The International Schools Review Forum

Hello all,

This doesn't apply to me this year but thinking down the road for next year or beyond.

What do teaching couples do with their kids when they want to go to a fair? (Let's say the kids are young 5ish)

If the couple is already overseas then having them stay with family would not apply. Does the whole family go and then each candidate takes turns interviewing? Do you have them stay with colleagues back at your school for the long weekend?

Something I always wanted to know.

Many/most hotels would have some type of babysitting services available or could recommend someone. I also know of people who have had kids stay with friends in their current overseas city and someone who had a grandmother meet them at the fair and combine babysitting with vacation.

One year friends had parents come for holidays, part of which was looking after the grandkids in Bangkok. Other years, friends hired a sitter through the hotel. I say, just buy a big dog crate, stock it with snacks, water and a couple of iPads and your kids are fine... <-- that is a joke, for those who might be inclined to take it seriously...

The two most common routes, in my experience, are to leave the children at home with friends/colleagues, or to have a grandparent or similar come to the fair. Alternatively, send the children to the grandparents, or bring the grandparents to the children wherever you are living.
I don’t recommend using hotel services. Your hiring fair days are too hectic and unpredictable and you won’t necessarily improve things by using a patchwork of multiple unfamiliar carers.

Also on the subject of kids at Job Fairs, we had an "interesting" experience at a job fair. We had a pre-fair interview set up at a fair in BKK and had arranged with the hotel for a babysitter. She arrived at the room at the last minute and we left our son (who has some special needs issues) with her after a few rushed words of background/instructions. We had told her that she could take him to the pool thinking it would keep him busy.

We had our interview which went OK and met them at the pool. The babysitter told us that everything went fine and she quickly left. We sat there enjoying the day and ordered lunch for about two minutes. Then, a nice and well-meaning lady came up to us and began to list all of the things our son had done wrong during the last hour (e.g. threw her cane in the pool, called her fat, pushed a girl into the pool after seeing her father do the same thing, etc). In the midst of this a man came up and told us how rude our son was (who when we apologized and explained about his disability said, "Well, that's no excuse!". We later found out the hotel's babysitters were basically off duty housekeepers with very limited English and she apparently was content to sit there and eat the lunch we told her to order while he ran amok.

We of course could only imagine how many potential admin/employers and other people connected to the fair must have witnessed/heard all of this and basically concluded that after all of the time and expense to be there, we were dead in the water before we had even started.

We tried to psych ourselves up and had quite a few interviews with some very good schools but left the fair without jobs. Partly because of our special situation with our son (his disability, not the pool debacle) and partly I'm sure because we started the whole process with an impending feeling of doom.

So, there is our humorous anecdote/cautionary tale. It had a happy ending though as that experience (and others) nudged us towards getting jobs with DoDEA since they are bound (to some degree) to follow IDEA. We now have our dream gigs in our dream location and couldn't be happier.

We also found our favorite restaurant in the whole world around the corner from the hotel and manage to pass through BKK every few years just to eat there a few times.

PS: I wouldn't rule out using hotel babysitters if that is what you need to do. BUT definitely do your research and prepare for it as best as you can.

reisgio, a dog crate is pretty cheap. And if you wrap it up and ship it back home, you can threaten and traumatize your kids for years afterwards... ;-)

wrldtrvlr123--re: We also found our favorite restaurant in the whole world around the corner from the hotel and manage to pass through BKK every few years just to eat there a few times.

What is your favorite restaurant in Bangkok? Please do share...

We left our 3 behind (HS, MS, elementary) when we did the job fair. It was 8-9 days because we did back to back fairs, but worth it. We would not leave our kids with hotel babysitters and the idea of them sitting around the room, bored or in trouble, would have been so distracting. Job fairs are intense and we felt we needed to be completely focused on the outcome and the process, not distracted by the kids. It was the first time we had left them alone for more than a weekend!

We didn't have family that could travel to us at that time, but if we did, I would bring family (or even a friend) over rather than take my kids with me. We had a friend from our church that was in town at the end of the break and able to live at our house and still do her work (since the kids were in school). It worked out well in all respects.

Good luck!

Heimtun wrote:
> wrldtrvlr123--re: We also found our favorite restaurant in the whole world around
> the corner from the hotel and manage to pass through BKK every few years just to
> eat there a few times.
>
> What is your favorite restaurant in Bangkok? Please do share...
================
The Gallery, around the corner from the Royal Orchid. It's been great for us every time we've gone.

The Gallery was great, but it closed a couple years ago, if I’m not mistaken.

My major concerns with bringing family and children with two recruiting ITs are two fold:
1)The travel costs are at least double just in flights, rooms and meals and the children add nothing. This doesnt include childcare costs and other incidentals. Its less an impact if its a local fair for you, but if not having the children there does nothing for you.
2) You will have increased restrictions on your time and resources. During sign-up both of you will need to be on the floor requiring at least some time that you will need childcare. In addition the increased restrictions of juggling interview times so that one of you is with the kids while maintaining business formal dress can be very problematic. It sounds like it works in theory, but you inevitably will produce conflicts that either require you to miss opportunities or arrange for more childcare and other arrangements. This has less an impact based on your teaching fields and scheduling (if one of you has only first night interviews or one of you has a teaching field with low number of vacancies) than you an more easily schedule around them.

A number of IT couples have made it work, and I recommend arranging for the childcare at your destination. Schedule a full day nanny for the day of signup, you will have more control and flexibility on later days where you can schedule around one another and restrict activities to the hotel property. I would disagree with @mamava in regards to bringing a caregiver, it just adds even more expense and coordination for what amounts to 8 hours of dedicated recruiting time. I would however strongly advise leaving the kids at home.

@sid

I thought the Gallerys closure was temporary?

sid wrote:
> The Gallery was great, but it closed a couple years ago, if I’m not mistaken.
======================
It re-opened across the street from the old location with the same menu and apparently the same people. We went last last December and the corn fritters and pomelo salad were still great. :D

@WT123

Whew, thank goodness.

reisgio wrote:
> What an appalling thread. How can any of you be educators and have such
> insipid questions and answers!? If you don't know what to do with your
> children, maybe you shouldn't have them.

Actually, I’m the type of person that doesn’t like to impose on others so am hesitant to leave kids with colleagues for a weekend. We have never actually used babysitting services at hotels, but now thanks to the valuable comments and anecdotes from other professionals, I will think twice before using this option. I have also found a great restaurant review for BKK and the potential uses for crates for children.

Lighten up Francis

Hey, if it's good enough for Spot, it's good enough for Dick and Jane! ;-)