Turkey is a country full of lovely people. I am saddened by the dictatorship there now. I would not teach there, personally.

justme123 wrote:
> It has gotten to the point where my expectations are so low that anytime I
> get a rejection email/call, I am happy (err relieved) that I wasn't
> ghosted.

That's the best attitude. Just assume ghosting is the default, and try to forget about applications shortly after you make them. Not worth your energy to fixate on them or the ghosting.

Ghosting is of course highly unprofessional and says much about the institution (or people running the institution) that is at fault. Take the ghosting as a sign of how a place does business, and if anything, be glad that you didn't wind up working there.

JasperTheCat wrote:
> I read somewhere where that an average salary today for International
> teachers is 32K per year. I made that amount 9 years ago. Is this the right
> number (32K)?

Whatever the number is, it will be too low. 32? 42? 52? Who cares?

The sad fact is that the "effort to remuneration ratio" for teaching is almost universally terrible compared to many other professions. Speaking personally, I never worked harder than when I was a teacher, and yet I was never paid more poorly for the effort, the education I needed to practice, and the multitude of talents that were required to run a successful classroom. Whether it's 32K or 52K for the skills required to be a good teacher, you're just talking about a range that goes from embarrassingly bad to bad.

Yet I loved teaching and still do. However, I must always check my sanity when I teach because I know that with my skills, I could walk away and earn two or three times my teacher salary with relative ease (technology).

At some point, though, you have to decide what's more important: money or job/life satisfaction. It's not an easy question to answer when you have options.

The great irony, perhaps, is that while teaching is among the most demanding and yet most poorly paid of the jobs I have held, there is tremendous competition for teaching jobs. I suppose this speaks to many things: people can easily drift into teaching from being a student because they're familiar with the whole gig; people would rather spend their days engaging young minds (hopefully) rather than engaging a computer screen in a cube farm; people will sacrifice a lot (a LOT) of pay for the status and autonomy that teaching affords. The list goes on and on.

I have no answers. I do know that if you have options and being a teacher is just one of them, the choice is tough, or can be tough, and that perhaps a good strategy is compromise: get out for a while, stack some money while living frugally, and then return, free of concerns about money. If you do that, a lot of your life will have been devoted to something you cannot look back upon with pride, but oh, well. You've solved one of your needs. If you don't do that, you may end up on a message board one day referring incredulously to average teacher salaries.

C'est la vie.

Pension vesting in Germany is 5 years. Very small pension at that level.

Search may blacklist you. So what? There was life (and there were jobs) before Search, and there will be life and jobs after Search.

I'm hoping that those of you with positive experiences at your international schools are leaving appropriate reviews on this site. There's a preponderance of negative reviews, as one might expect: people are more inclined to vent in reviews when they're frustrated than they are to take the time to write about being satisfied. Would be nice to see a balance.

I once observed an English class at a top-tier private school in DC. The teaching was atrocious--and this by a teacher described as "brilliant" by the department head. Whatever they're being paid at that school, it's too much.

I left international teaching about 25 years ago to work in IT. I didn't want to leave teaching; it's just that my girlfriend brought us back to the U.S. because of her job. The dot-com revolution was just picking up steam. I had computer skills. The transition brought me 2.5x my teaching salary immediately and kept going higher. Headhunters called me several times per month to try to lure me to another company with more pay. I wanted to return to international teaching every year, but the economics did not make sense, and it sure was nice to be in a field where employers would fight over you, as opposed to the teaching field, where even then you had to really bust it to get a job.

Now I'm looking to get back into international teaching because I no longer have to worry about securing my future, but I'm sensing that indeed teachers have become commodities, even more so than they were. The supply-demand equation is tilted grossly against teachers and has been for decades. Put another way, there are too many willing to work in this field--and for peanuts.

The reasons, I suspect, have something to do with the fact that meaningful work these days, in the age of automation and information age factories, is rare. People are willing to work for next-to-nothing to have meaningful lives. Also, working conditions for teachers in the U.S. are poor, and the word is out about international teaching. It used to be the best kept secret among educators, I felt. No more.

Lastname_Z wrote:
> Employment is the reason people work in China. Simple as that.
>
> In my country there are too many teachers and not enough jobs. I wouldn't
> enjoy a good quality of life (economically speaking) if I stayed back home
> to try to pursue teaching further (go through the substitutes list, mat
> leaves, and wait pretty much 10 years for a full time job).
>
> There are so many schools in China compared to the rest of the world that
> it's easy for a new teacher to gain teaching experience and have a full
> time job. Also, pretty much anywhere outside of Shanghai and Beijing has a
> lower cost of living and a good wage. I've saved quite a lot of money in my
> three years here and I've been in the third-tier so far in my career.

What's the point of money if you die as a result of breathing in cancerous air for a few years?

I always factor in where I can speak the language. That's pretty huge for me, more important than a bit of extra money. I don't like living in an IT bubble.

grdwdgrrrl wrote:
> Not just China.....
> 'Filthy air' prompts 'very high' pollution alert for London
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-38716498

Yeah. Paris, too.

But that's not comparable to China.

Thank you for the advice. They are probably searching for someone local and did not expect to get my application. Once they did, they weren't enthused enough to turn on the computer. I should pass.

senator wrote:
> Right.
>
> I have a lot of Chinese friends and they all are concerned about the
> health/safety of their food.
>
> Those heavy metals and poisons that all those Chinese factories spew 24
> hours a day have to land somewhere, like in the soil.
>
> But the question is: Why in hell do people still want to work in China now?
> Aside from ISB or SAS or Wab and a couple of others, the salary/benefits
> are not exceptional. And if they want culture, they can just visit on
> vacation rather than risk the long term exposure to poisons.
>
> Anyone who still teaches in China care to answer this question? And I did
> work in China for 8 years - left in the late 2000's when things were still
> good.


I don't get it, either. My Chinese friend that I mentioned, for example, refuses to go back, even though she could take any number of prestigious positions in the university.

Good position at a state school in Germany. The school refuses to do a Skype interview, wants me to come there to interview. I'm inclined to do it--at my expense, of course--but am also fully aware that it might not amount to anything.

What would your attitude toward such a situation be? Part of me is indignant at the lack of accommodation, which suggests they don't value my candidacy much--a potential red flag.

Wow, all these age limits are really discouraging. 60 is not that old, you know--at least to some of us.