Working Teaching English Abroad
for Long Periods of Time
What things
should I be thinking about?
Think networking, at home and overseas, and think
about continuing or improving your credentials. Think
about all the things you would do if you were still back
home.
Networking
Is
even more important overseas. You can, at times, line
up good jobs via friends - with only cursory
interviews. Contacts and networking work for you
even better overseas than back home. Keep in touch with
people you work with. They will move on to other, often
better jobs, and so will you. You never know when your
paths may meet again. Or, when you might be able to
help each other.
Back Home
Don't forget to keep in touch with your contacts and
friends back home. You never know when you might want
to head back. Invite them to visit you, be a great
host, give them the vacation of a life time! It could
well pay dividends if you were to need a job back home
on short notice. But, also, just do it for fun - not
just to create an obligation.
Visit your Friends, Bosses and Coworkers
When you go back home, make sure you visit your old
coworker, bosses, and friends. Nothing is worse than
coming back home "cold" - having lost all your old
contacts. The work/job hunt environment back home, to
me, is much more difficult than it is overseas. Much
more impersonal, much more dehumanizing. Do your best
to keep it personal, with a good list of personal
contacts.
Improve your Credentials
Take another training course, get another degree. Some
jobs overseas are only four days a week and you may get
long vacations if you are lucky. Use that time to
improve your credentials - so you can continue to move
up the ladder and improve your wages, benefits, and free
time.
Double Check Validity
Any
course you take via distance learning, online, or even
partial residence, may or not be considered valid where
you want to go/teach next. Double check. Ask on the
boards, ask potential employers what they accept and
don't accept. Some countries and employers are very
strict and some accept almost anything. Some
countries will have liberal acceptance policies that
hiring authorities don't always follow and aren't
legally required to follow.
Check the reality on
the ground.
Here's the directory for this section:
Planning for a Long Stretch Overseas
How does networking work overseas?
Should I continue to network in my home country?
Does it matter where I get more training or education?
Distance programs and more.
Can I get better health insurance?
Do I need a will if I stay overseas?
