Blogs of international school teachers: Tim Woods (Preparing Tomorrow’s Leaders)

Are you inspired to start up a blog about your adventures living abroad?

Our 11th blog that we would like to highlight is called “Tim Woods.”  This international educator has much experience in the international school community, having worked at international schools in Canada, Costa Rica, Bahrain, Eng­land and Bel­gium.  Check out the blog entries of this international school teacher who is now working at Overseas Family School Singapore in Singapore.

Entries we would like to highlight:

Around the World in 80 Seconds

“My wife and I were recently grounded by ash from Iceland’s infa­mous vol­cano. The name of that beast, Eyjaf­jal­la­jokull (sounds like “AY-yah-fyah-lah-YOH-kuul”  if you’re brave) is much fun­nier than the real­ity of it, I assure you. In our case, what should have been a short 2-hour flight from Helsinki to Brus­sels turned out to be 4 days of pac­ing in a cold air­port and then a 47-hour com­bi­na­tion of fer­ries, buses, taxis, trams and trains.

I men­tion this only so you can under­stand why it is I appre­ci­ate this clip so much: the feel­ing of traveling, with­out hav­ing to actu­ally leave my din­ing room. Perfect.  If you liked this, you might also enjoy Sin­ga­pore and Back in 5 Min­utes.”

This photo journey idea is a another great idea!  We all can relate to the traveling experience of going back and forth, back and forth to our home country.  The feeling going back and then the different feeling of returning to your host country.  Sometimes the journey goes smoothly, sometimes not!  A journey of 4 days sounds like a nightmare indeed!

Guarantee the career you want

“Your job is not per­fect. Me nei­ther. We have hid­den gifts you and I.  First instinct, espe­cially in the heady days of early Jan­u­ary, is to re-evaluate and con­sider mas­sive life changes.  Have we in fact missed our call­ing? In a word: yes. But it’s an eas­ier fix than you might think.

Have you ever heard the expres­sion: “When you’re doing what you really love, it doesn’t feel like a job?” Do you know why this is true? It’s because when you’re doing what you really love you prob­a­bly aren’t at work. Day jobs are some­times less-than-totally ful­fill­ing. They don’t nor­mally appre­ci­ate or hon­our our full great­ness. They nor­mally can’t. (Because that’s not their job). They are not designed with us in mind, but rather with our clients in mind. But their imper­fec­tion doesn’t mean they are wrong for us. We accept their imper­fec­tions as they accept ours. And that’s not bad.

Non-jobs are an anti­dote to less-than-completely-fulfilling careers. They offer a ful­fill­ing ‘third place’. A place, that is not our job and not our home-life, where we grow in the ways we crave.”

Yes, international school teachers are very keen to find the perfect job at the perfect international school at the perfect school so that they can feel a sense of meeting their goals with their career.  If any of those things are not perfect, then you are more prone to thinking you have a job instead of a career at that school.  Then it is true coming hiring season it just might be time to re-evaluate.

*If you are an international school teacher and would like your blog highlighted on International School Community contact us here.