I agree with Psyguy, although I do think- particularly in the Fine Arts- there are sometimes a bit too many teachers who have never practiced their art outside of an academic setting. So there's a lot to be said for an artist who has actually been displayed in galleries and worked in that type of environment. There's got to be some schools out there that would value that kind of real-life experience and take the chance on your husband.

The main roadblock you would have is the desire to "live outside a major city". The nature of our job puts most of the schools in the big city. I'd say 80% of them, and that's probably a conservative estimate. So you need to take the good with the bad, I suppose. Like 4 million people instead of 14 million people.

Apply everywhere. Even if it isn't a place you'd consider teaching. The worst that can happen is you get an interview. Once you start limiting yourself geographically, you are missing out on a lot.

In my opinion, you can do two years anywhere, as long as the school has its heart in the right place. It goes by super quick, trust me.

Good luck!

My wife had it. It's pretty nasty, but she's none the worse. You should be more worried about malaria. Ten years in a malaria zone and I've had two mild cases. It's much more common than dengue. You just need to cover up and invest in good insect repellent.

West Africa is great. My assumption is it will be small, intimate school with interesting kids. The people are great and full of energy, and the eating and drinking can be glorious. (Unless you'd going to Nigeria. There are some questionable schools there.) Congrats.

You should pay this much attention to those numbers on the Search database: 0.

I'm not sure if that's the appropriate cliche to use or not, but anyway.

My wife and I have interviewed with four schools, and got a job offer from one. It is a small school, in a 'hard-ship' post (nothing we haven't done before), not much money, but it would be stress-free and easy, in terms of the teaching. That being said, it isn't at the top of our list. Of the other three schools, we were turned down by one, and are waiting to hear from the other two, but I'm not expecting much.

My assumption is, at this point, recruiters are going to wait until after holiday break, around the Bangkok fair, to start the recruiting in earnest again. While we'd love to go to a fair, we can't because of reasons beyond our control, which- at this point- I'm assuming might hurt our chances.

So do we suck it up and take the job we've been offered, or hope within the next two months that something else comes up? (Science/Elementary w/one dependent). I'm just thinking there might be couple of bigger birds in the bush than the tiny thing we've got a hold of now.

It's an interesting question. The very nature of our jobs is the transiency, and I think that needs to be a big part of deciding when it is time to go. It's not like the States, where a teacher can stay thirty years and teach two generations of kids. In a job where students come and go, it seems to make professional sense that we as teachers would do the same. It keeps you on your pedagogical toes, as opposed to getting bogged down in practice that might work, but slowly becomes mechanical. I have friends who have been at one good IS for almost twenty years, and each year they put feelers out for other jobs, it becomes more and more difficult.

I also agree about the dependents being a driving factor- young children entering school for the first time, or moving into middle school or high school, seems to be a cue as when to leave as well.

We are in our sixth year of teaching at the same school, and it is our last. We could easily stay here twenty years, LOL (current admin notwithstanding), but it's time to move on.

MYP, by definition and practice, should be holistic, but it is moving towards a lot more structure in order to align with the DP. E-assessments mean that teachers will inevitably begin 'teaching to the test'. If you have, for instance, a Criterion D assessment to do for a science class- which is traditionally a research paper- it will be done in a timed situation instead. In fact, that shift is happening quite dramatically. I was told by a school that wasn't IB, that working in their standards based curriculum within an American system leaves teachers with a lot more 'freedom' and 'flexibility' than the MYP. I used to feel that MYP did a great job of encouraging that deeper thinking in students, and thus allowed for a more authentic learning experience. However, its moving in the direction of all pedagogical dinosaurs. Plug and chug. Test, test, test. Tick the boxes. Oh well.

I applied to one school using Schrole and it was a major pain in the a**. I didn't like that I had to directly contact my references AGAIN, after already asking them to serve as my Search references. There's another school I'm interested in that uses Schrole as well. Does this mean each time I use Schrole, I will have to notify my references? Or once I've filled a Schrole form out is it automatically forwarded to the school? In other words, do you only have to fill the thing in once? I don't want to have to notify my referees every single time I apply to a school.

@wntriscoming.

No, no, no. That's too funny. I want to work at your school.

