Finding the Right Fit: Your Professional Guide for International Educator Recruiting Fairs and Amazing Stories of a Teacher Living Overseas

By Gregory Lemoine

In "Finding the Right Fit: Your Professional Guide for International Educator Recruiting Fairs and Amazing Stories of a Teacher Living Overseas" you will learn the ultimate step-by-step guide to succeeding at an international educator's job fair. In this guide, you will find tips to successfully prepare for interviews, how to present your most qualified self, and you will be engrossed with the narratives of many passionate educators who enjoy their work overseas. International educator recruiting fairs are unique experiences. Take this book with you and share it with other educators.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667828848

Book preview

cover.jpg

The Right Fit

© 2022 Gregory Lemoine

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN 978-1-66782-883-1

eBook ISBN 978-1-66782-884-8

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the individuals that helped me along the way, and those that will in the future. Arriving in a new country, with its own language and culture is daunting. These are the people that showed me the way, shared their friendship, helped me navigate the local cultures, and arranged for translations when necessary.

Ron led the way to life in Honduras. Khalid and Manaf watched out for me in Kuwait. Cambodia would have been impossible without my driver and friend, Pov. Ruben invited me into his inner circle of friends in Venezuela. Ruben, we have seen some shit! Giorgio brought me into his family and showed me the real life of the Swiss, even though he is a Chicago Bears fan. David is a mentor and silent protector from possible dangers I cannot even fathom.

Living overseas is safer with people like you at my six.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1 – Guide to Succeeding at an International Teacher Job Fair

Ten Reasons to Teach Overseas

Ten Reasons Not to Teach Overseas

How to Find an International Teaching Job

When the Internet-Only Hiring Method Goes Wrong

Definitely Go to a Job Fair!

Don’t Wait, Start Now!

Succeeding at the Job Fair

The Day (or two) Before the Fair

Day 01 – Welcome to the Job Fair, Work Begins

Line Up to Sign Up

Time Out after Moo!

What to Bring with You to the Initial Interview?

The Interview Itself

Your First Interview

More Initial Interviews

Back at the War Room

Day 2

The Offer

Go to Presentations and Don’t Miss the Cocktail Social

Is There a Day Three?

Accepting the Offer

You Aren’t Done Yet

The Quiet Champion

What Happens Next?

Questions and Deal-Breakers

Top-Ten Surprises at the Fair

Top Pieces of Advice from the Seasoned Candidates

Different Flavors of International Schools

Become Familiar with these Terms!

Part 2 – Anecdotes and Stories from around the Globe

The Perfect Swiss Job Offer

You are Going to Die! My First International Job Fair

Unbelievable Bad Luck

Diving Vietnam

My Honduran Driver License

One Night in Kuala Lumpur

Skiing Beirut

Do Planes Have Bathrooms?

Smuggling Bacon

Safari in Tanzania

Christmas and New Years in Sri Lanka

Carjacked in the Barrio

Bangkok ISS – International Educator Fair 3

My Not-so-Private Hotel Room

Biking from Nice to Monte Carlo

My First Day of Teaching, Ever

Leaving Kuwait

Deserted Island, Sunken Ship

What’s the Matter … Horn?

The Tourist

Random Meet Up in the Galapagos

Free Pens. International Educator Job Fair 6

Vegemite and Cool Change

Biblical Mt. Sinai

Your Boat is Sinking

The Football Game in Milan

Stolen Passport in Dubai

Big Band Jazz

Grabbed by a Market Woman in China

Final Words for Now

Introduction

This book has been written over the past twenty-one years. As of 2022, there are still very few books about international teaching. When I was preparing for my first job fair in 2001, there were no books out there. The only information I could find was published by the job fair that I attended, and I couldn’t access it until I had paid the $150 for the job fair. I didn’t even know what questions to ask. I vaguely remember someone telling me about exchange teaching. That description couldn’t have been further from reality. It went something like this: You do a total switch with a teacher in, say, Australia, and the two of you exchange jobs and even live in each other’s houses. Where could I start with that? I was still in college, renting a crappy apartment, and the only Australian I knew was Steve Irwin on Animal Planet.

Yes, teaching overseas is the best-kept secret in the world. Life in the United States can be very geocentric. Our colleges and universities in the U.S. train us to teach in local schools. Many excellent teachers go through their whole lives not even hearing about teaching around the world. If they do hear about someone teaching overseas, a number of images immediately come to mind.

