The International Schools Review Forum

Anybody taking the year off? I got locked out of China in February and my new schools numbers dropped so I am not needed. Now it's very late and I am financially set to take a year off. Anyone see a downside to this? I'm sure the market is not going to be booming next year but the jobs on Search and ISS currently are not anything that sparks my interest. Just looking for some guidance. Thanks.

I don't think any prospective school in the future is going to think poorly of you for not working the 20-21 school year.

I think you just get to say “pandemic” and there will be no more questions.
Unless someone else is telling a different story about you, you’ll be fine.

I'm not working internationally this year and don't see it as a blight on my employment. The amount of people who have lost their job due to falling numbers, cant get into a specific country due to restrictions and so many other reasons will make this a "oh yeah - next question" type of thing.

Thanks for the advice. I've always heard mix things about taking a year off but your right I am sure the word pandemic will be a pretty easy thing to say and not worry about follow up questions. I am going to get a letter from the school that no longer needs my services saying I was offered the job so that some what helps.

Lots of people take a year off and don't do anything related to education and it does not affect them. If fact I have done before. Make the most of it though. Don't spend it watching Netflix someplace. I'd make a list of things you always wanted to do but think of things of course you can do in one place.
Maybe go someplace to really get into good health with a good diet and exercise, pursue a hobby, maybe do another type of work, but you could also teach online. There are a lot of companies where you teach ESL online and there will only be more due to pandemic.
Have fun!

Friends from Bangkok and Singapore are in a similar boat. Moved back home to N. America and are currently looking for part-time/full-time jobs. Nobody knows what 2021-22 school year will look like. If you have solid savings, could be a good time to up-skill.

You can do pretty much anything for a year away from IE or E and not have it effect your marketability or your resume. You can sit on a beach destroying your liver watching YouTube or Netflix and its fine. I would concur with @Sid, drop "pandemic", and its next question.

My husband and I are in the same boat (laid off from jobs in China) and decided to take a year off. We're young, we don't have kids, we have a decent savings, and since we were laid off quite late in the year, didn't see any attractive positions opening up. We're just chilling out with family in the States and using this time to work on hobbies, rewrite our curriculum so we can hit the ground running wherever we go next, and do a bit of personal and professional development. I definitely feel like we will be better equipped to get the "right" positions after a year off than we would have been if we had scrambled to take whatever we could find out of panic after being laid off.

As with anyone taking time off in this era of increased child protection, please make sure to keep hold of some evidence of where you were and what you were doing. It doesn't have to be much, but sooner or later you'll probably find yourself faced with a prospective employer needing to do a proper background check. Don't be like the candidate I had to turn away because she or he had spent a couple years living in a foreign country without a residence visa and working under the table. The simple version is that you need to be able to prove that you weren't in prison or otherwise engaged in questionable activities.

As the school year begins I find myself wishing that I had taken the year off.

As we hear from our friends around the world, I have to say my husband and I are quite relieved we made the VERY difficult choice to take the year off to evaluate our future, to focus on our only remaining sick aging parent who we really want to keep in her own home and not move to a care facility, to reconnect with our kids who are now working adults, and to watch the fallout of this global pandemic from our home country. Not sure what the future holds but certainly after working overseas since 1992 we are ready for either a break or even a new direction. Glad that we have been saving and investing and are able to have the choice to retire and try something new and maybe less stressful with evenings to ourselves! Watching what schools, admin, teachers, parents and students are dealing with, the reopening plan A/B/C/D that are getting rewritten again and again as the Covid situation is entering the 2nd wave, many teaching online for a quarter or a semester or what may turn out to be the entire year, not getting to travel for vacations or get home to family with closed airports, limited flights, airlines going bankrupt, quarantines ..... we feel for everyone. What a crazy rollercoaster of a year or two or three ahead.

Entry and exit stamps for the region are more than adequate proof of where you were, and if the IS requires a possible CRB for the region.