Religious Education Teacher Abroad

ISQuestion
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Religious Education Teacher Abroad

Post by ISQuestion »

Hello, I am in the UK, training as an Religious Education teacher with the teacher training program called Teach First. I would have preferred English or History, but with the way the program works, I was allocated RE instead.

I have been told that it is still possible to go abroad if I trained in RE, provided I get some experience teaching other subjects, such as History, Geography or other Humanities. I know there are little to no RE jobs abroad, so I would be trying to get jobs in other Humanities subjects.

Would some experience teaching other Humanities subjects be enough for a potential hire at schools? I recognise it may be difficult, but is it difficult yet possible, or so difficult to be unreasonable? Just wondering what this forum thinks.

If this is relevant, I also have a BA in Political Science/Islamic Studies and an MA in Political Science (with a Middle Eastern focus) and I can speak Arabic and English. My qualification will be a PGDE in Secondary Education, not specific to RE.

Any help is greatly appreciated!
sid
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Re: Religious Education Teacher Abroad

Post by sid »

Possible and tricky. You’ll probably have to start out in a weaker school. Once you’ve taught overseas for a few years, it’ll be easier to move to a better school.
unsure
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Re: Religious Education Teacher Abroad

Post by unsure »

ISQuestion wrote:

> I have been told that it is still possible to go abroad if I trained in RE, provided I get some experience teaching other subjects, such as History,
> Geography or other Humanities.

This is a half truth. Yes, you could do this, but it will be a lot lot trickier. You may have to bury the RE on your CV and just present yourself as a Humanities teacher. Many nationalities have an aversion to mixing religion and schools. As sid says, you'll probably have to start out at the dodgier end of the sector.
ISQuestion
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Re: Religious Education Teacher Abroad

Post by ISQuestion »

Thank you both for your responses, how dodgy/weak would be expected? The sort of places that can't hire anyone else? How long would probably be expected to work there before being able to move to better schools?

Does not having "Religious Education" actually written on my qualification matter either? I thought it would be easier to present myself as a Humanities teacher due to this little thing, provided I can get sufficient Humanities courses from teaching in the UK.
PsyGuy
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Response

Post by PsyGuy »

Its way more problematic than tricky. How do you get experience in those other courses, so that you can expand your resume? There isnt a shortage of history or literature DTs in the UK. Nor are they in demand ares of IE. If you can get an appointment to get that experience despite not having it, then youve solved your own problem. Any DS in the UK can check your DT profile and see you were trained in RE. Geography is really the only humanities with any demand in the UK, so either the DS thinks you can teach it well enough and they cant get anyone better or they can and youre just waiting.

There are a small handful of RE appointments that come up every year in IE, but they are really small in number. You could be waiting years to get one and what do you do in the mean time. Without much marketable experience of those small number of ISs your shrinking the pool even smaller as your only competitive at tier 3 ISs and the lower end of tier 3 at that.

What you need to do is spin your resume. Youre not an RE IT, youre a humanities IT that just happened to have done your EPP/ITT program in RE. You use some subterfuge to emphasize your academic qualifications and pitch your experiences have given you a broad social studies/humanities background while de-emphasizing the RE component. You target vacancies that are lower secondary as opposed to SLL and upper secondary (though really you should just apply to everything). You then have a second resume that emphasizes the RE training and experience that you use for one of those RE vacancies.

Lower tier ISs are often in the position of having to take what they can get. Youre going to be an NQT with QTS and Masters degrees going up against ETs without any sort of credential besides an ESOL certificate and a bachelors/first degree. If those individuals can make the transition to IE, than you can. More often then they will admit, bottom tier ISs have to take someone without much classroom experience.

Yes, ISs that cant recruit anyone else.

Typically you can move up or over 1 place through the tiers with each new contract. Since your starting in IE without the general consensus of 2 years post credential experience. Youre looking at your first IS being in a hardship location and likely the bottom of the third tier, after two years there you can move to a region thats less of a hardship but still at the bottom of the third tier or moving up to an upper third tier IS but still in a hardship region.
You should note though that this would likely be the same plan had you gotten a placement in history or literature.

Its going to make it easier for you to present yourself as a humanities IT and to get away with framing your responses during an interview as a humanities edu rather than as a RE edu.
ISQuestion
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Re: Religious Education Teacher Abroad

Post by ISQuestion »

Thank you for the detailed response PsyGuy, honestly it’s hugely appreciated.

Definitely I intend to get enough courses in other Humanities in order to present myself as a Humanities teacher, rather than an RE one. I fully intend to leave RE behind, following what you said and just spin it that I happened to do ITT in RE while presenting myself as a Humanities teacher. Hopefully the PGDE in Secondary Education that I’ll be getting, rather than a PGCE in RE for instance, will help this effort a bit.

Regarding my plan for getting other Humanities courses, I’ve pushed hard with Teach First and will push hard with my placement school to get me other Humanities courses while I train. I’m expecting to be placed in a fairly rough school in the UK, which hopefully will get me a better chance of teaching other Humanities.

Honestly, I doubt I’ll make too much of an attempt to go for RE positions either as it seems those options are very limited in number and as you said, I could be stuck waiting for them for years.

