What was Search thinking when they scheduled this fair for Tuesday - Friday? Many teachers are going to end up taking at least a couple of unpaid days off to attend this fair. Please Search, go with a Thursday - Sunday schedule next time.

You cannot live in Phuket using public transportation, period. Phuket is a huge island and consists of much, much more than Phuket city, which may indeed be "very accessible", however that doesn't help much when the beaches, international schools, most good restaurants, etc, are all miles and miles away from the city itself (The school in question, PIA, is 30+km north of Phuket city in an area with zero public transport)

Taxis and tuk-tuks (even motorcycle taxis) DO charge DC and NYC prices on Phuket, in some cases much more! This type of transport is mafia controlled on Phuket, a fact to which the local police admit and is well documented in the Thai press.

Agree somewhat that a person could get by owning a scooter/motorcycle. Most of the expats I know on Phuket have cars.

Info may be hard to come by, it's a new school. I've been out to the campus while visiting friends in Phuket. The setting is certainly beautiful and the facilities are all new. As long as the admin isn't Thai it would be worth an interview to find out more. Be aware that you would basically have to buy a car if you moved to Phuket, which can really put a dent into your budget.

[quote="Glerky"]
Going to India is their way of getting away from the poverty might help put some perspective on this.
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Now that's something you don't hear everyday - wow.

I talked to them at a job fair last year and went to their school presentation. Not something I'd probably go for right now, but it might be an interesting experience down the line. As you might have guessed, the presentation focused on the school and the housing (which looked absolutely amazing) and didn't touch much on Dhaka itself - I assume they wanted to keep things positive. The guy presenting put a big emphasis on the cheap availability of household help to go into Dhaka for you for shopping, etc.

As nice as Thailand is to live, it is simply not worth it if you have to work at a sweatshop (to call it a 'school' is being way too generous) like this place. If you are set on Thailand for some reason you'd be much better off at a reputable language school - have you considered applying to the British Council?

Money making sweatshop. It is not an international school. It is a Thai school running the Thai educational system, which equals career suicide for a qualified teacher. You'd be nuts to even consider it unless you are some sort of masochist. Run away and don't look back.

To the OP: Get hired by a good school in Thailand. Problem solved! But not easy to do unfortunately, jobs there are competitive at the real international schools.

I would not outright lie to a school about being married, but if it comes up just say your wife does her own thing and will be visiting you from time to time (at your expense). This is perfectly reasonable and if the school is still bent out of shape over this, then you probably don't want to work for them anyway.

Just a thought, have you considered attending the fair as a 'single' and bringing your wife on your own? This is not possible in all countries of course, but there are many places where your wife could be a de-facto 'tourist' or obtain a student visa by doing a language course, etc.

For example, I know that in Southeast Asia it's not hard to stay in most countries as a perpetual tourist, and it's also easy in some (definitely not all) middle eastern countries.

Your wife could also end up getting hired locally in some capacity once in country.

ELC is supposed to be a good school, though I have no first hand info. I haven't heard anything about the others. Be careful, lots of 'international' kindergartens are all over Bangkok, many of which seek out unqualified teachers to increase the bottom line.

Knowing Thailand, this is nothing that can't be fixed by an unmarked envelope exchanging hands between a well connected Thai at your school and one of Bangkok's finest. And this latest 'crackdown' will all be forgotten as soon as the police find something more lucrative to do with their time. I would not be too concerned.

Wonder if they will take into account a false positive result? This is not uncommon in drug tests.

Never heard of it either. Although going by the name I would advise to run a mile. The so called 'catholic' schools in Thailand are mostly money making factories with horrid working conditions. Be careful. Thailand is nice but not if you have to work at a sweatshop.

Real Mexican food, fresh from a taco cart or a little hole in the wall. I can cook it myself, but it's never quite the same. Hard to think of anything else - my list of stuff I don't miss would be massive!

Plenty of people love the money that goes with working there. Haven't heard too many glowing reports of Saudi itself though. There are nice places in the Middle East to work, but Saudi isn't known as one of them.

[quote="hallier"]I'd be interested to hear other PYP teachers feedback about their first year teaching the PYP. In my experience, it took a fair while to get my head around the programme - with its concepts, essential elements, transdisciplinary themes, attributes, attitudes etc etc etc.
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Definitely, it took at least half a school year to feel comfortable with the terminology and philosophy and how that translates into the classroom. I can now understand why many IB schools won't interview people without IB experience, it is just a massive undertaking of training and resources to get a newbie up to speed, and realistically the first year is mostly a learning year.

I'm also interested if anyone knows.

It's an IB school (all levels I believe) in eastern Bangkok. The surrounding area is quite ok, it's out of the congested center but not way out in the suburbs, and reasonably close to the subway line.