The money tree
If I knew anything about it I surley wouldn't be just telling anyone about it, If you consider $580 a month a lot of money then that's cool. Honestly I am making enough to get by and afford what I want here in China but I wouldn't be doing well back home, sometimes it's even hard here. The point of coming here was never really to make money, if I play my cards right I could save some but I like spending it for right now. That said I might add that it is comments like that that really don't make me feel very bad about not being back in the states at all. I feel as though speaking my mind is a bad thing, I am starting to get the feeling of how people in general feel about me and even how my family feels to some extent, it's fortunate that I have taken this oportunity for myself and therefore I want to give other people a chance as well. Here is what you need to do to attain a job in a foreign country and make an alright living for a while.
1. You need to get some kind of TESOL or TEFL cert. If you already have a teaching cert or a bachelors in anything you are good to go. If you need to get the cert consider ponying up the money to take a course at a local college. Institutes appreciate this a lot more than an online cert but it can be pricy, the online cert is amost as good and it's a lot cheaper I would reccomend ICAL for this. m Include any kind of teaching or group training experience you may have on your resume
2. Get this idea about working in Europe out of your head, yes it would be nice but the fact is they aren't going to pay you anything worthwhile. You would be considered poor by even their standards. The places you want to work are places with really worthless currency, remember the idea isn't necissarilly to bring home tons of cash (We will get to that later) but to live like a king while your there. Places like Russia, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Central and southern Mexico. Basically anywhere that you can get 6-10 of their dollars for one of yours, research the prices of goods before you go. Anywhere that is almost a 1 to 1 trade to the dolalr or less is gonig to require a lot more than a tesol cert, Japan although they have crappy currency is very expensive and very picky when it comes to teachers, unless you have an actual degree and have an idea of what your costs are going to be I wouldn't make it your first choice, or even at all really.
3. At this point you have secured all the documents you will need, including a passport, and hopefully you have decided where you want to go and have reasearched the general cost of stuff in that country. Now you need to get on the ESL sites like www.davesesl.com and see if you can find any jobs. Generally you want to start looking around Feb or March, you may be able to find jobs into July but often all the good ones are taken by then. Once you have found a nice place send off an email and let them know you are interested, they will send an email back letting you know if the position is still open and some general things about it. There are a few things you want to ask
a. What are the general ages of your students?
Teaching kids with no real language other than their own can be very frustrating, many people find teaching Adults 16 and up to be far more comfortable
b. Are you a private institution or are you an actual school funded by the government?
This may sound odd, but it makes a big difference. A private language institute and a school have very different goals in the end, the private institue will be far more interested in just making students come to the school, not necissarilly that they learn anything. It will always come down to money in the end with these places and if your students quit coming you will be swiftly blamed for that and potentially have your probation extended or termed, or both. You will find that many of the young children in these places have no wish to be there and have been forced to come by their parents. Althoug hthe idea is that you do very little speaking and the students so a lot, it has to be in english and ot can be very hard to make this happen with students that have no wish to learn. Schools of course are going to be far more centered on education, but you have huge class sizes Vs. the 16 or so in a prvt institute, once you loose the student's attention in this situation it's almost impossible to get them back. So what is the trade off? A prvt institute is going to pay far more than an actual school and have smaller class sizes usually.
c. How much are you going to pay me, do you cover living, do you cover my flights there and back, how long is the contract, how many teaching hours must I do?
