International School Community Blog

The Impossible “Trinity” When Teaching Abroad

It was more than ten years into my international teaching career when a colleague said to me, ’You never get all three – the school, the location and the package’.

Teaching Abroad

That was nearly two years ago, but I have returned to that idea many times since. In fact, I wonder if doesn’t explain many an international school career, my own included: are some of us looking for something which, in the end, we can’t really have?

My first international school provided a first class professional experience. Coming from an unremarkable UK comprehensive school, suddenly I had not one, but two, well-appointed classrooms for my own individual use as we taught different Secondary sections on different floors. Suddenly, no class had more than twenty students. At first, I used to sometimes catch myself wondering where ‘the others’ were. Suddenly, every student had their own personal textbook (…this was the ‘90s!). No more sharing and photocopying. The students were polite, pleasant, keen to learn – everything, in fact, that I had sometimes wished for during that last period on a Friday back in the UK.

Teaching Abroad

As if this wasn’t enough, my take-home pay doubled. Was this too good to be true? A fantasy? Would I wake up with a jolt and find it was all a dream? Well, if I did wake up with a jolt in my first few weeks it was because of the unfamiliar sound of the call to prayer echoing across a walled compound. Yes, I was in Saudi Arabia.

Like anywhere, the Kingdom has its fans and its detractors. While my classroom experience was excellent, and rekindled my enthusiasm for teaching, working in Saudi Arabia, for me, was not the problem. Rather, not working was, in that I found life outside work, while initially interesting, not for me. To go back to the idea of the ‘the school, the package and the location’, I had two out of three and, after completing my two-year contract, moved on.

Teaching Abroad

Looking for something completely different, I resolved to forget about earning and saving for a few years and just to go somewhere ‘for the experience’, adjusting my priorities. Therefore I was staggered when, in Latin America, I found myself saving nearly as much money as in Saudi and experiencing an, at times, overwhelmingly different culture, one I’m not sure I made the most of in part perhaps because of the two years that had come before. After the Kingdom, all that reckless hedonism may well have been wasted on me. Three years on, I made another move. Yes, you guessed it: once again I felt I had two out of three and made another move, adjusting my priorities once again.

It would be neat and predictable if I got two out of three again but, unfortunately for me, the next time it was only one. One more move followed, and it was two out of three again. Perhaps subconsciously influenced by the idea of ‘The Impossible Trinity’, I am into my fifth year at my current school, the one where I have been happiest. Whether the school is that much different from those that came before or whether I am, I reckon I have a creditable 2.5 right now. Is that as good as it gets? Maybe. Is there anyone who has found their perfect fit, with their school, country and remuneration all ticking the box? You tell me, I’d love to know!

Teaching Abroad

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