+ 1 for talesmag.com It's for the dip community but that's basically you at this point. They have sections both on i-schools and life at posts.

You make these choices the way you make all big decisions in life. Weigh the pro's and con's very carefully. Do you want a megalopolis of 19 million inhabitants in a country with massive wealth inequalities, Orwellian internet controls and crippling air pollution, or would you prefer a country known for its strong social welfare system, adherence to human rights, and general honoring of the liberal tradition.

It's funny how they say absolutely nothing of the Christian sensibility thing during their presentation at the fairs. Jerks.

Any idea if Phorms hires non-EU residents?

@psyguy

>>i tend to avoid schools with a majority of "north american" students, you end up with the same spoiled, entitled, elitist, students who think they know everything, you would have had back in the states>>

Again, I think this depends so heavily on one's own experience. I have, by far, discovered some of the most spoiled, entitled and elitist students among the kids of the local ruling class where I teach now. I would sell my spleen to work with spoiled, entitled and elitist North Americans over this crowd.

Interviewed with a school in Syria last spring where the director assured me again and again that the security situation was under control and that, really, Syrians liked their government and it was just a few factions that were causing trouble. Really, the city is one of the most beautiful in the Arab world (like that would somehow keep the lid on a civil conflict.)

I wasn't offered the post and am grateful for it.

This is, pardon my French, utter horseshit. Any school that won't provide a moving allowance for you to move a quarter of the way across the planet does not deserve your employment.

Does anyone have any inside info on these two schools in Spain? Benjamin Franklin is posting openings on NAIS which seems odd, because it's usually for-profit Asain schools that advetise there. Any reason they would not be working with Search/ISS? Anyone have the low-down on Sotogrande? It looks like they pay about 15k more than most southern European schools...

I teach in the general neighborhood.

To say "Guatemala City is no different than any major city in the world so take the usual precautions" is not accurate.

Honduras-El Salvador-Guatemala was recently deemed the most dangerous region in the world outside of a war zone. Some observers estimate there were over 15,000 gang-related murders in 2011 and a couple more thousand "disappeared." In a region of 30,000,000 this may not sound like much but there is a de facto urban civil war with police literally not venturing into many parts of Guatemala City, San Sal and Tegucigalpa.

You may not experience any of this first-hand, though about half the expats I know have been mugged/held up at gunpoint/pick-pocketed etc. But the number of ways in which your personal freedom is curtailed in societies like these gets old real fast.

You need to read The Economist and Small Wars Blog. Not the Lonely Planet.

You will be fine. It will be a delight compared to our sinking ship of a country. You will pay a load of taxes but it will be worth it. As you say, if things hit the shitter, there are always other options. Nothing is permanent.

I'm sorry but you are paralyzed by fear of moving to the NETHERLANDS? Dijibouti, ok maybe, but the NETHERLANDS?!

Eat gouffres everyday and then go for the free health care. I think you'll be fine.

Like buttons! PMs! We need full functionality, ISR :)

I don't know Psyguy's experience in Egypt exactly and I'm not trying to defend his decision to leave, but what bothers me so much in some of these threads is this idea that international teachers in some parts of the world should just expect to suffer.

@ wannateach

"Took up the slack"? "Couldn't hack it"? What is this? The military?

No one owes a bad experience anything, especially when you have been misinformed or misled. If a teacher finds suffering noble, they should join a cloister. There are far more effective ways to expand one's worldview than putting up with some joke of a teaching position in a massively unpleasant environment.

While I think this is a worthy thread, and deserves to exist as some kind of "Blue Ribbon School" list that we update from year to year on ISR, I don't think State's support is indicative of very much. I hear absolutely wretched things about State-supported school in Africa for instance.

It would take some research but if someone were to establish a metric that took staff turnover, university acceptances, IB results, teachers salary and English proficiency into account--and averaged all of this over, say, the last decade--then we might start to have a common appreciation for just what are unarguably Tier 1 schools.

Fabulous comments, psyguy. I think we have entered the "officially ugly phase" of globalization.

One thing that strikes me is that your time seems to have been wasted. This is not good for anyone at a hiring fair with its very foreseeable time constraints. If candidates are allowed to come through the door with qualifications that are extremely unlikely to get them a job, coupled by a skewed view of what international ed, is then Search is not doing their job. I hope it finished better than it started.

Now about that Middle School English/Humanities position you have open...