whatkatiedid wrote:
> I am adding my voice to this. Yes AVOID SWISS BOARDING SCHOOLS. They treat
> staff very very badly. You will be poorly paid and overworked and at the
> mercy of capricious business men. There are teachers coming in direct from
> the UK with decent qualifications/careers/reputations they will blow a hole
> in those careers by working for one of these Swiss boarding schools. You
> will not get a reference when you leave.
>
> You will NOT save at a Swiss boarding school. Do not waste your time and
> effort on these disgusting organizations who charge parents the earth and
> pay teachers peanuts.
>
> AVOID AVOID AVOID.

I agree with everything whatkatiedid has written.

And I tried to PM you, whatkatiedid, but there seems to be no option? Is that because I haven't posted enough? If you could PM me, that would be so great.

I don't know about others, but when I see only one or two negative reviews for a school, I tend not to pay them much attention. However, if I see many negative reviews, especially if they repeat the same ideas, I find that pretty convincing that there is a problem at the school.

Also, it is important to know if negative reviews from a year or two ago are still valid, and more recent negative posts can confirm this. Things can change so quickly at a school as an admin comes or goes.

So for those reasons, I'm grateful for people who bother to post a negative review even though there might already be other reviews for the same school.

As for taking a job with bad reviews, I did that for my first overseas job. I saw all of the bad reviews and realized it wasn't a great school, but it was in Europe and that was where I wanted to be, and I know it is hard for a first-time IT to land a Europe job. I was prepared to keep my head down and see the job as a two-years-and-done stint to get my foot into the door of the Europe circuit. And it worked! I still left a negative review when I left to be sure that people would know that the negatives other people had already written about were still current.

I am at an Eastern European school which I love. The students and package are great, and I'm thrilled to be here. BUT...I feel really bad about a friendship with a local hire which is stressing me out, and I was hoping someone might offer some advice.

I became friends with one of the very few local hires at my school. She does accounting/admin for the school, and we are the same age, so became friends during the (long) visa/residency process.

Now it is awkward. Since we were friends, she's (rightfully?) assumed that friendship means venting about work related issues. But she's really angry and bitter with the school and a lot of my colleagues, mostly because the package is so great for us and so poor for her. For example, she's really angry when colleagues decide to change apartments; she says that her own apartment is half the size of her office, and teachers here have the best apartments in the best parts of the city and are "still not happy"--yes, she is responsible for landlord issues, too.

I LIKE my colleagues, and they have NO idea that my admin. friendn HATES them. In fact, she's always included when the same-age-ish younger teachers go out socially. I really don't understand why she actually goes, but it is starting to make me angry the way the US and UK teachers always subtly cover her portion of dinner or whatever else we are doing (they all know that she doesn't make much money as a local hire). I don't think she should accept this if she can say that she "hates" them.

It is a small school, and I really don't think I want to continue the friendship. But it IS a small school, and this person does payroll, etc. anad will be arranging my new lease for next year (and will be furious, as she's said to me many times that my current apartment is "better than anything normal local families get, and it's all for you"). This sounds terrible, but I wish I hadn't become friends with her when I started here.

And also, she considers me a special friend, and doesn't really talk to the others in our age/social group except for social banter when we all go out. The others have no idea that she feels the way she does about most of the US and UK staff. If I end the friendship, it would be really awkward because of this, and I don't want to get into a situation of telling everyone all of the things that my friend (former friend?) has said about them, but as I said, she IS included in social outings, and she comes, and she and I are known to be friends outside of these outings, so I will look bad to my peers if I just cut her off.

This all looks really petty written out, but I feel stressed about it, especially as I listened to this person complain through Saturday afternoon about another of my US colleagues who she hates beause he only asks her to do things which fall...within her job description.

Please advise...

Thanks Special Ed,

I do have a graduate degree, and am working on a second one part-time (both are at/from local US universities, not online). Also, I worked in a non-teaching job in Europe for one year. Do you think this will give me a chance? (I don't care if I make less money, just as long as I get it in a reliable way...).

a.

Thanks so much for the helpful replies. I really appreciate all the advice.

I did want to clarify that by "looking half-heartedly", I do not mean that I was playing games with schools or wasn't sure that I would take posts for which I had applied. I meant that I only sent my resume to a few schools--if any of them had offered me a post, I would have taken it.

Thank you especially for the advice about leaving my current school mid-year. I am a little torn about this because I have received so much conflicting advice from teachers here in the US: some say that my current schedule is "career suicide" because teaching outside of my field will make it difficult to get interviews for another post in the US within my field, but others say that it would be worse to bail out in the middle of the year. (as for the "breaking contract" issue, I work for a private school, and the contract states that either the school or I may end the contract at any time by giving one month's notice). I do like my current school, but I am nervous about the financial situation--as I said, they have laid off teachers for this year. The teachers who were laid off this year were not told that they did not have jobs until two weeks before the start of the academic year--all three of these teachers are now jobless and terrified, as there are few posts left to be filled at this time of year. So I don't really have any assurance that the school itself will be able to honor all of the year-long contracts of the current staff if enrollment continues to decrease. One of my good friends was among the three who were laid off two weeks before school started, and she is in a very bad situation--I don't want that to ever happen to me!

Again, thanks so much for the advice! I am carefully considering options right now, and I just paid for membership to TIE online, as advised.

a.

I've been looking for an overseas job rather half-heartedly for the past year. I didn't get any offers from the few phone and webcam interviews I had, but I didn't apply to very many either.

I've been working at the same US school for the past 3 years, and I really want to move on now: recent cuts in our school's staff mean that this year I have a much heavier teaching load--I've been asked to teach 2 extra classes per day, neither of which is in my own field (I'm a Math teacher and they are Social Studies classes). I know, I know--I'm lucky to have a job, and lucky not to have been one of the teachers who was laid off. But I want to go overseas, and I'm now willing to go whenever I find a post. Here are my questions:

1. What are my chances of finding an overseas post, preferably in Europe, during the academic year? I would happily go at any time now. Is it common for overseas openings to appear during the term/year?

2. US private schools, at least here on the East Coast, are def. being effected by the economy. As I said, my own school has made recent lay-offs, but I am "safe" because I've been here 3 years. It seems that the new teachers are the first to go. Is it the same overseas? I would hate to leave for a new school/country only to be cut for financial reasons. What are your thoughts on this?

thanks so much!

I recently did a phone interview with a school in Japan. A few days after the interview, they emailed me to ask for my references, saying they wanted to make a decision within the next three days. Now it has been two and a half weeks, but they never called any of my references and I've heard nothing. I sent an email four days ago, but no reply.

Does this mean that they decided i'm a "no"? Do schools usually phone interview so many people that they don't have time to email everyone back to let them know that they will not be offered the job?

How long have you waited after an interview before hearing back with a "yes" or a "no"?