Travelling and Teaching - What is international teaching like?

Teaching Internationally - should you do it? 

A traditional classroom setup

An example of an international school classroom

Yes - there that was easy!

Well okay, maybe it's a wee bit more complicated than that. 

Now I do need to clarify two things; one, I know that not everyone reading this is actually a teacher; two, this is only my first overseas posting - although we have another one coming up (more about this on later posts).

So I guess that narrows the audience? Well, kind of, but the generality of moving to another country to work applies, so hopefully anyone reading this who has any interest in doing this or is simply interested in the process and experience, can get something out of this.

First and foremost - why?

1: Adventure. 

Apparently this is what Google thinks adventure looks like...

This was top of our list. I was happy at my UK school. I worked with an exceptional team. I had carved out a comfortable niche and was appreciated in my role and for my work. My classes were generally great, they had their moments, but that's just part and parcel of the job. It was all good. No, actually it was all great (comparatively). So the reason to leave was not really that I wanted to leave, but that I felt the opportunity to broaden my horizons and give my family the opportunity of an adventure of a lifetime was too good to miss.

2: A Welcome Change.

There was nothing about my life I didn't like at the point of leaving the UK. I'm incredibly lucky to have been in that position and grateful that this was the case, but it wasn't always that way and even at the best points it was still hard work.

The two to three years before we left I would happily have walked away from the job without a second thought. I wasn't miserable, but I wanted a change. I got a change in the environment with a shift in my immediate team and then Covid. 

It's strange, but adversity really can bring about positive outcomes and for our department the pandemic made us work brilliantly together and we put in an enormous effort in challenging circumstances to achieve some amazing outcomes. I believe that it brought the team closer together.

I was also more than happy with my life outside of school - good friends, lots of activities to get involved in, family near at hand. Life was pretty good.

However the desire to give my family the opportunity we had been working towards for three years overrode my comfort with my work and personal situation. This chance might never come again. So we went for it.

3: Chance of a lifetime.

As I alluded to above, this opportunity was definitely time limited. I am not getting any younger and even now I know I'm closing in on the age limit for visas in certain territories. I'm experienced, but expensive.

Also we needed to do this whilst Thomas was still young and adaptable enough to make the transitions fluidly, but at the age he could appreciate the experience. In short - it was now or never!

So what does this mean for anyone considering this?

Well, like all things this is a balancing act. A cost-benefit analysis. What will you gain and what will it cost?

The costs:

1) Time away from friends and family.

This one is impossible to quantify and will depend on you and your relationships. I'm conscious of missing key events and opportunities to be with people we love. This is incredibly hard, especially when the distance is so extreme as it is here in South East Asia.

2) Lost income and savings.

Gone is the time when the overseas posting was some kind of golden ticket. The world is levelling out and this is a good thing. I'm not suggesting that wealth is evenly distributed across all societies and countries evenly, but the post industrial economic supremacy of Europe and the US has been challenged and this has had the effect of broadening access to higher paid and skilled work. The upshot of this for teachers is that the days of earning double your UK salary and having a Scrooge McDuck style swimming pool full of money have ceased to be, if indeed they ever existed. 

As a result there are some things you need to bear in mind. In the UK you will have both a state and very likely a work pension. The teachers' pension scheme is still okay, even with the current changes to the retirement age - it is defined benefits, career average earnings related and superannuated by your employer (this all still has to come out of school budgets though... but that's a very different post for another time). You will lose both of these financial benefits if you are away from the UK for any length of time and you need to make provision for this.

You also need to be aware of the set up costs of moving. Deposits for accommodation, utilities and a dozen other costs will hit you within days of arrival. You may even have to bear the cost of visas and flights depending on the package you are given.

Even more extreme is the situation we found ourselves in here - Malaysian tax residency didn't kick in until the end of our first full academic year and we were subsisting on a fairly low income for the first few months. Fortunately the tax comes back once you attain residency, but this has caught out more than one teacher we have known.

My caveat is this. Teaching overseas can be well paid, but for UK teachers, probably only about as well paid as you were at home - don't bank on this as a retirement fund. Take it for what it is; a decent job in a different context.

3) The impact on your career.

Yes, this is something you need to consider. UK schools will shy away from interviewing candidates who are not in country. Schools are relatively risk averse when it comes to recruitment so why employ someone from overseas when there are candidates you can meet face-to-face. This sounds counter intuitive - surely the best person for the job is the best person for the job - but my current experience is a wall of silence from UK schools.

