Teaching abroad is an opportunity to expand your horizons and enhance your resume in order to advance up the career ladder. But, if you have a family, making sure you have all the information you can find will help you find the best position for your entire family.
There are many international teachers who love the lifestyle and believe that their children are the best to get an international education. Essentially, your children will not only benefit from the expanded horizons, but they will also receive a private education. Teaching abroad is not for the faint-hearted, but you can manage the risks of making a bad decision.
Here are some items to consider if you are teaching abroad with children:
Tuition as part of the salary package
International schools are fee schools. This means that parents or their employers pay for children to attend school and it is not cheap. In most salary packages you find, you will find that tuition for your children is included. What you need to check is if it is included for the number of children you have. Often times, you will have to pay tuition for your third and / or fourth child.
Learning difficulties and learning support
If your child has learning difficulties, don’t try to hide it from the school because you are concerned that the situation will affect his employability. If so, you probably don’t want to work there, and you probably don’t want your child to go to school there! Learning support departments are becoming more common in the best schools, and as a consequence there is an increased awareness of special education and support for struggling children. To find out if learning support is available at a school you are considering applying to work for, check their website for a list of departments or a list of staff. If the provision of learning support is not mentioned, ask the school directly or ask a friend to email the school, pretend to be a potential parent, and ask for yourself.
Languages offered
Most schools will offer several foreign languages for your child to learn. If your child has already been learning a language, you may want to find out if he will be able to continue at his new school. It is an important consideration if you are moving to an IB school because all students must learn a language other than their mother tongue. In grades 11 and 12 (years 12 and 13) this is particularly relevant because your child is expected to take the Diploma exam which presupposes a prior knowledge of the language. If you are moving to an IB school and your child has never studied a foreign language before, ask what languages are offered at the ‘ab initio’ level. This is the level at which Diploma students can enter a language for the first time.
Extracurricular Activities Offered
Smaller international schools can be a nice change from working in a national public system, but the downside is that there may be only limited opportunities for your children to participate in extracurricular activities. Again, check the school websites to see what sports are offered. If there is no obvious link, you can always look at the images to see if there are sports or music related. If your children are dedicated athletes, you can find out about regional sports competitions and which sports participate in them. Other activities to learn about, depending on your children’s interests, are Model United Nations, Amnesty International, International Youth Awards (similar to the Duke of Edinburgh Award), orchestra, choir, theater productions, etc.
Community leisure activities
What activities do your children participate in when they have free time? What would you like to try? You can get information about leisure activities in the community you will be moving to either by asking the recruiter (in the interview, after you’ve been offered a position), on the schools’ websites (you can often find a page about ‘life’ in the same area as the employment or admissions pages) or through Internet searches. When searching the Internet, use city AND activity, for example, Bangkok AND flamenco dancing.
The key to making the right decisions is having accurate and complete information at your fingertips. By following these simple tips, you will have good quality information on which to base this important decision about your children’s lives.