You seem pretty set on the ESL thing which like other posters I would suggest avoiding.

I spent a couple years doing the ESL thing pre-cert. It was a lot of fun but the money was not awesome, the travel opportunity limited (not many vacations) and professionally it was no more valuable than working at a summer camp (I just learned I could deal with kids all day).

If I could do it again I would have gotten training and then worked domestically or tried to break into IE. Working for a hagwon exposes you to the same sort of abuse that working for a lower tier IS except the hagwon experience will be guaranteed to count for nothing later. The only perk to the hagwon is that it is really easy as basically nothing is expected of you.

In my experience working as an EFL teacher would not be a good test run for being a teacher in an IS. You would be better off volunteering in a local school wherever you are.

The bias against EFL experience is that people in the IE world are aware of how crap many EFL institutions are.

If you worked at an okay international school in Asia you would likely have at least equal pay (almost assuredly more), better holidays (hagwons give you like 2-3 weeks off a year often) and you would be developing professionally.

Bumped because I am curious what you chose!

I don't really have the experience to give you anything that resembles a definitive answer but I think you need to chill. Other posters seemed to indicate that you are in the middle of the pack so to speak, English also seems like a saturated market. It makes sense that schools may dedicate their time to filling their hard to find spots first.

The only evidence I can provide is that I have noticed that there are still lots of schools adding vacancies to the search database). Also most of the vacancies that are disappearing seem to be admin/co-ordinator and science/math spots (admittedly I don't know how quickly schools pull vacancies from search).

I can relate to your anxiety about attending a fair. I feel much the same about the London fair, it's a lot of time and money to invest in something with no guarantee of return. The way I am justifying it to myself is that the cost spread across the next couple of years (assuming you accept a position) is pretty negligible. If you don't end up with the position the experience and indication of your relative value in the industry will also be invaluable as you continue to make decisions about your future (at least this is what I am telling myself).

Just my 2 cents to be taken with a giant grain of salt.

Check out BISM, EIS and AIS (antlantic international not anglo-american) they (I believe) all do some variation of the English National Curriculum. Other place might be willing to take you as well but those are the places I have heard of picking up NQT's.

I feel like this is getting silly, I don't see much point in debating my intention. What I was trying to argue is that your opinions (based on anecdotal evidence) psy are not any more or less valid than anyone else's on the board without their being some context attached to them. That and that the IE world is diverse so experiences will vary.

As far as rustled jimmies or hurt feelings you taking the time to read and anaylse snowbeavers' research may be the best "evidence" of that.

*slowly backs out of thread.*

@psyguy

I feel like your not really reading my posts.

I am not arguing that male primary teachers are in demand. I was suggesting that you are "painting with a broad brush" and it is irking people.

As to recruitment programs existing I addressed that issue in my previous post. I think it rather logically explains why these programs may not exist. I thought you were referring to recruitment programs in international education and that was pretty clear in my last post. That said I think my logic holds either way.

I think it is complicated (as previously stated). The OP may find that some people want him because he is a male primary teacher and some people don't for the same reason (if you reread the last paragraph of my previous post I think this is pretty clear).

The "trend" in hiring I was making reference to IS the hiring of male primary, hence me referring to it as a trend.

Anglo Americans hiring preferences are listed on their website. Other schools in Moscow do not have such a narrow range.

" that means that exchange rates are locked in for three months at a time"

My experience has been rates locked monthly or simply matched on the day of pay. The day of pay is in my opinion clearly better. If the rouble goes bottom up after your rates have been locked you could lose significantly.

I am Canadian

I feel your pain. Though I am in primary and I honestly don't expect to here anything until January sometime. Hoping that by applying now I will be more able to cast a wide net.

I am also interested in hearing from experienced people about how much contact is too much?

@ psyguy

I think the issue people are taking with your argument is that you are making these really broad statements. It is possible that you have access to some resource with lots of IT info but without you sharing that source you're making really broad statements based on anecdotal evidence. The same anecdotal evidence that pretty much the entire readership of the forum has to some degree or another. Specifically your claims of low turnover and local hires at primary schools seems WAY too broad to me.

As to the male primary thing:

There is no doubt that primary spots are really competitive. There is no doubt that some schools/admin prefer hiring female primary teachers, there is no doubt that some schools/admin actively recruit male primary teachers and there is no doubt that gender is a non factor at many schools. The argument/discussion is about how MANY of each exist.