Once in country you will probably find your way back, but there is another unexpected side effect - will you want to return to a classroom in the UK? With bigger class sizes, more direct pressure for results, a pastoral system that is creaking under the pressure of post pandemic mental health strains and behaviour which can be challenging at the best of times, a UK classroom becomes a more daunting prospect.

 

The Benefits:

1) The experience of living in another country and culture. 

Regardless of whether you end up in a cosmopolitan European capital, the depths of rural Africa, the Mongolian Steppe, the desert environment of the Gulf States or the myriad destinations that South East Asia offers, you will be a whole other where!

You cannot help but become immersed in a different way of doing things. Hell, even going from the North to the South of the UK you experience a cultural shift. Now multiply this by a factor of 2 to 10 depending on the destination! 

This is not the same as going on holiday. Yes, you will travel. Yes, you will see tourist spots. However, you will get an idea of day-to-day life and experience the reality of a different world view and environment first hand. We have seen Chinese New Year and Thaipusam in the space of a single weekend, observed the 9 Ghost Emperors festival, Hari Raya, Eid and Deepavali all up close and been involved, albeit in a peripheral sense (mostly through school and visiting the local celebrations), in all of them.  

We had a lion dance come through the school! That's new! We've been to a buddhist temple and received a blessing - never done that before either. Apparently these are the rituals and fabric of normal life here.

We have shopped in wet markets for our fruit and vegetables, we have attended cookery courses, been to a Chinese New Year steamboat celebration, attended a lantern festival. None of this is the touristy stuff - it's the kind of thing you only get if you live somewhere.

2) The chance to travel.

We would never have travelled from the UK to Bali, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam or Cambodia, let alone Malaysia itself. Firstly we couldn't afford it. Secondly, we couldn't really take the amount of time needed to really invest in travelling to these places. 

The advantage being based elsewhere has is that it opens up a whole range of other possibilities. We were comfortable accessing Europe from back home and the destinations I've just mentioned are no further away than Mallorca is from my native Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. 

Wherever you are in the world you will shift your access to travel accordingly. The further from home, the more exotic and unusual the destination.

3) The Chance to Eat!

I couldn't resist putting this in as we are in the foody capital of a food obsessed nation. Your palate will be exposed to new and interesting experiences just as you are. Eat locally and by that I mean eat where the locals go, not just eat nearby your accommodation. 

My lunches are regularly sources from an amazing nasi kandar 'restaurant' just down the road from my school, where for about a single Great British pound (5MYR) you can get a plate of rice and your choice of brilliantly well cooked local dishes. These places are all over Malaysia and are not only an absolute bargain, they are usually very good too! 

This stack of food cost less than £10 and lasted two days for three people...

Eating the local specialities is a great way to see the country too. Again, this is not the tourist face of Malaysia I'm talking about, but the hidden gems that sit in rural kampungs. This is the advantage to living in the place rather than visiting.

4) Developing your career.

Okay, I know I said that it can be difficult to get back into teaching in the UK following a stint abroad, but the CPD budget and training opportunities in international schools are far greater than anything I've encountered for a very long time in the UK. I recently had the chance to do some training with Diana Osagie on leadership and team management skills. This is the first external trainer I have had the chance to interact with for years. And the school had brought her all the way from the UK! 

International schools tend to be well connected and they are also able to be more forward thinking and experimental than UK schools as they are not slavishly chasing results in a bid not to be shut down by the government's attack dogs and turned into an academy run by a crony of the current education secretary (not that that ever happens in the UK...).

You will also likely get the chance to work on leadership projects more freely than in your home country as this is a more dynamic environment and people tend to move posts more frequently.

5) More freedom to innovate.

See my above point about being free from the constraints imposed by external agencies. This is not to say these don't exist, they just aren't seen as the absolute restrictive factors that they are in the UK. 

6) Professional Development.

The opportunities to access high quality training from external sources is something that I've had more access to here in Malaysia (and from UK trainers) than I did for many a long year in the UK. Depending on where you go and what the PD budget is like you can secure some amazing opportunities. However, there are schools that are inward looking, parochial and tight fisted with their budgets - I am lucky that my school is not one of them.

Regardless of context, the fact that you will be in a culturally diverse and linguistically varied environment means that you will have to develop professionally as you adapt your teaching to match the new context.

The final verdict?

It can be daunting looking for a job abroad, but the opportunities that there are out in the wide world are huge. If you do your research, prepare and make the decision for the right reasons you will get a lot out of the experience.

In short change is not always good, but you can't improve a situation if you don't make a change!