There are four classes per day- 80 minutes each. This is a total of 20 periods per week. In a ten-day cycle, that adds up to 40 classes over two full weeks. I'll teach 30 of those. In other words, I'll teach every period one day (a 30 minute lunch and a 20 minute short break, with a 10 minute passing period thrown in for good measure) and two out of the four periods the other days.

Sorry. Schedule lingo/vocab can always be confusing.

We are having our work loads increased next year. Each day there are four 80-minute periods. We teach in a 10-day cycle, for a total of 40 periods in two weeks. Currently the average is about 25/40, but next year will be 30/40 (not everybody, but more than enough). This means I'll be teaching, for instance, every period one day and then the next day two out of four. EVERY PERIOD. And at the middle school level, we're looking at a conservative estimate of 120-130 students. Is this normal?

I taught at the American School of Douala for two years. I am now teaching in Tanzania. Africa is awesome and I would say all of the teachers I work with are doing so because they want to live and work in Africa. That being said, it can be very challenging living in a town like Douala: it is frenetic, hot, smelly and worse for wear. It is certainly a two year and out posting, but that is generally understood. The school was very small and intimate, and it made for a nice atmosphere. Cameroon is a gorgeous country and the people are amazing. Yaounde is probably a better school and the town is nicer than Douala. I was also there in the Peace Corps ten years before moving back, so it is a place that holds a soft spot in my heart.

I teach here now. Dar is the bomb and the school is easy-going and the students are wonderful. Don't go for walks with your 1500 dollar school-supplied MacBook Pro and you'll probably be alright.

[quote]'the real purpose of course behind the IB (MYP and DP) is to funnel a VERY lucrative Asian/European student body into Western Universities'...too funny, it just has to be time to sign out on this one...[/quote]

Yes, that was a rather unfortunate way of saying that the MYP, at the basest level, is a money-making scheme. And that is where the big issue lies. I don't think people who are 'defending' MYP are actually defending the program itself. What they are defending is good teaching practice. I'm not sure why schools need to pay money for that.

I am new to this program, I am not a dinosaur, nor am I resistant to change. I have been trying to wrap my head around it for three months. I have attended the school-based PDs and will be going to another one in Europe next week. What I find is that even the veteran MYP teachers nod their heads in tacit agreement when I get off on one of my rants. Its not the 'teaching philosophy' that I object to. Its the practicality of having five AOIs, with 6-content based criteria (assessed on a 6 point rubric) and then converting that to a 7 point scale. At that point, what do all of those numbers even mean to a 12 year old kid? Or a 16 year old for that matter?

Having done workshops on developing and using rubrics for years, coming into this program has kind of blown my mind. Rubrics are supposed to make the learning goals explicitly clear to students, and when done well, they work. Students know exactly what is expected and know exactly why they achieved whatever score they may have had. Do MYP rubrics do this? No, they don't. And, unfortunately, my hands are tied when it comes to developing task-specific rubrics, because they don't fit nicely into the MYP criterion. It is very frustrating, because I am at my desk trying to explain to students why they got the scores they got because of a vague, wavering rubric. This fosters student confusion, not understanding. The practices in MYP are common to ALL good teaching practices; the assessment needs a complete overhaul.

I worked in an American system for ten years teaching middle school before starting MYP this year. When looking for jobs, one of the first questions I would get is, "Do you have MYP experience?" and -quite frankly- I found it insulting. I figured a decade of working with middle school kids gave me a pretty good understanding of how they learn and what constituted good teaching practices. Regardless, MYP hasn't changed the way I teach. So for those saying they are successul within the context of MYP or out of it, its a non-issue. A programme doesn't need to be mandated by a mysterious operation in Geneva to ensure good teaching practices. In that sense, MYP can be a bit ludicrous.

That being said, the community service aspect of the program is great, but I find the rest of it to be completely confusing. It is a program- in my opinion- that works in international schools, in some ways, because these students are generally coming to us with a strong support base. In other words, the kids survive in spite of the MYP, rather than because of it. I find there is a tremendous lack of consistency across the board. In science you may be assessed on six criteria on a six point scale. In humanities, English, math it is completely different. There is no reason a 10th grader, who has been in this program before, should ask me "How many points is this out of?'. But they do. Even the kids don't understand how they are being assessed.

Plus I have a real problem using a rubric to grade tests. ;-)