So you have already done your research on costs, that is apartments, utilities, electronics, musical instruments, food, anything you may be interested in. So the proposed salary is very important. Are these people going to supply you with an apartment or will you have to cover that out of your check? a big chunk of change coming out of your check every month can ruin your fun, a good job will at least give you a housing allowance to ease the cost. Who is going to get you there and back? Will you at least be reimbursed for your flights? It would take me over 3 months to be able to afford to fly home one way so this is a big deal. You don't want to work hard all year and then spend your last remaining cash to get home, usually they will only cover 2 flights for you, the one there and the one back at the end of your contract, if you want to go home for a visit you will most likely have to cover this flight. How long will you be under contract? usually it's a year, sometimes they do have six month contracts but you won't be supplied with housing or anything like that. Part time work is also available but then you get very little out of it other than a better hourly rate. How many teaching hours are you going to haev a week, and remember for each teaching hour there is generally an hour of lesson plan and prep at the very least, you will find yourself doing a lot fo work at home especially if you have a PC. Again the point is to have lots of free time and have fun, not work all the time for less than a grand a month. Do also keep in mind that there is usually a 3 month probation period as well
Those three steps are the hard part, once you accept the position your employer will send you an invitation to work in the country, you will need to take this and your passport and any other docs they send to a local consolate, or use a visa service to get your work visa. Once that is done it's a matter of getting on the plane. Now here are some tips if you want to make a good bit of money. Most countries will only allow you to convert a certain percentage of your salary to foreign currency, they want to keep their money in the country if they can. However if you do prvt tutoring and keep that money off the books you can send all of that home you want, if you charge a resonable rate you could have a lot of students. You will be busy but in the end it could be worth it. You can use western union to transfer this back to someone in the states and have them set up a savings account and start drawing interest. Keep in mind that the local government will frown upon this so do your best not to get caught. Also don't get to attatched to the items that you buy because you will most likely not bring them back with you, the idea would be to sell these before you come back home. You will take a loss most likely but it is cash in hand, you can ship items home but it can get expensive and they may be damaged, also some of the single voltage items may nto work in the states or whatever country you come from. The smart thing to do would be to take this money and do some traveling on your vacation time, in asia at least it's very cheap to do so usually. Just keep in mind you may need a tourist visa to enter other countries. If you could manage to send 300 or so dollars home a month, that would be 3600 dollars by years end, generally most people are going to teach in other countries for several years at a time. Anyway I hope this has been usefull
1. You need to get some kind of TESOL or TEFL cert. If you already have a teaching cert or a bachelors in anything you are good to go. If you need to get the cert consider ponying up the money to take a course at a local college. Institutes appreciate this a lot more than an online cert but it can be pricy, the online cert is amost as good and it's a lot cheaper I would reccomend ICAL for this. m Include any kind of teaching or group training experience you may have on your resume
2. Get this idea about working in Europe out of your head, yes it would be nice but the fact is they aren't going to pay you anything worthwhile. You would be considered poor by even their standards. The places you want to work are places with really worthless currency, remember the idea isn't necissarilly to bring home tons of cash (We will get to that later) but to live like a king while your there. Places like Russia, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Central and southern Mexico. Basically anywhere that you can get 6-10 of their dollars for one of yours, research the prices of goods before you go. Anywhere that is almost a 1 to 1 trade to the dolalr or less is gonig to require a lot more than a tesol cert, Japan although they have crappy currency is very expensive and very picky when it comes to teachers, unless you have an actual degree and have an idea of what your costs are going to be I wouldn't make it your first choice, or even at all really.
3. At this point you have secured all the documents you will need, including a passport, and hopefully you have decided where you want to go and have reasearched the general cost of stuff in that country. Now you need to get on the ESL sites like www.davesesl.com and see if you can find any jobs. Generally you want to start looking around Feb or March, you may be able to find jobs into July but often all the good ones are taken by then. Once you have found a nice place send off an email and let them know you are interested, they will send an email back letting you know if the position is still open and some general things about it. There are a few things you want to ask
a. What are the general ages of your students?
Teaching kids with no real language other than their own can be very frustrating, many people find teaching Adults 16 and up to be far more comfortable
b. Are you a private institution or are you an actual school funded by the government?
