PsyGuy wrote:

> Astril use to be the go to inside China, and still is a top contender if you have
> to arrange VPN service from the inside, but their service is unreliable and so is
> their customer service.

Not my experience at all. I have used Astrill in China for three years and I find that the service is very reliable and their customer service is prompt and helpful.

UNI is a very good fair. My wife and I have been twice and walked away both times with jobs. There are a wide variety of schools represented and to characterize it as a dump fair is shortsighted and uninformed.

During our first foray into the international world we had extensive conversations with a particular school prior to a fair. We got to the fair and met with the director on signup day and then once in his room during the interview process without any hitches. We made it as far as a second interview and he was eager to sign us to a contract when he noticed that we had children. It was clearly stated on some form or something similar. He turned to us crestfallen and said he couldn't accept a couple with children and that put an end to the interview. Luckily we hadn't burned any bridges and walked out with a job on the opposite side of the world. At the same fair we were told by another school that while they loved our qualifications they couldn't hire us because they had no room for more teachers' kids. I guess the point is, if its going to be a deal breaker then its going to be a deal breaker whether you are upfront about it now or later, it just depends on how much time you are willing to invest in a process that might go sideways when your family status comes up.

Generally I would say a building administrator without teaching experience would be a disaster all the way around. However, there are admin type positions available in schools, particularly large schools, that having teaching experience wouldn't necessarily be necessary or even practical. What type of skills does he have that could be applied at a school. My school has all sorts of financial, marketing, tech, building management administrators that are not or have ever been teachers.

The best advice we ever received was given to us at our first job fair by a well respected administrator. He told us not to limit our search but rather expand it to find the schools that will be a perfect fit. We followed his advice the very next day and ever since and have had a marvelous and rewarding overseas teaching career. We have taught in both Europe and Asia, in budget schools as well as high flyers and each one has had its rewards and frustrations we wouldn't change anything.

Adult entertainment or it's touts are not an issue in Shanghai, I wouldn't even give it a second thought and that's based on my 11 years of living here. As for the heating issue, well it will depend on the apartment you rent so you need to make a wise choice. We have in floor heating, though it's not oil immersion, and we also have air machines which double as Air Conditioners during the hot season.

As long as you can provide receipts our school doesn't ask what you did or where you traveled to.

and how would you feel if you signed a contract or made a verbal commitment and then two weeks later the school wrote and said they had found a more suitable candidate, sorry!

As a father who has lived through this, all I can advise is think long and hard. If you decide to take the opportunity realize it will be as hard, if not harder on you.

I'm not quite sure why you think you are spinning your wheels? You have experience teaching, you've signed up to go to Boston and you have made some preliminary contacts. Not having heard from them is absolutely normal, especially considering your relative lack of experience and number of dependents. This happens to everyone. If you are still willing to go to Boston, and make those early contacts I think you are doing everything you can.

If a school works for you (and your family if you have one) its Tier 1, if it doesn't work for you then it isn't.

I think you would be hard pressed to live on $500 a month in China, even in a small Chinese city and certainly not in Shanghai. If you were going to attempt that then you are not traveling and are buying everything at the wet market.

Actually I never compared sports at the International level to sports at home, I simply said they were competitive. In fact the latest APAC tennis tournament had at least 2 internationally ranked players involved.

The original post never asks for a comparison to North American sports. If the original poster is interested in coaching sports and or schools with good facilities then I am simply suggesting a school that belongs to APAC or IASAS, among others, would be a good place to start looking.

As for the travel, sure there are club teams and private schools that have individual teams that travel alot. However, I would bet our kids travel a lot more than most high school athletes do in the states. Actually I have quite a bit of experience in sports both at home and overseas and I have been happy with both.

Two big sports oriented associations found in Asia are APAC and IASAS, look them up. Each are multi-country organizations and each sponsor numerous sporting and cultural competitions that involve competition. Schools that belong to APAC include ISBeijing, Shanghai American, Conordia, Canadian Academy, Brent, and Hong Kong IS. I never had any kids play sports in North America but I did have kids participate in varsity sports in APAC and it was competitive. I have also coached APAC sports and that was equally competitive.

I have also worked at schools with only outdoor facilities in climates where the high temperature reached 40 C on occasion and at other schools with bubble gyms and artificial turf courts. At my current school coaches come from all grades K-12 and are stipended, most teams travel twice a season at the varsity and JV level and play in several tournaments every year.

I have a different take on why you might want to have a home, back home. The OP makes reference to family and thats why we kept our home and didn't rent it, it was a place for our kids to call home when we went back in the summer. They had their room and their stuff. They went to university and they had a place to retreat to on university breaks even when we weren't there. We were fortunate enough to have a mortgage we could afford on our salaries and were not forced to rent the house.