It would be lovely if school choice came to the US in an extreme form to the point where public schools started to have to shut down. A free market in education would be a blessing for so many children.

Tell them that your family is going on a great adventure with a lot of excitement. This way, if it is good, they are getting excited for it, but if it is bad, at least they know you warned them that it would be an adventure and adventures are not always happy happy 24/7. Especially if what you arrive to is not what you had hoped for keep reminding them that this is an adventure that will come to an end! Being that it is China, it could easily go south fast.

I will play the devil's advocate: If you are taking that much of a pay cut and leaving a secure job that you love, maybe you should pull out and just use your extra money in your current job to pay for nice vacations during the summer? This way you salvage your network back home and get more of a life when school is out.

I sure hope you are going somewhere nice. At least then you can maybe justify it to yourself that you will have a nice work life balance on a weekly basis. But, it would be a shame if you are planning to go to Africa, China, Kuwait, Korea...and the list goes on...

I have come out of self-imposed exile to respond to the original poster. Let me put it to you like this: You have a slave mindset. You must change it immediately. Feel guilty? Obscene. The fact that so many posters are even engaging with you on this and telling you to say nothing is amazing and pathetic all at once. SLAVES EVERYONE.

@teacherian, I think you said it beautifully. As a matter of fact, the most know-it-all teachers on this board overlap a great deal with the ones who have the most success in terms getting jobs at schools/in locations they want. And what is one thing they almost all have in common? No kids! Do these individuals ever wonder that maybe they are not the best teachers but the best teachers without baggage? That maybe their obvious intellectual holes are clear to the heads who hire them but the heads don't care enough because they are single or are a childless couple? Thus they are winning at a game that is rigged in their favor. And they love every minute of it. The good news is that these self-indulgent know it alls have the nerve to call me an egomaniac, when in fact their lifestyle proves they are the ones who are so self-centered as to be unable to marry and/or have children because both would take way from their "me time." Head's love getting hires who have nothing going on in their personal lives other than short-term flings with culture, places, or people that don't get in the way with their bottom line cost.

International education is as bad is it is because most schools keep, for financial reasons having to do with lack of imagination or intelligence on the part of their heads, having to settle for just such teachers who bring plenty of their own self-love but nearly no self-awareness about the implications of their schools' decisions on others: the better teachers who got shafted because they did not check a "cheap box" or the students who learn from whole faculties of teachers who have little to no perspective on life as anything other than children in adult bodies.

@shadowjack

I apply everywhere with my job and only by interviewing with them would I ever know if I wanted to work with them or for them. What, you think a person can know if he or she would like a school based off of its website alone? Oh, and this site's reviews too?

Otherwise, to be clear to all those who can't read: I got offers! I got European offers! I said no because I don't like them. I said no. I am disillusioned with international education because I am smart and most in international education don't motivate me to want to work with them or for them. That simple. I am not going to take a job at a school to be surrounded by people who are not going to challenge me to be a better educator or a better/smarter/more capable person. What is so hard here? This has nothing to do with ego, it has to do with the truth. I stated it, and most of the other contributors in this thread don't want to hear it. That is all.

I want to also make very clear that I am not being sarcastic when I say I am really happy I went and saw the light at the fair. I'm moving on and I am excited for new adventures.

As you would have known if you could, I turned down many interviews at the fair. I am not bitter for not getting an offer. It says more about the school than it does me if I interview and don't get an offer or if I am not even offered an interview. I was actually offered two jobs at this fair and I turned down both. I am done settling. That is the point. The whole field is about settling. It's the mindset the powers that be want you to have. I am done settling. The end.

@fine dude, what utter nonsense you write.

In other news, a rainy day in London has ended this year's fair for me. While many would find it depressing, I find it cleansing.

Bottom line: teachers need to really man up. I have never met and been in the company of so many poltroons and nebbishes in my life. I am convinced by this experience that the entire field of education is in for a revolution sooner rather than later because I can't believe those with money will support having their children taught by and attend schools led by such uninspiring and ineffectual recreants for much longer. Congrats to all who got your dream job. Even bigger congrats to those who saw the light that they are in the entirely wrong field.

If you are in your 20s, just don't ask any questions. It's all about location at that point for a male. Do you want to be in that city or not? That's a question you have to ask yourself. If you can live comfortably for your type of lifestyle then sign on the dotted line.

