How To Find Work Teaching English Abroad

da teachada teacha Regular
edited March 2011 in Spurious Generalities
After a hungover mess of a morning with a shitty class, I revealed my desire to leave come the finishing of my contract. There wasn't actually any date set on the contract, but the boss had it in mind that I should be here for 9 months; less than 3 months remaining. Wanting to put my head down and complete something; I'm happy to rock along with that and see it through, resisting all thoughts to bail now I've got my travel reimbursement money back.

Naturally, as a back up plan, I'm going to have to start looking for work teaching English in other places, if my other plans don't materialise.

If you're in the same boat, but not too sure how to get your foot in the door, here's some advice on how to set yourself up a gig...


Rocking Up
The ballsy way to do things is just to get a one way ticket to a place, have a look around and knock on the doors of various schools. Not only will you get to see what the school is REALLY like (not just glamoured up pictures), but additionally you'll show your future employer that you're already here and that you mean business.

The easiest way to go about things is to make yourself a profile on Couchsurfing, a site where you can stay at people's home across the world free of cost. Not only does it save you on accomodation costs, but you can also tap into the local knowledge; they can point out to you what the local schools are, and where to find them. And even if you cannot find a place to stay, you can still send messages to various people and ask for advice. Alternatively, find some lonely women on local dating sites who'd be willing to help you if it means free English practice/the prospect of a lonely foreigner coming their way.

Foregoing that, you can do some translations into the local language, scour the net for addresses, compile a big list and take a little journey around town. I did this back in 2008 in Poland without any clue about teaching or knowing what I was doing, and after 2 days of aimless wandering, I found myself 2 jobs. Far more satisfying than sending around some emails.

And don't forget, do NOT dress like a backpacker on your search.


Internet
Firstly you have the standard job sites which you could find on a simple search for 'tefl jobs'. It's highly unrecommended, as you're going to be competing against the hordes of ESLcafe wankers and fresh off the boat CELTA toters looking for their first gig.

Beat all these idiots by looking locally for jobs. Firstly, you'll be competing against less people, and secondly, the employers will be expecting non-natives to apply; putting you at the very top of the pile.

Your first step is to find out where these local job sites are. So get out your favourite online translator, find out what 'job' 'work' 'search jobs',etc is in your desired language. You can then plug these keyword into Google to return yourself the local job sites.

When here, you're then going to have to look for posts teaching English. The search bar should be evident, if not, enter the URL of the site into a translator and find out what's what. Sometimes employers list job vacancies for English teachers in English, so searching things such as: 'English', 'English Teacher' and 'Native Speaker' may bring you success, if not, translate them, and voila.

For the lazy ones out there, which would include me if I was reading this, here are some websites which may prove to be useful for a newbie.

Ukraine
http://www.work.ua/
http://rabota.ua/
http://www.jobs.ua/
http://greenforest.com.ua/posted_page/27
http://www.speak-up.com.ua/eng/method.html

Poland
http://gumtree.pl (under 'Praca' click 'nauczyciele')
http://www.profi-lingua.pl/praca/en (chain school)
http://www.pracuj.pl/
http://gazetapraca.pl/gazetapraca/0,0.html
http://www.praca.pl/
http://praca.gratka.pl/

International Schools
http://www.britishcouncil.org/teacherrecruitment.htm
http://www.ihworld.com/recruitment/
http://www.englishfirst.com/trt/tefl-jobs.html
http://jobs.languagelink.ru/jobs/
http://www.callan.co.uk/en/school-search/

As for CV writing and nailing the interviews, stay tuned...
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