What do you think of when international teaching is mentioned? Many of my friends back home still think I teach in a hut. You’ve seen it in movies. A thatched hut is set up in the middle of the village. A lone blackboard is attached to the front wall. I’m sweating through my grimy t-shirt as I explain how to say different greetings in the English language. Between thirty and forty eager, smiling village children are raising their hands to answer my question. In the afternoon, I kick a worn-out soccer ball around with laughing, barefoot boys and girls. When the day is done, I sit with the tribal leaders in a larger hut eating a nondescript bowl of something. Am I close? Can you see it? It doesn’t seem that farfetched, does it?

Wrong. Every bit of it. I might do this on an outreach program set up by my school or on a vacation for a week or two. The reality is much different at the schools where I teach. It’s 7:30 a.m. and I am on recess duty on the playground. For the next ten minutes I observe more than 100 students playing tag, playing four-square, and arguing about whether the last ball was out or good. I also keep a watchful eye on the playground set as kids, of all different skin colors, take turns on the slide or competing to swing higher than each other on the swings. Backpacks are strewn about in front of classroom doors. Each backpack has one of the latest cartoon trends pictured on it. One of my parents walks up to me and explains their child will be absent after lunch because she must go along to their embassy and renew her resident visa or passport. The first bell rings and the playground exodus commences with a flurry.

I stand at my classroom door and shake hands with each of my eighteen students as they enter the class. High five here. Fist bump there. A little girl from India holds up the line and says Mr. Lemoine, did my mom email you? I have a dentist appointment at 9:15 so I’ll miss math. But I’ll be back after lunch. My smile is enough of a reply as she rushes into class with her Winnie the Pooh backpack half open. I send in my attendance on my iPhone as I make a note that my third graders are making their way to the colored carpet square for our morning meeting. Susie is changing the daily schedule. Juan is feeding the fish. Margaret is unlocking the laptop cabinet. Muhammad and Ivanna are sorting the homework folders. Just another day!

Later in the day, the bell rings and I’ve just finished explaining equal fractions to a small group at the smart board. Everyone closes their MacMillan Grade 3 Math books and puts their pencils in their pencil cases. My students line up for library and I have to defuse a quarrel about this week’s line leader. Patrick is finishing up his last MAP test with a specialist. Two of my girls want to volunteer for his line-leader job, and I randomly pick one. Just before we head into the hallway, Philipp breaks the ranks and holds out his hand with his latest baby tooth and smiles with a hint of blood on his lip. Hooray, Philipp. The nurse’s office is right on the way to library. Stop in there as we pass by. The nurses will give you something to keep your tooth in. Just another day in one of the many international schools around the world.

There are many different schools out in the world. Suffice it to say, there are opportunities out there just like the previous scenario and there are many teaching positions quite different. For the past twenty years, I have described my teaching experience something like this: Take a rather wealthy pre-k through twelve school. It could very well be an elementary, middle, or high school instead. Take that school and put it in another country. We use a lot of the same textbooks. The school year is similar, starting in August and ending in early June. Students have gym class, music, art, and computer lab. The biggest differences are the students and where the school is located. That’s the quick, elevator-style description of teaching overseas. Usually, that’s enough. That’s cool, is the usual reply, followed by the conversation turning away from me. Most people just cannot relate.

I know. I know. For some of you, this kind of conversation wouldn’t end there. You have a thousand questions. Great! You want to know more. You think to yourself: Is there any way I could do that? How? Impossible! That would be cool but …? This book is your guide. International education is educators’ best kept secret. I’ve been doing this for almost twenty years now, interviewed hundreds of overseas teachers, and had thousands of conversations about job fairs. Finding the Right Fit is my way of sharing what I have learned over the past twenty years.

This book is the most comprehensive guide to success at a face to face international educator job fair. Yes, there will still be face to face recruiting fairs again. When they do, this book will be in your hand. Few, if any, books about international teaching unpack the process of attending an international educator-recruiting fair. Let me stand up and shout These job fairs are unique. State – and district-educator job fairs, from what I hear, don’t even compare. These fairs are simply different.

The first part of this book describes a face-to-face job-fair format common to the most well-known international fairs. I refer to them as the Big Three. International Schools Services, University of Northern Iowa, and Search Associates are the three most popular U.S.-based fairs for international educators and administrators. Read this book before you sign up for a fair, and bring it with you when you go!

