Our Journey
While I was student teaching in Holland, my friend who was currently teaching in Bulgaria messaged me about teaching full time at international schools. She gave me the Search Associates website, and encouraged me to pursue it. She told me if I liked the idea of traveling while getting paid and teaching students who love to learn it's an experience of a lifetime. I was sold, but I knew I had to convince Ben to come with me. Over the next year, we discussed the idea and did a lot of research. Ben was very supportive of my dreams and agreed to pursue this with me! At first, I was very narrow minded and applied to Search stating we only wanted to teach in Australia or Europe. Turns out Australia isn't in need of American teachers, and would be difficult to swing with opposite school years. Search told us that we needed to consider other countries or they weren't going to accept us as candidates. I was skeptical, but Ben said, "If we're going to do this, lets just say we will go anywhere and see what happens. Plus, I've heard great things about South East Asia." So we finished our profiles on the Search database checking every continent's box, and drove up to Boston to our first job fair!
The opening ceremony at our first job fair really changed my perspective on international teaching. It taught me to leave all of my stereotypes and fears of certain countries behind. They encouraged candidates to "be open to anything" and talk to every school that has an opening you are qualified to teach. Even if it's a country you never dreamed of visiting. We knew going in that it was late in the job search season and there weren't going to be a lot of job openings. Plus, Ben and I had already decided we weren't going to accept any job offers this year, if we were lucky enough to receive any. We were getting married that summer and wanted to teach and coach one more year at the school we were at already. We wanted to see what was out there, to be ready for the following year, so we signed up as much as we could to get interviewing experience. We interviewed with schools in Dubai, Ecuador, Abu Dabi, and the Ivory Coast. We had a close connection with the administration from the school in the Ivory Coast. We spent what seemed like an eternity talking about it, but it wasn't the right time. Of course, I cried after we turned them down because I was worried we might not get another international job offer ever again. We left the job fair hopeful of the upcoming year.
We were told the prime time to be hired for an international teaching job is October - February. Whether this is true or not, we were discouraged by December! We had left inquires with our "top schools" in Doha, Oman, Italy, Switzerland, and Singapore, and heard "not at this time", "we will speak with you at the fair in February", or no response. While Ben was teaching Math and PE at CMS, he was pretty set on primarily teaching PE at our next placement, therefore we only applied to schools that had a math and P.E. openings. So since I was getting impatient, I started applying to schools that had two Math positions. Then a miracle happened: a school in Thailand (APIS) responded saying they not only had two math positions, but a PE position that was about to be posted. I had a gut feeling about this school, and we quickly set up a Skype interview. I knew after that interview with the Head Master that this was the "good fit" we were looking for. Ben and I continued to talk to the current teachers at APIS to get a good feel for the school and life in Chiang Mai. While we didn't have a firm job offer before the job fair, we went to the job fair with almost all of our eggs in one basket: Thailand. Even though APIS was not at the job fair, our advisor encouraged us to still interview with other schools. So we did, and we had to turn down a job in Kazakhstan through the organization Quality Schools International (which was a great job opportunity - and a great organization but we reallllly wanted to stick with APIS). So we came back from the job fair and confirmed our offer with APIS by signing our 2 year contracts.
Believe it or not, that was the easy part - the months following were the hardest part! We applied for FBI background checks (11-15 week wait), submitted tons of copies of documents, told our friends and family, and our wonderful family at Clifton Middle School we wouldn't be coming back next year (I cried). We will be forever thankful for the love and support we have received that past 2 years and we hope some of you will be able to live through us in this blog or visit us in Thailand!