Your argument that there isn't a program/system to recruit more male IT's speaks to the fact that there is no an overwhelming/undeniable need for men in primary hiring but that is pretty much it. Do any such programs exist for any position in the international school world? It seems like the IS world is too spread out for anything coherent like that to exist especially in a field like primary where there are lots of qualified teachers (male teachers would at best be a preference not a necessity) . There will be "trends" in hiring of course, even in primary and I think that is what other posters are speaking to.

As I stated before I think there is not black or white answer. When researching a school recently I saw that the entire primary staff was female. Maybe they don't get many male applicants and would be very receptive to my application. Maybe they don't hire male staff. Maybe the staff were simply the best qualified and gender was a not an issue in their hiring.

@psyguy

"Primary is half of EC-12 education, i dont see half the vacancies every recruiting year being primary vacancies. There isnt a 1:1 ratio of primary:secondary vacancies."

I don't think anyone is suggesting that nor would it make sense as a judge of the primary (or male primary) IT market. What's commonly articulated about the primary market is the volume of primary teachers. There are a lot of them because anyone with an undergrad can become qualified and any primary IT can apply for any primary IT job. The point I was making before is that there are of course primary jobs that don't go to the spouses of high needs secondary teachers. How many of those jobs there are or at what schools will vary based on all sorts of intangibles.

@snowbeavers

"So male teachers can't be nurturing? Pretty sexist comment psyguy."

I don't think he was saying that male teachers can't be nurturing he was implying parents think that they can't be nurturing. Really if anything he was being sexist in his take on Mothers and their potential hang ups over male primary teachers.

I hope you are right about the desire to employ male primary IT's! I've written about my background in other threads so I won't repeat it here but this year I am recruiting with the goal of working in a big Asian city (guangzhou, hk, busan, seoul, shanghai....less large places in SE Asia etc). I'd be happy at a solid tier 2 school. I will post about how my job hunt goes as time goes on, then we can all argue about whether or not me being a man had anything to do with my results!

On the subject of male primary teachers (note: I am a male primary teacher) I think whether you are in demand really depends on those involved in the hiring process and school community. In my limited time in education I have felt real stigma towards being a man working with kids and real encouragement/support so it is hard to make sweeping statements. I have definitely been pushed into upper primary grades though, no doubt. I had taught ESL in a kindergarten for 2 years before returning to finish a B'ed and had wanted to keep working with that age group but found it difficult. Perhaps my experiences were out of the norm or my difficulty finding a kindy spot was due to some other factor(s).

@psyguy

Your point about turnover of primary staff is interesting. If you are referring to elite/1st tier schools then my experiences will not be relevant. Both schools I have worked at have had a mix of primary teachers who were single or married to another teacher (often a secondary/middle school teacher, I imagine this is the result of gender divide). There have always been more primary positions then science/math positions. Turnover between married and single primary seemed about the same. Admittedly at 1st/elite tier schools turnover may be less but I imagine it would be less across the board not just in primary. The challenge in primary seems to always be the number of primary teachers but it seems this exists for pretty much anyone other than Science/Math teachers.

I have worked in Russia but not WE (I've never really applied to WE so I can't provide much comparison).

There are a growing number of schools in and around Moscow and depending on what you teach you may be able to get employed at an okay school. I was hired as a new grad at a school in Moscow, it was far from perfect but in the greater scheme of things it was a good experience.

Please do keep in mind the current economic situation when looking at contracts. Even contracts with amounts stated in foreign currencies will be payed in rubles if paid into a local bank account (they will marked against the central bank exchange rate). Some schools apparently pay into foreign bank accounts, I don't understand the legality of all this. The details of this sort of contract are important so read carefully. Also do some research into the tax situation. New foreign employees in Russia face a steep tax rate though many schools will pay taxes on your behalf.

Lastly as alluded to by previous posters living on the economy in Russia would be no fun. When it comes to eating cheaply it is not Asia.

Hope that was helpful!

*disclaimer* I am quite inexperienced so this is all opinion with little substance.

It is certainly possible to get hired by a IB school with no IB experience the question is more how "likely" it is. I personally found breaking into the pyp difficult. I only had 2 years exp at the time but found that out of the way lower tier schools were the only plausible option. If you are in a more employable position than I was (am!) then perhaps your experience will be different. The way I think of it is there is little incentive for a school to hire someone without experience if they have the option to hire IB trained/experienced people, you are just more expensive. The exception would be I suppose if you bring something else to the table that the school really values.

I have ended up at a small not for profit in a rather out of the way place which in the scheme of my choices actually seems like an okay result all things considered. I of course tried to write my CV in a way that appealed to the IB ethos but it seemed to make little difference.

@hairylemons: If you don't mind me asking where in China are you?