This book will also entertain you. Join me in the second part, as I share snippets of experiences around the world. My life overseas is like an unfinished painted canvass, permeated with colors that span across continents and bleed over borders. These experiences include several of my own job-fair successes, paying off Cambodian police officers, touring the Pyramids of Giza with students, and having my car stolen in Venezuela. Let my experiences permeate your life’s canvas and spark your interest in the world of overseas education. Life can be stranger than fiction.

I have been living and teaching overseas for two decades now. It’s difficult for me to keep track of how many questions have come my way. Most of the conversations start with a version of how to get a teaching job overseas. Usually, one of my friends from home has a friend of a friend that wants to contact me. I agree with open arms. Bring it on! But they seldom follow through with the contact. Either my information isn’t passed on or the individual just never contacts me. The questions stay out there. This book is a way to pass on the lessons I have learned over the span of a career.

The most important sources of information for this book come from the countless teachers and prospective teachers I have had conversations with at job fairs. An overwhelming number of candidates at any job fair, recently, have never taught overseas before. Many of those former newbies have become friends over the years. They just needed someone at the fair to bounce questions off of or a stranger to just listen to them while they made up their own minds. Sometimes, I feel like a priest or counselor helping a parishioner or patient work their way through a personal struggle. Hah! I am far from a priest. This book contains it all. It is meant as an entrance into the international educator world.

Are you a student who is graduating next year (or next semester) with a teaching degree, with no teaching experience, with no clue as to what is out there waiting for you? Perhaps you just plan on waiting for your education school too set up some mock interviews. Perhaps you’ll just go with the flow and wait until June, after graduating, to put your name in the local district hiring pool. Maybe you haven’t even thought about that yet.

Are you a current teacher? This book is meant for you teachers out there who just can’t stand that same classroom you’ve inhabited for the past ten years. When is the last time you went on a vacation? Chances are you have two or three jobs in addition to teaching. Do you feel stuck in your routine? Are you waiting tables or doing construction during the summer just to keep your financial head above water? Yes, maybe.

This book is especially for you if you already know about international teaching. Maybe your friend has gone overseas. You want to do it. Where do you start? You can keep pestering them with emails and FaceTime. Yes, keep doing that. They will have first-hand knowledge about their school. This book will hopefully back up their advice. This book is the key to the best kept secret in teaching: international teaching.

Part 1 – Guide to Succeeding

at an International

Teacher Job Fair

Ten Reasons to Teach Overseas

This is the section of the book where I shout out loud, There is nothing I would rather be doing with my life! This is almost my twentieth year overseas, and the only thing I would have done differently, if I could roll back the clock, would have been to start this career before I turned thirty-one.

Travel and Experience the World—See the world, while traveling the world on a teaching salary. Yes, on a teacher’s salary I have been to more than sixty countries. Scuba diving in the Maldives over Christmas break was spectacular. Spend the summer learning Italian in Italy. Spend your Easter week in Ireland with your family, going from AirBnB to AirBnB in a rental car. Wake up in a new country for New Years rather than going to the same friends’ house you’ve been going to for the past five years. Take a trip to Shanghai or Bangkok for a teacher’s conference, on your school’s budget.

Man

y

of us who live and teach overseas have memorized our passport numbers. We get so used to filling out travel visas at border crossings that our passport information is burned into our memories. The U.S. Passport Agency used to allow you to add extra pages. Not anymore! We fill up our passports with visa stamps well before the ten-year expiration date, and have to renew our passports. There is an important little checkbox on the passport application. By checking that little box, you can request the maximum number of pages for your passport. Make sure to check that box like many of us that live overseas. You’ll thank me later.

Make money while you travel—Money is an issue for any teacher. How many teachers do you know who work side jobs, nights or weekends, just to get by? How many teachers do you know who are still paying off student loans, twenty years after their first day of teaching? All of them?

As of 2017, expatriates can make up to $104,000 and be exempt from Federal taxes. That means if you make only $20,000 in Central America, you get to keep $20,000, minus your cost of living. That boils down to a lot of discretionary money. Depending on your lifestyle, you can save a lot of money and still afford a live-in maid or nanny. It all really depends on the school, the host country, the salary and benefits package offered by the school, and the debts hanging over you back in your home country. There are a lot of international schools out there, and each contract varies. Even the lowest paying schools will provide an opportunity to live well overseas, if you plan it out.

