International Teaching Living Abroad EPO - The University of Iowa College of Education

International Teaching
Teaching & Living Abroad

Motivations | Job Seeking & Interviewing | Recruiting Fairs
International Schools | Teaching & Living Abroad | Key Resources

	"We probably romanticized the international experience…it's almost impossible not to…. When we arrived (Guam) it was hot, humid, and it would never change. We had to find an apartment, a car, etc. Everything is very different and one needs to adjust quickly in a short amount of time."
	"You need to be prepared for adverse conditions overseas, not only weather. You are a long distance away in an entirely different setting and you are culturally marooned."
	"You can get by not knowing the language. The benefit of the language is that you get to know the culture. As you're working with students of other cultures, that's such a key to understanding your students."
	"I've never seen students work as hard as they did at the American Embassy schools. I was amazed at how hard our kids studied, the difficulty of courses, how motivated they were to excel academically, how tight knit the student body was, how supportive they were of each other. They got lots of extra benefits too. For a week each year, the entire school closes and goes to various locations in India, so the opportunities for students are incredible. Also the demands on how hard they work are pretty extraordinary."
	"There was some flexibility in terms of my role [as a school counselor]. I was able to do some other things that I normally don't get to do...like some of the administrative things, you just pitched in where help was needed."
	"If you are graduating and want to put your theories & education into practice in a place where there is room to make mistakes and to learn your craft, the Peace Corps is a great opportunity for that."
	"Single teachers may be expected to share an apartment with another person. That can be quite an adjustment. Usually after the first year or two, they'll work to find continuing teachers a single apartment."
	Salaries overseas vary considerably. You need to look at all aspects of compensation. Consider the cost of living, whether housing is provided, taxes, the currency in which salary is paid, health insurance, moving allowances, and other perks.

"Part of the training was that I visited another Peace Corps volunteer to see what her life was like. I also lived with a host family for 6 weeks of my training and that allowed me to see the kind of lives that my students were living. I got a first hand glimpse of what my students' lives were like. Some of them had to get up at 4:00 in the morning to gather the firewood, boil the water for the baths, make breakfast for themselves and their younger siblings and then walk 5 miles to school. So it really gave me an understanding of what their lives were like and helped me to understand why they may fall asleep in class, that there were reasons for that. A lot of the students went to school because of the free food. They were given a tea break where they received bread and tea and they got lunch. Three times a week there was meat in that lunch. That was one of the motivating factors for parents out in the bush to send their children to school."

"It was a 24-hour a day job (at the Swiss boarding school). We were living in the dorm, doing dorm duty. We took kids everywhere. We never went anywhere without taking a group of kids.... Until the kids got on the plane home... we were responsible for them. It was exhausting, wonderful work."

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