Teaching Nomad

I wish I had given myself a week or two extra time so that I wouldn't have felt so rushed. My contract with the school I am to teach at in China begins in a few weeks, and I hope to be on time or at the least, not very late. I am very excited about my new job, and I hope to be teaching in China very soon!

Because it's a private school, Aston must work around the public school schedule, so I am to teach mostly afternoons and weekends. It's a 23-hour work week, with three hours a week in the office going over lesson plans with the Chinese co-teacher, and the other twenty hours actually teaching a class of no larger than ten students.

I've never traveled abroad, so I had to start from scratch – from my passport to my background check to my physical medical tests. All the paperwork had to be prepared in fairly rapid order for my application for the work visa in China. My biggest fear was that the task of so much paperwork was simply too daunting, but I've learned to make a plan and stick to a schedule.

I discovered in observing the local public school system and later teaching that students can be held back only one year; after that, it's social promotion regardless of ability. I didn't realize the implications for this policy until I started student teaching in my last semester; that's when I realized the usual program wasn't going to work for me.

One of the teachers that I had placed moved her entire family to Shanghai to take her teaching career overseas. I still keep in regular touch with the family, and they are very grateful for the job and the opportunity that I helped them get. She told me that after living back home for such a long time, they now are in love with the lifestyle, friends and experiences they've come to know in China.

Well, we do have some jobs in Saudi Arabia that pay almost $60K USD per year, so that would be awesome. As a teacher, I'm not qualified for that, so I think being able to experience the culture pretty much anywhere in the Middle East would be something interesting for me, as I haven't really traveled out that way yet. It's much different from Asia, and I think it would certainly be another eye-opening experience.

There's lots of recruitment companies out there, but part of what makes Teaching Nomad unique is the fact each member of our staff has significant experience either living or working abroad, and we all love to travel. We love to go above and beyond to share our own experiences in hopes that our teachers can have similar experiences and enjoy it just as much as we do.

I think the biggest factor that makes any company successful is customer service. Anyone can sell a product, but it takes something special to provide on-going support, help with problem solving and overall customer satisfaction. At Teaching Nomad, our database continues to grow, but quite a few of our teachers come back year after year for a new job simply because we keep in touch with them, help them through issues, and even get to know them outside of the normal client to customer interaction.