Hi all,
I am currently working as a project management consultant for one of the Big 4 accounting firms. The pay is great and I like what I do. Only thing is, outside of work I would like to have more time to do other things - side projects, play music, learn languages, family, etc. I also think education would be more meaningful as a profession. We are an international family (wife and 2 kids). I speak fluent Chinese as I went to a university in China to receive a degree in Chinese and worked in China for 4 years (also consulting). I am currently at intermediate level Japanese and working hard everyday to improve. My wife worked a few years in the international school systems as a Chinese teacher in China and US and she suggested that I consider switching to international school teacher in order to have more time to do the things that I want. We would be interested in the Asia Pacific region only. If something worth pursuing, I can spend the next 3 years or so preparing for the switch.
Has anyone ever switched from a busy consulting or much higher paying corporate job to become an international school teacher? What has your experience been like? Positive, negative, neutral? Regrets? I’ve been looking on the forums and I do see a lot of folks complaining about Asian country schools overworking teachers. But this is contradictory to what I saw of the international school teachers in China at least. I would also be curious as to overworked means to you.
Appreciate any help!!
Thanks,
J
Career change from corporate job - experiences?
Re: Career change from corporate job - experiences?
Saying you want to go into international teaching to have more free time strikes me as very odd. I know many people who have left teaching or taken break years due to the massive amounts of time it consumes. Especially if you are talking about E. Asia. One thing to keep in mind is that school time is going to be much less flexible than corporate time. You can't schedule your meetings around your own needs, and you will likely have after hours commitments that you must attend to beyond just planning.
Especially if you haven't taught before, you are going to be going in as a new teacher in general, and those first fews years basically take over your life as you figure out how to set up a classroom and plan lessons. After 3 years of getting a foundation in your subject, I could maybe see you having more free time, but I really think you are being overly optimistic about the demands of the profession here. I obviously don't know the details, and it depends a lot on the school and courseload, but what you have observed from teachers who seem to have more free time may be from teachers who have been teaching the subject for years and therefore have very little prep required. Overall, I would make sure you want to teach for many other good reasons besides free time before you dive into this world.
Especially if you haven't taught before, you are going to be going in as a new teacher in general, and those first fews years basically take over your life as you figure out how to set up a classroom and plan lessons. After 3 years of getting a foundation in your subject, I could maybe see you having more free time, but I really think you are being overly optimistic about the demands of the profession here. I obviously don't know the details, and it depends a lot on the school and courseload, but what you have observed from teachers who seem to have more free time may be from teachers who have been teaching the subject for years and therefore have very little prep required. Overall, I would make sure you want to teach for many other good reasons besides free time before you dive into this world.
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eion_padraig
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Re: Career change from corporate job - experiences?
I know three people who switched from finance or corporate business jobs into working at international schools. One spent 8 years working in schools before moving into another unrelated field and the other two continue to work at schools. One of those seems to enjoy living a life that is beyond the person's current means, but I suspect the person has managed their money well. When I spoke to those three about their corporate work, they all found it to be soul-sucking so working in schools was a relief from that for all three.
No doubt you'll work fewer hours as a teacher once you get settled in and can prepare lessons and grade efficiently. Besides the holidays which are much more generous than in corporate jobs in North America. My question for myself, if I were you, is how much would you enjoy the teaching and interaction with students, students' parents, fellow teachers, and administrators. In corporate work you tend to have long hours, but you're not necessarily constantly there with people. Being a teacher in the classroom means a lot of time working directly with students. If that isn't an enjoyable part for you working with them, then the job really can be tough.
By the way, your experience in Asia and language skills don't really matter than much. Sure, it can make your life in East Asia easier, but it's not what recruiters are looking for compared to a history of success in teaching. It's a minority of my colleagues who speak Chinese. If you are going to be able to teach high school level mathematics, that will be a bigger issue and help you get work at a better school.
So are you ready to start making USD35,000 a year? Some of the best schools in China have a pay scale that starts in the mid to high $40,000 a year if you have a Master's degree and no years of teaching experience. You'll have more time. I know teachers who love the time they get to be around their family, who play in rock bands on weekends, and who take time to study languages for fun. If you and your wife are both teaching, you can probably save up one of your salaries pretty easily. But you can blow through a lot of money if you keep up spending habits of someone pulling in USD150,000 +. Unlike the people I know who left corporate work, you say "I like what I do", so there's a possibility you'll find the work less fulfilling.
Good luck.
No doubt you'll work fewer hours as a teacher once you get settled in and can prepare lessons and grade efficiently. Besides the holidays which are much more generous than in corporate jobs in North America. My question for myself, if I were you, is how much would you enjoy the teaching and interaction with students, students' parents, fellow teachers, and administrators. In corporate work you tend to have long hours, but you're not necessarily constantly there with people. Being a teacher in the classroom means a lot of time working directly with students. If that isn't an enjoyable part for you working with them, then the job really can be tough.
By the way, your experience in Asia and language skills don't really matter than much. Sure, it can make your life in East Asia easier, but it's not what recruiters are looking for compared to a history of success in teaching. It's a minority of my colleagues who speak Chinese. If you are going to be able to teach high school level mathematics, that will be a bigger issue and help you get work at a better school.