Regarding hardship regions, I’ve been told the Middle East is generally seen as a hardship region, is this true? I would prefer to go there if possible, as I would be more comfortable there and have family and friends in different countries but I understand I need to be open to all options.

It’s interesting that you said if I was put into History or English my situation would more or less be the same. My biggest worry is that I will not be able to get my foot in the door with international teaching and essentially be stuck teaching RE in the UK without the hope of breaking into international teaching due to my initial training.

Thanks again for your help, I’m trying to make the correct decision because it seems the wrong one in this matter can really mess me up.
PsyGuy
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Reply

Post by PsyGuy »

@ISQuestion

Thats not really how the program works. When you get to your DS for your field experience. Youre going to be assigned a mentoring DT and you will be shadowing, observing and demonstrating lessons in their classes (TT, Training Teacher). Its possible as a RE TT that you could have other classes within that DTs domain but unless your lead/head DT is up for it, youre not going to be able to bounce around to wherever you want. Id go on but even if you did work it out, field experience doesnt count in IE unless your the TOR, and you wont be.

Well they are limited but the ME tends to have as large a portion of the available (small) RE vacancies by itself out of the globally combined vacancies. You have an academic background in that religious denomination and you speak Arabic, and youd actually like to go there for non-mercenary reasons. You might consider placing yourself to fill that particular niche.

Yes the ME is generally considered a hardship region or post.

Yes it would more or less be the same. Look at the resume. There are three things that go into an ITs resume 1) What they can teach (credentials, qualifications, degrees, etc.). 2) What they have taught (experience, exam scores, etc.). 3) Special Skills (ASPs, languages, etc.). Of those experience is king.
You dont have an academic background in history or literature. Youd have to spin in an interview something like 'history is merely the record of politics' or something, but you have to get into an interview to do that and they have to buy it. Theres nothing in your academics that speaks to any expertise in literature, aside from your a college graduate and its expected you have some type of background in the main genres (prose, poetry, plays) and that having a graduate degree you know how to write. Thats everyone though. You have no experience in teaching anything, field experience doesnt count if you arent the TOR. So whether its RE, history, or literature your resume has little credibility that you could teach any of those subjects. About the only TT assignment that aligns with your background is a politics and government assignment, but you didnt get that. Its a small subject area, but it is offered, and the number of examinees taking it at GCSE and A* isnt zero (COVID was a weird year). Going into a position like that with your background it might have been possible to take over the politics and government course of the DT assigned to mentor you.

You may very well have that problem. Its maybe a better at looking at presenting yourself as a FL IT in Arabic. Youre not a better candidate for that then anything else except that your bilingual and the pool of Arabic ITs is small, but there isnt a lot of demand for Arabic ITs. Its less than RE but there are more ITs that can teach RE than there are those that can teach Arabic. You can assign a humanities/social studies IT to teach RE. You pretty much need someone who is at least conversational in Arabic to teach Arabic, and your fluent and bilingual. It would be easier to teach as well. Youd really only need to do 2 preps compared to RE if your a whole IS IT.
Heliotrope
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Re: Religious Education Teacher Abroad

Post by Heliotrope »

ISQuestion wrote:
> Regarding hardship regions, I’ve been told the Middle East is generally
> seen as a hardship region, is this true?

It depends on your definition of hardship, and on which country of the ME you're talking about.

In the terminology of the US Diplomatic Service, most countries are considered hardship posts, including countries & cities that aren't really deserving of that description imo, such as Reykjavik, The Bahamas, Fiji, Malta, Mexico City, Belgrade, Istanbul, Bangkok, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Aruba, Barbados, Sofia, Santiago, Ho Chi Minh City, Quito, Kuala Lumpur and a bunch of others.
None of those seem like hardship posts to me, and quite a few of those are sought-after cities.

However, if you would ask other teachers what countries or cities have hardships worth mentioning, my guess is that Dubai wouldn't get many (or any) mentions. Same for Muscat, Amman, or Doha.
Then again, Kuwait is almost universally disliked, and although surprisingly many people have told me Saudi is a decent or even a good place to live (and not just because of the pay), most would consider it a hardship post.
Most of the countries (other than Saudi) with many ISs will not be considered hardship by many teachers, even if the US Diplomatic Service will still pay their diplomats there a hardship differential.

From what I've heard and read, the ME does have a relatively large number of terrible schools, and I've heard many teachers say that generally ME students aren't great to teach, so for that reason you could consider it a hardship region.

So consider the specific country instead of the whole region, and research the school thoroughly.
But that's true everywhere.
PsyGuy
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Discussion

Post by PsyGuy »

I tend to agree with @Heliotrope that the US DOS does classify a lot of locations as hardships that I wouldnt (for that matter they classify a lot of regions as hardships that I would consider a hardship).

I disagree with @Heliotrope in regards to the rest:

Dubai (and for that matter Muscat, Amman, or Doha) are all hardship regions. Just because they are less of a hardship than somewhere like Kuwait, doesnt mitigate that their still hardships.

