Startup Schools

[elkiesea]

Hi folks

I was recently offered (and have accepted via email although not signed a contract yet) a position at a new international school that will be opening in 2016. The school has a good name behind it (for what it's worth) and the package is great compared to what I'm making now.

I've pretty much decided to take the risk but am interested to hear other teachers' opinions and wondered if anyone has any first hand experience of going to a new school with its first intake of students - good, bad or ugly?

Cheers, El

[migratingbird]

I think it depends on a lot of different things. I worked at a start up with a "good name" behind it. I was told they were expecting to open with 350 students, when we arrived there was only 35...from 2 years of age to 16! Still, we were positive and saw the school slowly grow. Not just in students, but in buildings - it was nowhere near finished when we arrived. There were also very, very few resources (for the first few weeks no photocopiers, printers, coloured paper, reading books, etc) which was a great challenge professionally but could be frustrating. Setting up a new school is hard work, but exciting if you're working under competent leadership and have full support of the "good name" behind it. If you don't have these two things, it can turn into a nightmare. I have other friends who have worked at start up schools with good leadership and had a great experience. One other thing to consider, when moving to a start up school you have to discover everything about the local area by yourself, there's no-one there to offer good advice about estate agents to avoid, where to buy decent cars, etc. That was an element of it that I hadn't considered before. I love a good explore, and was happy to discover local markets, restaurants, etc by myself. But for big, pricier things, it would have been handy to have a few people who knew what they were talking about.

[elkiesea]

Thanks, it's good to hear about positive experiences. From what I've been told, construction is largely complete but no idea on numbers of students. Like in your case, they've said they will open with 300 students but who knows. Housing is provided in an established expat area so I shouldn't have to worry too much about finding accommodation (the worst part of moving to a new country in my opinion!)

[PsyGuy]

Startups have good and bad. If your the adventurous type the good outweighs the bad, if your not the bad can be pretty bad. You cant believe anything the IS and its leadership says, because they dont know either. The good is you get to build everything, so going forward a lot of what the IS becomes will be from your direct influence, and that could persist for decades. Leadership is also very busy and there is a lot of chaos meaning you have a lot more room and time to make mistakes, you can always blame something else for whatever goes wrong, and leadership usually has bigger priorities. You can be a new IT and pretty much coast for a couple years while everything is happening.

The bad is that you have to do everything, and no one knows anything, there really isnt anyone to go to for help on anything, and you will be expected to chip in to get the job done even if it goes above and beyond what you were contracted to do, and that can be frustrating and exhausting (I advise leaving as soon as you can before someone gives you something more to do in any one day). You need to be comfortable with changes made at the last moment, your class of 15 is now a class of 15 over 3 grade levels, and you have to differentiate. You also have to have a very healthy tolerance for meetings, never ending meetings.