What we learned

We started asking around about the best ways to acquire an overseas position. Based on our friend’s advice, ISS and their IRC was the way to go. We started the process the end of November (a little late in the process) with a call and email to ISS. Told them what we taught, and our backgrounds and certifications and they agreed to let us attend the IRC in Boston in Feb 2005. Getting the paper work together, all the transcripts, letters of recommendation and state certification documents was a little pushed because of our short timeline. Another problem was the Christmas holidays; one of my colleges was closed for two weeks, so no transcript till Jan 3. Contacting past administrators during the holidays was also a challenge.

I will say that the ISS staff was very helpful, courteous and supportive even though we were late to the party. One of my first suggestions would be to plan ahead; our finally pulling the trigger caused us to have to do certain things in a very short time frame. Because we couldn’t get access to the job opening at the International Schools website till everything was completed, we had a very short amount of time to contact the schools that sounded like they might have two opening that fit our skill set. When you go as a teaching team, it has pluses and minuses. When the jobs match for both of you, schools like it a lot, save a little money and kill two birds with one job offer. The downside is finding a school that needs both of you.

We started looking for positions that matched our training and were in places we wanted to go. Because you can only search for one job at a time, we had to look for a Science job and see if they needed the other person. We would also try a counseling job and then see if something was available for the other person. Then you have to check the benefits, the country, the pay, etc. It would be a great help to a teaching team to be able to enter both jobs in the search and to enter a region of the world (not just each country). The present system works but it could be so much more powerful if the search process had a little better capabilities.