There are really two type of locations in IE (1) places ITs want to go at some degree of cost to them and (2) places ITs dont want to go and ISs have to incentivize them to go. You can see it every year at every recruiting event (fair) theres the ISs that have a snaking line of dozens of candidates for a very low number of positions (sometimes just one, sometimes they dont have any positions at all but candidates talk to them hoping they can make one) and then the ISs that have nobody or 1 or 2 candidates. In the ME theres really only one IS that has that snaking line and its an IS that repps essentially a major oil company. Its rare (such as your case) someone wants to go to the ME. Have a pint with them and you quickly get to the truth that its more along the lines of "given what the coin is the living situation is acceptable."

Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, the Kingdom, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen the whole list of the ME, all of them hardship locations. Some better and less hardships than others but yes all hardship locations.

Its less a large number of terrible ISs and more a large proportion of terrible train wreck ISs.

ME kids can be really horrible to teach more often than the inverse but there are some good kids among them, somewhere, maybe, hopefully.
Heliotrope
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Re: Discussion

Post by Heliotrope »

Quite a few of teachers teaching in especially Muscat & Dubai do so BECAUSE of the location, not in spite of it.
And Amman and Doha might not be very exciting, there are few hardships there.

As said, it depends on which country/city you choose, and on your definition of hardship - for some living in a very hot country without much culture, or one where alcohol isn't readily available would be insufferable, for others that might not matter at all because they prioritize other things.
The region as a whole isn't a hardship location, but there are plenty of countries in the ME that most would describe as such.
And also, 'hardship' is a spectrum: Egypt, which some will call a hardship location, will have a lot (like, a whole lot) fewer hardships than Iraq or Yemen.
PsyGuy
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Reply

Post by PsyGuy »

@Heliotrope

Do you repp these ITs are are you speaking solely for yourself again?

That we seem to surprisinglu agree momentarily that hardships range in severity and comprise a spectrum of hardships is quickly rendered moot as it appears your position is that a certain threshold of less severe hardship mitigates the hardship entirely. In this it would seem we again disagree.

Muscat,Dubai, Amman and Doha are hardship locations. ITs mostly go there for the coin or to get experience where they couldnt otherwise get any. The region as a whole, the entirety of the ME is a hardship location.
Heliotrope
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Re: Reply

Post by Heliotrope »

I only represent myself, but I do know a good amount of ITs in the UAE and Oman, and I'm familiar with what most of their motivations were when they decided to move there. The salary or the need to get experience weren't the main motivators - the location was.
Most of the people I know in the ME are in Muscat, and for them it's a dream location, apart from school & salary. If you would call it a hardship location they would laugh in your face, along with most expats in Muscat, going by how Muscat usually gets reviewed as an expat destination: Internations ranks it as the 14th in the world in the index of best cities worldwide for expatriate living. Abu Dhabi ranks even higher at #10.
On Numbeo.com the city of Muscat ranks higher than Portland, Melbourne, Amsterdam, Vancouver and Cambridge for quality of life.

Whether or not Muscat, Dubai, Amman & Doha are hardship locations depends on a person's definition of hardship. One person's hardship is another person's boon. Heat is a hardship for some, but others prefer hot places.

You could use the definition used by US Diplomatic Service, in which case most countries are hardship locations (see my examples in my previous reply), or you could research how other expats rate a location and what they mention a possible hardships and see if it applies to you. In my opinion that will give you a better idea whether or not a city will be a hardship location for you.
PsyGuy
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Reply

Post by PsyGuy »

@Heliotrope

I do know a good amount of ITs in the ME, and I'm familiar with what most of their motivations were when they decided to move there. The salary or the need to get experience were the main motivators. Either they couldnt get a location they wanted that they could afford or the salaries on offer were substantially better than they could find elsewhere. None of them would describe their location as a dream location, and some of them are in locations like Dubai, Doha, etc. Not once have I heard an IT state "I just cant wait to get to Muscat", not one. I would, have and will call Muscat a hardship location. That there is a small, marginal group of ITs who like it, well thats true of anywhere I imagine.

International rankings by who, Numbeo? Someone with an agenda to see ME locations ranked high. Im not partial or particularly inclined to acquiesce to their position because they think so.

Muscat, Dubai, Amman & Doha are hardship locations. Its probably safe to conclude this is another topic where 'we disagree'.
Heliotrope
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Re: Reply

Post by Heliotrope »

If you think Muscat is a hardship location, then yes, we disagree.

As usual, please read more carefully. I said 'Internations'-ranking, not 'International ranking'.
Internation is a huge community of expats everywhere, and their ranking is user-generated, so NOT by someone with an agenda to promote the ME.
Expats who have actually lived there rank Muscat higher than cities like Vienna, Luxembourg City, Auckland, Prague, Barcelona.

The Numbeo-ranking for quality of life, that as said rank Muscat higher than Melbourne, Amsterdam, Vancouver and Cambridge, is ALSO generated by user data.

But hey, just like everyone, you have your own criteria for what you define as hardship, so I won't dispute that for you it would be a hardship location. But for many, many others, it is not.
PsyGuy
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Reply

Post by PsyGuy »

@Heliotrope

For many many ITs Muscat like the rest of the ME would be and is a hardship location.

We Disagree
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