This may sound odd, but it makes a big difference. A private language institute and a school have very different goals in the end, the private institue will be far more interested in just making students come to the school, not necissarilly that they learn anything. It will always come down to money in the end with these places and if your students quit coming you will be swiftly blamed for that and potentially have your probation extended or termed, or both. You will find that many of the young children in these places have no wish to be there and have been forced to come by their parents. Althoug hthe idea is that you do very little speaking and the students so a lot, it has to be in english and ot can be very hard to make this happen with students that have no wish to learn. Schools of course are going to be far more centered on education, but you have huge class sizes Vs. the 16 or so in a prvt institute, once you loose the student's attention in this situation it's almost impossible to get them back. So what is the trade off? A prvt institute is going to pay far more than an actual school and have smaller class sizes usually.
c. How much are you going to pay me, do you cover living, do you cover my flights there and back, how long is the contract, how many teaching hours must I do?
So you have already done your research on costs, that is apartments, utilities, electronics, musical instruments, food, anything you may be interested in. So the proposed salary is very important. Are these people going to supply you with an apartment or will you have to cover that out of your check? a big chunk of change coming out of your check every month can ruin your fun, a good job will at least give you a housing allowance to ease the cost. Who is going to get you there and back? Will you at least be reimbursed for your flights? It would take me over 3 months to be able to afford to fly home one way so this is a big deal. You don't want to work hard all year and then spend your last remaining cash to get home, usually they will only cover 2 flights for you, the one there and the one back at the end of your contract, if you want to go home for a visit you will most likely have to cover this flight. How long will you be under contract? usually it's a year, sometimes they do have six month contracts but you won't be supplied with housing or anything like that. Part time work is also available but then you get very little out of it other than a better hourly rate. How many teaching hours are you going to haev a week, and remember for each teaching hour there is generally an hour of lesson plan and prep at the very least, you will find yourself doing a lot fo work at home especially if you have a PC. Again the point is to have lots of free time and have fun, not work all the time for less than a grand a month. Do also keep in mind that there is usually a 3 month probation period as well
Those three steps are the hard part, once you accept the position your employer will send you an invitation to work in the country, you will need to take this and your passport and any other docs they send to a local consolate, or use a visa service to get your work visa. Once that is done it's a matter of getting on the plane. Now here are some tips if you want to make a good bit of money. Most countries will only allow you to convert a certain percentage of your salary to foreign currency, they want to keep their money in the country if they can. However if you do prvt tutoring and keep that money off the books you can send all of that home you want, if you charge a resonable rate you could have a lot of students. You will be busy but in the end it could be worth it. You can use western union to transfer this back to someone in the states and have them set up a savings account and start drawing interest. Keep in mind that the local government will frown upon this so do your best not to get caught. Also don't get to attatched to the items that you buy because you will most likely not bring them back with you, the idea would be to sell these before you come back home. You will take a loss most likely but it is cash in hand, you can ship items home but it can get expensive and they may be damaged, also some of the single voltage items may nto work in the states or whatever country you come from. The smart thing to do would be to take this money and do some traveling on your vacation time, in asia at least it's very cheap to do so usually. Just keep in mind you may need a tourist visa to enter other countries. If you could manage to send 300 or so dollars home a month, that would be 3600 dollars by years end, generally most people are going to teach in other countries for several years at a time. Anyway I hope this has been usefull
posted by goemonronin at 3:38 PM
2 Comments:
Excellent tutorial on Teaching English Abroad 101. Thanks.
Patrick
I agree with everything you have said, having been in Japan since 1998 and for the last three years running a language school....very small one really. One issue is health insurance, the Japanese one provided if you opt into it is really full of holes for the expat. I have discussed this issue on www.healthyexpat.com if anyone needs to be aware of the pitfalls. Another issue is to be prepared for an outlet for stress, teaching is a stressful job, hit a gym, try yoga, go for a run or walk in nature, perhaps aikido or another martial art. In any case have an outlet for the build up of stress, drinking in some bar will not be an answer, a drink here and there is fine of course. Moderation.
Cheers, Shakuman
Post a Comment
<< Home