So are you ready to start making USD35,000 a year? Some of the best schools in China have a pay scale that starts in the mid to high $40,000 a year if you have a Master's degree and no years of teaching experience. You'll have more time. I know teachers who love the time they get to be around their family, who play in rock bands on weekends, and who take time to study languages for fun. If you and your wife are both teaching, you can probably save up one of your salaries pretty easily. But you can blow through a lot of money if you keep up spending habits of someone pulling in USD150,000 +. Unlike the people I know who left corporate work, you say "I like what I do", so there's a possibility you'll find the work less fulfilling.
Good luck.
Re: Career change from corporate job - experiences?
Here's a link to an ISR article/discussion with over 100 reader comments on this very topic. You'll find hundreds of articles/discussions related to International Teaching on the ISR Discussion Boards.
https://internationalschoolsreviewdiscu ... reer-move/
https://internationalschoolsreviewdiscu ... reer-move/
Re: Career change from corporate job - experiences?
Thanks all for the responses! And I want to take a moment to say big thank you for volunteering your time to answer questions on this forum from folks like myself. With every post you really are helping others and making a positive impact to the online community with your honest feedback so keep doing what you’re doing!
Reading the responses there seemed to be a good mix of positive and negative. Out of the positive side, I noticed there seemed to be more folks who had a teaching background teaching in the US or UK before going international. From that perspective, I completely understand as I know many teachers in the US who have it rough. Something else that struck me was the issue of ageism in teaching. This was another factor in my decision to investigate teaching because in the technology world this is an issue as well. On my technology projects I rarely see anyone in their 50s unless they are senior directors. Unlike technology, I thought teaching was a profession where the older more experienced folks would be more valuable.
After consideration – I think I will stick with my current situation for now. At its peak, corporate world really does become insanely busy, but at the same time, there are days where I am way ahead schedule and I can take a breather. Just like teaching, it seems to just be luck about what situation, role, and employer you happen to fall into. All in all, both professions might actually even out from a busy-ness perspective, in which case it would be silly to take 4x less money. Plus I do enjoy what I do, I’m not dreading going to work every day. I try to make those around me happy and myself happy in turn. I know some folks who get into a 24x7 churn every year no matter what client or role they accept. In that situation I completely understand looking into a change, but for me that has not been the case so far. I do feel teaching would be more meaningful. Slaving away for a corporate mission objective that really has no meaningful impact on society, and in many cases can even be said to be doing more harm than good, is the one thing I don’t like about my line of work. The indirect consequences. So I’ve always had a great admiration for those in education. Plus I still do have opportunities to travel and potentially get into a position where my language abilities are a big asset in the international business world.
Reading the responses there seemed to be a good mix of positive and negative. Out of the positive side, I noticed there seemed to be more folks who had a teaching background teaching in the US or UK before going international. From that perspective, I completely understand as I know many teachers in the US who have it rough. Something else that struck me was the issue of ageism in teaching. This was another factor in my decision to investigate teaching because in the technology world this is an issue as well. On my technology projects I rarely see anyone in their 50s unless they are senior directors. Unlike technology, I thought teaching was a profession where the older more experienced folks would be more valuable.
After consideration – I think I will stick with my current situation for now. At its peak, corporate world really does become insanely busy, but at the same time, there are days where I am way ahead schedule and I can take a breather. Just like teaching, it seems to just be luck about what situation, role, and employer you happen to fall into. All in all, both professions might actually even out from a busy-ness perspective, in which case it would be silly to take 4x less money. Plus I do enjoy what I do, I’m not dreading going to work every day. I try to make those around me happy and myself happy in turn. I know some folks who get into a 24x7 churn every year no matter what client or role they accept. In that situation I completely understand looking into a change, but for me that has not been the case so far. I do feel teaching would be more meaningful. Slaving away for a corporate mission objective that really has no meaningful impact on society, and in many cases can even be said to be doing more harm than good, is the one thing I don’t like about my line of work. The indirect consequences. So I’ve always had a great admiration for those in education. Plus I still do have opportunities to travel and potentially get into a position where my language abilities are a big asset in the international business world.
Response
Im going to advise you to reconsider and to do so deeply and for two reasons: 1) Your goals arent really those you can come back too. You want to spend more time with your kids for example and these are times you cant go back and recapture. 2) It becomes exponentially harder to enter IE as you get older.
As far as time management, what do you get in the corporate world 10 days a year? In IE ITs work about 190 days a year. Sure there are ITs that spend their summers tinkering with lesson plans and creating new content, but there are a LOT of ITs that dump everything in a box on the last day, and then check out for the next couple of months over the summer without a care or thought to their classrooms or their students or their craft or anything else for that matter. The same for winter and spring holiday and any other long stretches of holiday off. If you want time off that you can make constructively meaningful, IE can absolutely provide that. Your comparison is days compared to weeks and months.
As far as time management, what do you get in the corporate world 10 days a year? In IE ITs work about 190 days a year. Sure there are ITs that spend their summers tinkering with lesson plans and creating new content, but there are a LOT of ITs that dump everything in a box on the last day, and then check out for the next couple of months over the summer without a care or thought to their classrooms or their students or their craft or anything else for that matter. The same for winter and spring holiday and any other long stretches of holiday off. If you want time off that you can make constructively meaningful, IE can absolutely provide that. Your comparison is days compared to weeks and months.