I was both registered with SA and went to the GRC Fair last year. I got hired at the fair and informed my Search reps, thanking them for their support. They congratulated me, told me it made sense to use the GRC Fair, and said they would invoice the school since they had purportedly accessed the database. My new school never paid for anything.

Bottom line is that SA can't do much and they are not going to blackball you for using multiple platforms. Candidates have been doing that for decades. They might not like getting undercut by GRC (Fair is free, mostly better non-profit schools, schools don't have to pay SA finders fee, etc), but they are not going to sabotage you working with them in the future.

My mistake, I meant to write 5 CLASSES a day, not preps. Big difference. I haven't ever seen more than 3 preps at the high school level, either.

So I pose the question again, is the workload in Japan exaggerated?

Starting to look into positions for next year, I have a quick question about work/life balance in Japan at the better schools. What's the workload really like there? For example I have looked into the American School in Tokyo (ASJ), Nishimachi, and Hokkaido International, and reviews all mention the workload, but often it's hard to get an idea of what that really means.

For example, sometimes people mention 5 preps, or two extracurriculars, or 50 hours a week, none of which are a problem for me. I work hard when I'm at work. I'm just looking for a place that doesn't keep you there 80 hours a week, or make you slave away every night and weekend. Basically, a predictable schedule, and when I'm off, I'm off, and not having my time wasted by 30 extra hours of meetings and paperwork a week.

Is this possible in Japan? Or do the schools have the salaryman mentality? I, for one, am not interested in sleeping under my desk!

Arguments about CIS aside, thank you for the information listing different accreditation. That's exactly what I was looking for.

The question remains, though, how much does it matter long term? One of the two schools mentioned is sending us an offer this evening. As I mentioned before, we've done the research, talked to other teachers there, and we have no qualms about the school. It has a good academic reputation. Whether we accept the offer will come down to the package.

The question is if there is any stigma working for a school that is only accredited by the Ministry of Education? It doesn't matter to us, but we're wondering if it will matter 3 years down the road when we're thinking about moving to another international school. We'd like to do this for many years.

After looking at the total package for that school, we decided to pass. It's tempting to accept an offer, any offer, when it''s been a difficult hiring year and we're so motivated to go overseas.

However, we are pretty far along in the interview process for two schools in China now and the accreditation issue has come up again. Really, it's more of a question this time. Is there any kind of standard accreditation that a non-IB international school should have?

Both schools have local accreditation and one has IGCSE. Should we be looking for something more, or does it matter? We are happy with the locations of both schools, and feel comfortable with the schools themselves.

And for the record, Shenzhen is not cheap, especially for China, and there's not much to do there. The only saving grace seems to be that it's close to Hong Kong.

Ours does nothing. The San Fransisco fair was a nightmare. Two weeks before the fair there were 5 jobs we were seriously interested in and 4 more that looked okay. Every single one of those jobs was gone when we showed up. Only one of those schools actually attended the fair. Over a quarter of the schools that were on the list didn't even show up at all. There were only 5 jobs available in my husband's field and they were all in seriously sketchy places/schools like Al Bayan Bilingual School Kuwait (the school involved in the Katherine Phillips incident).

We emailed our associate after the fair and he gave us a lot of bs reasons we might not have been successful at the fair and told us there were lots of positions still available in their database (at least half of which we know are gone). No help at all and the whole debacle makes us unlikely to ever go to another fair/recruiter again.

We are , too. Looks like this would be useful information for the forum.

Here's a pretty comprehensive list:

www.internationalschoolsreview.wordpress.com

And here's the list for recruitment agencies:

http://www.internationalschoolsreview.c ... gfairs.htm

The school is in Saigon. After doing some digging I discovered this: SNA is an approved candidate for accreditation by WASC and is registered by CASCU Consortium of American Schools, Colleges and Universities and by the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training. It was established in 2006, but moved to a new building last year. (And by digging, I'll admit I couldn't see that on the bottom of my netbook screen the first time because of the small print. oops!)

They still have unlicensed teachers, though, and there were some red flags at the school presentation yesterday. It sounded like new hires pay for a plane ticket over there and they reimburse half, holding the other half until the end of the first year. Health care was a question, but the bigger thing was contact days. Summer break sounded like it was only a week or two and per the calender on their website they do have summer school. We'll just have to wait for the interview later today to clear things up, I guess.

My husband has an interview tomorrow with a school that has no accreditation. Besides that, several of the teachers there appear to be unlicensed (though there are several that have a Masters of Education). It's a new school, just established last year. My question is how much does that matter in terms of the bigger picture for someone looking to teach internationally for many years?

Everything else that we've seen about the school is positive. The administration cares, and the teachers are happy. We love the location, and the salary is in line. Are these valid concerns or not? Is it common for a new school to not have accreditation yet? And to have unlicensed teachers? This would be his first position in an international school.

Thanks so much for the information. It's exactly what I needed to know.

I was just wondering if school health insurance policies normally cover dependents? I haven't been able to find a clear answer to this anywhere. Specifically, can a trailing spouse expect to be covered by a policy or not? Or is it all over the board? Wondering if this should be a negotiation point.

I am not going to the fair with him. His associate never said anything about it and money is tight so he's going by himself. I'll be at home researching the new schools that pop up and more detailed info about places he's interviewing and relaying info.

I just wish it would get here already. Several positions have disappeared since the Cambridge fair. I'm really hoping some last minute positions pop up to balance it out. I'm curious what your experience will be like as a non-teaching spouse at the fair.

[quote="mathgym"]About half the teachers at our QSI school are single. They hire both married and single teachers. Also, most of the employees are not religious, nor is religion part of the curriculum. I think they are changing in this regard.[/quote]

I wasn't clear in my last post. What I meant to say was that QSI only hires teaching couples. Singles are fine, but they won't look at couples if one is a trailing spouse was my point. Sorry for the confusion.

Although I'm not sure I understand your post about QSI dismissing your application. It seems you're already teaching at a QSI school?