How to Apply for International Schools

The past few days quite a few people have asked how I applied for teaching positions overseas. Was there an agency involved? Did I go to a hiring fair? Did I know people who were in international schools that were able to tip me off on potential jobs? The answers to all those questions are no, well sort of no. Let me explain.

I did not involve an agency due to the fees associated with signing up with one. That and the countless horror stories I heard in signing on with an agency being placed in an awful school and having to suck it up or break contract only to be blackballed from many other schools. I did however use quite a few agencies websites for the list of schools they worked with. With those lists of schools in hand, I began looking up each potential school's website. Some of the schools directly post vacancies on their websites in a specific section. If that section didn't exist I would send in an inquiry email to find out where they posted their information. Sometimes these emails were answered and other times they were not. This method was often time consuming as I had to to check the websites on a regular basis (at least 1x a week) just in case they posted any openings.

Another method I used was coming across second party websites that updated themselves daily with new teaching positions. Some of these websites only posted about specific regions or specific types of schools while others just posted a variety of jobs that needed to be filtered through to find the teaching jobs. It was through one of these websites that I managed to apply for my teaching position in Togo.

Though I do not currently have many contacts overseas right now in teaching positions I made sure I tracked down people who had taught overseas. Though some of the profs of my university I was able to meet some very knowledgeable teachers or administrators who had taught in a variety of different places all around the world. Since I also had quite a few connections through friends/neighbours who had gone overseas to work in a variety of different positions I was able to gather valuable information about working and living in a different country/continent.

Though I had intended to go to a hiring fair due to school this year it was not a possibilty. I have heard that fairs can be a very great place to find a position.

Next time I will talk about a few things to do once you have been offered a position. The advice I am giving comes from a number of different poeple as this will be my first teaching post internationally. I will also make sure I write a bit on travelling and moving overseas as the time draws closer.