Freedom to teach—I was trained and am certified in Wisconsin, but have never taught in the U.S. My teaching career has been completely overseas. However, teaching in the U.S. comes up all the time in post-grad courses, online classes, and everyday discussions with other teachers from the States. No matter what party or dinner I attend, we teachers always talk about school. We live it. We spend more time at work than at home. We need a certain amount of freedom to teach with our own style, throw in some jazzy lessons, and try out a few wild ideas.

Teaching overseas has provided freedom for many teachers. That freedom is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, if your overseas school has a weak curriculum or doesn’t faithfully follow a curriculum, then you won’t have anyone watching over your shoulder to see what page you are on in social studies. You will have the freedom to create your lessons on your own. On the other hand, the more-established schools do have curriculum to follow and the expectations that come with them. Also, many overseas schools are constantly changing their curriculum and, as a teacher, it falls on you to be part of the committees. Meetings, meetings, meetings.

As an overseas teacher, you bring experience and training to the school. You are able to make a difference at an overseas school. Most of them are free standing, without the support or the constraints of a district, on their own as a thriving organism. These schools rely on you to add current pedagogy, bring change to their curriculum, and be a positive influence.

Learning about various local cultures—Overseas teaching is a career choice and lifestyle that many of us embrace because it means living and teaching in a totally different culture. Culture runs many different paths. Think for a moment. Culture includes: your clothes, food, bedtime, table manners, parenting skills, greetings, music, doorknobs, body cleanliness, faux pas, eye contact, political correctness, standing in line, waiting your turn, religious beliefs, patriotism, sports, use of eating utensils, drinking age, politics, sexual preference, and everything else that makes you who you are. (Even using a doorknob, or having a door, was something that was part of my American culture.) Those are all part of a culture you have to offer. Going overseas gives you a chance to challenge yourself to alternatives. When you move to a new country, you are a guest, in every sense.

Personally, the more cultures I open myself up to, the more patriotic and more proud of my own culture I become. Living overseas puts you in situations where you both question and defend the cultures that define you and your home country.

Chance to learn languages—Learning a language is up to you. Most of the overseas positions are in countries that speak something other than English, but the lingua franca—language of instruction—is English. You don’t have to learn a new language to be a successful International Educator, but in my opinion it is one of the greatest perks of teaching and living in other countries.

Every day is a new day—Take a moment and google the song, video, or song lyrics of The Day Before You Came by ABBA (1981) or Blancmange (1984). The lyrics describe a life that is very different from any teacher’s career. Now consider work and life outside of work. No day will ever be the same for you overseas. Even if you stay in an overseas school for twenty years, the challenges of teaching are diversified. International schools, the schools with diverse student and staff cultural backgrounds, will provide you with challenges and rewards you cannot even imagine.

You will have immediate local connections—If you have ever traveled or moved to a new town, city, state, or country, you know how vital local knowledge is. Need directions? Can’t speak the local language? Need a babysitter, for tomorrow? What about when a loved one has an emergency?

Every international school relies on its local hires to exist. The locals that work at your school are perhaps the most important people you will rely on throughout the time you live and teach in your chosen country(ies). Believe me, those secretaries, teachers, administrators, janitors, parents, drivers, and office personnel are a vital part of your new life at the school. While expats come and go, the locals have seen it all.

The opposite is also true. The locals will depend on you for help. Help a local solve their problems and your life will be enriched beyond any expectations. My favorite stories have unfolded due to my relations with locals.

You will be able to afford household help—Imagine having a maid. I haven’t done laundry in the past twenty years. Having a maid, driver, live-in nanny, or cook is very common for overseas teachers. In some countries, like Egypt, your maid may be a male. In others, it is most probably a female. The bottom line is having someone take care of your home is one of the most amazing perks of living and teaching overseas.

When I come home from a long day of teaching, my apartment is spotless, the bed is made, and all of my clothes are neatly folded in the drawers. It’s both amazing and affordable in many countries. Some families just leave money out on the counter and their maid goes shopping for fresh fruits and vegetables at the local market. This all depends on your relationship with the local help. Don’t worry, once you get settled into your new country, other families from your school can let you in