2.0x on average (can actually be a lot
> more but thats less common) per unit of time in ESOL then you do at a third
> tier IS. Third tier though you may be basing that "pretty hard"
> on a majority of ITs who havent been in IE or even DE long enough to
> develop efficiencies, so pretty hard may not be very applicable to you.
> What do their students maths scores look like. If they do well, and the IS
> really isnt looking for you to really do any innovation and the extra work
> involves sitting around and generating a few pages here and there of
> curriculum and you can just use your own lesson plans to base much of that
> off and all the IS REALLY cares about is keeping those scores acceptable
> then this may be more of a dwaddle for you, in which case the comp is
> actually pretty nice.
>
> This really comes down to how hard "pretty hard" is and what that
> translates to you as.

Thanks for the reply.

As far as quarantine, you never know what happens between now and August, but I'm already in China and don't expect to have to quarantine. The school covers visa expenses. What is FTE?

I can bank the relocation allowance. I can't bank extra housing allowance, but to be honest while 4k is sufficient I don't expect there to be much extra to bank.

What does "out in the provinces" mean? I don't really have any ESOL training.

Me: Licensed math teacher with bachelor degree in an unrelated field. 5 years teaching experience, 2 in the US (my country), 3 in China. 2 years AP experience. Single with no dependents.

The package - all numbers are before tax:

Basic salary: 369,000 RMB
Completion bonus: 32,000 RMB
Relocation + cash allowance: 19,000 RMB
Return flight: 13,000 RMB

Housing is only 4k/month, but I've seen the apartments they have for this amount and they are acceptable it's a Tier 3 city. I'm responsible for utilities.

3 free meals/day on campus M-F.

There's also a possible bonus for student scores on standardized tests, but the interviewer himself told me the criteria is hard to explain so I'm just not going to factor it in.

The school has a reputation for working teachers pretty hard. I'm at a point in life where I'm happy to do this if the compensation is there.

How does the package rate for someone in China with my resume, such as it is?

Pretty odd fetishizing of economists by the OP. Economics as a discipline is right up there with sociology and basket-weaving in terms of rigor and usefulness. You're much more likely to get a quality answer to your question from a physicist (no, I don't teach physics).

PsyGuy:

Something that was just pointed out to me (and not why it didn't occur to me). Teach Now requires a mentor teacher to supervise and evaluate my teaching. I'm having trouble understanding how that could happen in some of your suggested improvised classroom arrangements. For example, the 'Float' option where I'm an on-call sub in the teacher room - how would I find a qualified mentor teacher to coordinate their schedule with that?

You are a hero, PsyGuy.

I'm in the process of researching these schools: http://www.state.gov/m/a/os/c1684.htm (this is the correct list of 1st-tier schools?) and cross-checking the reviews on this site before I start contacting them. Other than applying to the hardship regions in general, any thoughts on specific regions that would be best to focus my time on? I plan on following your advice re: finding the school's needs and writing a proposal to the HOS. Thoroughly researching each school will be very time-consuming though and I doubt I'll get through them all in a reasonable time frame - though I will try - so I'm just looking for the best way to target them.

One last(?) question. I of course would prefer an IS that gives me the 3 months required by TN, but would ultimately take the 5 days with TR if that's my only option. So, once I've researched the schools' needs and crafted my letters to the HOSs, do I simply say I would like 3 months but would take 5 days (in a more detailed, thoughtful way obviously)? Or just ask for 3 months, and if rejected see if they'll go for 5 days?

PsyGuy:

Thanks for another informative, helpful post. There are some things I'd like to clarify.

1. One point of confusion is where you reference the field experience as being only 3 months, re: viewing it as a summer camp, re-considering my no-go list, etc. This seems to contradict a few things:

-Teach Now says that their field experience is "embedded throughout the modules", rather than a compact 3-month segment.
-The potential upside of a followup full OSH appointment for 2 years (or whatever the contract length) seems like it would be negated if I'm only in that particular location because I'm willing to suck it up for 3 months, no?
-If nothing else, wouldn't my ES contract have to be for longer than 3 months?

I bring these up because I would indeed be willing to go anywhere for 3 months. For 1 year+, I'd like to avoid a small number of places like Saudi Arabia, some parts of rural China (most of China is still fine), probably some parts of India and Pakistan, maybe 1 or 2 other ME countries like Kuwait, and likely some parts of Africa - although it would probably depend more on the particular city/school than the country in most cases. For 2+ years, the list of no-gos gets a bit bigger but I'd still be open to plenty of hardship regions.

Another issue I just thought of apart from finding an IS is the qualification requirements for the temp ES position itself. In the ME for example, it seems like most ES positions are requiring domestic certification if not an MA? I'm thinking that would eliminate some places like Saudi Arabia which I wasn't thrilled about going to anyway.

2. Second point, I'm confused as to why the 'List of Embassy 1st-Tiers' option and the 'Hardship regions' option are listed as distinctly separate things. Apologies if I'm being obtuse, but certainly there are 1st-tier/elite schools located in hardship regions?

3. I'm a little confused about exactly how I would do the pitching process you suggested. You gave me some options for marketing myself to these schools, but how do I know which 'pitch' to use before knowing what their needs are? Or do I just lay it all out in my initial e-mail and say e.g.:

"Hello, my name is cookies4u. I am in the process of pursuing my teaching certification, and I'm interested in completing my field experiences at your school because X & Y. Depending on the needs of your school, I could do one of the following (list Float, Primary, Resource packages + details)."

edmunder:

Hey, just read through your post. It sounds like you definitely have a bit more experience than me. Out of curiosity, do you mind me asking how you ended up teaching Literature and History at a university? I've always been under the impression that anything at a university required an MA or PhD, and usually non-ESL subjects require domestic certification. Feel free to send me an e-mail at chaconne87 (at) gmail dot com if you don't want to post here. I'm not sure how Teacher Ready handles international schools, but I'd probably just give them a call and ask.

shadowjack:

For someone planning on teaching math, my math background isn't very strong. I suppose it's strong for someone with a non-math/science degree. I took two semesters of Calc and got A's; I would also say I have a solid foundation in Stats due to outside interests and self-study, although I've never taken a formal class in it. I looked at the shortened Praxis exam samples available online, and the main thing I'm missing is Linear Algebra, which I plan to learn. The rest of the test seemed very doable if I were to take it right now.