Dear Austin

Here is yet another e-mail I wrote to a would-be international school teacher, who contacted me through the TES. I am including a few photos of my two years of teaching at the BSB, the British School of Bucharest.


Dear Austin,

It was great to get a message from you! Yes, of course I will help you, as much as I possibly can. 

Chemistry! Yes, of course this is very much an "in demand" subject. Maybe it is not quite in such demand as PHYSICS, but Chemistry teachers are still hard to find. Therefore I do not think that you are ever going to be unemployed. No, that is not the issue. The real question is where you want to work and what sort of school you want to work in.

Who is this silly man who is standing next to me?
Generally speaking, international schools come in all sorts of shapes and colours and flavours. Broadly speaking, there are "British" schools that mostly employ Brit teachers and more or less follow the National Curriculum in the UK. "American" schools mostly employ Americans or teachers with American certification. Then there are the IB schools that really do follow an "international" program and they tend to recruit teachers from all over. On the whole, I would say that the IB schools usually pay the best and give their teachers the best "package". Please remember that your "package" includes your salary, but there are also a lot of other benefits as well, such as health insurance and accommodation, so do not just look at the salary numbers.


No, I have never taught in Taiwan, but some of my colleagues have and they loved it. Mrs. Hippo and I were in Shenzhen for five years and we really enjoyed our time there. Maybe there are some similarities between SZ and Taiwan.

Zoika and Innichka in our apartment

As you are a young teacher, my advice would be to find a school - anywhere in the world - that will give you some good IB training. A job at a school in Taiwan that does not give IB training is not as good as a job somewhere else that does. You really need to be flexible in the international jobs market, I am afraid, and sometimes we have to see an appointment as a "stepping stone". No, it might not be quite what you want or where you want, but it will be a stepping stone to something better, two or maybe three years from now. 


Having taught in the UK, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Romania, the UAE, Qatar, China and Bulgaria, I suppose you could perhaps say that that I am bit of an "old hand" in international schools and so I want to do what I can to help other teachers.


With regard to recruitment agencies, I would recommend you to stay away from HAYES because they are rubbish. SEARCH ASSOCIATES are pretty good. Have a good look at their website. I also think that you should find out about TIC. It is run by a chap called Andrew Wigford.

Last, but by no means least, I would recommend you to read my blog, bulgariawithnoodles.blogspot.com

Stay in touch.

Best wishes,

Simon Hill
(aka the hippo)
My pretty TA did not like it when I took her photo!


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