If you are in your 30s or older, then ask about savings/retirement/pension if you have not already done so.

I have been trying to get all my thoughts out about this year's London fair, but nothing longform or narrative is coming together right, so I am drawing inspiration below from long lost forum member ffmary, who wrote something similar two years ago. Below those I create a few of my own. I will try to cobble more together soon.

Best and Worst of London Fair 2017:

Best Looking Recruiter Male: No such thing
Best Looking Recruiter Female: Let's just say that ascending to the thrown at ASM (as it does in any place of work) does just the opposite for the looks.
Worst Food: Chocolate bars from AAS Moscow (Why? Just, why?)
Worst School with Best Presentation: I so very much want to tell but that would be review information, which is not allowed on public forum
Worst Experience: Getting an invitation to interview at a school in Caracas
Best Experience: Staying at Bailey's instead of Gloucester
Best Associate: Oxymoron
Worst Associate: Richest Associate
Best Interview locations: the Bar - recruiter drinking while interviewing is wonderful
Worst Feeling: Realizing that the job you dreamed of for years just went to a 25-year-old because she married to the school's new middle school principal
Best No-Show: UAE schools, oh no, wait, they were there, but they all just blended together for being absolutely mediocre in every way imaginable
Worst Behavior: Recruiters lying to your face and doing a bad to wonderful job doing so
Best Moment: Skipping Gez's candidate orientation

and a few more of my own creation:

Spotted: More spouses piggy-backing on their partner's recruiting business trip to get a free shopping trip in London
Noted: The Italian schools' recruiters seeming to be even more of a mess than usual
Hated: The folders; everyone knows how to use email
Discovered: I could make more as an escort for the for the night in London than I would make in a semester of teaching in Riga

I'm at Search London right now. What can I say? More disappointed than ever in the 'globally-minded' and 'boundary-pushing' international school community made up of entrenched white men or feminazi harridans who proudly discriminate in hiring based on gender, national background, or family status. How progressive! No wonder education is made up of so many Trump-hating leftists. It's the only field that structures and sustains itself as the exact opposite of a meritocracy. Stop complaining that education pays so little. It pays so little because most in 'education' are worth so little and could not make it in any field but modern education. Only college professors may be more worthless for society. Even so, I've had three interviews before sign ups and have three more scheduled today at schools that seem genuinely interested in student success and breaking the restrictive mold of present-day international education. I will only interview with the contrarians. "Top" schools in Asia, Europe, and Africa put little love letters in my folder, but after getting one look at them, I say no thank you. I know they want me not for my talents but more for the superficial boxes I check or my cost relative to more expensive candidates. I am more than happy to stay in my current school because I won't consider trading down; yet, sadly, most schools here present no value added that would prompt me to leave.

Otherwise, lots of pretty and perky youngins ready and eager to sign two-year contracts in order to feel good about themselves without even wondering if making a life choice about where one lives and works for at least two years probably isn't the best thing to do with a gun to your head over a 24 hour period.

Associates are as unhelpful as ever, with my assigned fair counselor simply nodding (not even smiling) as I asked her questions. Her response? "That's interesting." Not as interesting as how you siphon money off of poor teachers and call it a career honey. Gez and his family are all here making sure to make things far more complicated than they should be. All is right in the world...More later.

Of course this is the case when school heads want to get cheap but energetic looking teachers. There are whole schools with no expat teachers above 35-years-old. It's also a great way to take advantage of young wide-eyed teachers who won't complain as much about bad housing, hr policies, etc.

The qualifications of "counselors" currently working at international schools vary dramatically. Some are teachers who have no experience but are being team players to impress the boss. Others just little girls who are cheap and like to talk to students and the heads like the girls (in more ways than one) and consider nice talkers counselors. Others have specializations in college or mental health counseling through premier post-bac programs such UCLA's or masters programs in school counseling for the soci/emo specialists. Some are generalists, some are specialists. A majority are highly average, a great number are so bad they are worse than a school having no counselor at all, and a minority are at the top of their field.

What happens depends on what you make happen.

Senator, now that santa claus has shot up an bar popular with Westerners and westernized Turks, are you still living in la la land and considering Istanbul? Please say no. I had such respect for your perspectives up until recently.