Video Highlight: Knightsbridge Schools International (Bogota) (An international school in Colombia)

There are a few international schools to work at in Bogota!  How do these schools stand out from each other?

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Knightsbridge Schools International (Bogota)

The campus looks very nicely taken care of, lots of plants and trees and grass!

Nice to have a code of conduct. Hopefully all students are well aware of it and act on it.

It appears as if they have some cross-grade level lessons, where older students are working with the younger students.  Always a great learning experience for both students involved.

Interesting how they highlight the other Knightsbridge international schools.  I wonder what type of (if any) collaboration is done between all their schools.

Well the languages part didn’t really highlight so many. I think I heard Spanish, English and French.

The after school activities that they showed in the video seemed a bit basic.

So many girls that were in the video, hardly any boys were filmed.  At one point I thought it might be a all-girls campus.

Love the ending when the boy was holding the spinning globe. Great idea!

Currently on www.internationalschoolcommunity.com we have 7 international schools listed in Bogota.  Here are a just a few of them (The number of comments and information that have been submitted for each school is listed to the right of the link):

• Colegio Anglo Colombiano (17 Comments)
• Colegio Gran Bretana (3 Comments)
• Colegio Los Nogales Bogota (6 Comments)
• Colegio Nueva Granada (15 Comments)
• International School of Bogota (0 Comments)
• Knightsbridge Schools International (Bogota) (0 Comments)
• The English School (6 Comments)

If you know about what it is like working at one of these international schools in Bogota, log-on today and submit your own comments and information.  Become a Mayor of one of these schools and you will receive unlimited premium access to International School Community for free!

Getting a Job at an International School…in June!

Teacher Job Fair

For those of us who have been in the international teaching profession for numerous years, it is still very daunting having to think about acquiring a new international teaching post. There are so many new fresh young teachers out there that are eager to fill the same post that we are vying for and often times at a lower salary!

There are various ways of going about acquiring such a position, one being through attending one of the elusive job fairs that are held each year. These events tend to be pretty much like a cattle call of sorts; in and out of hotel rooms to ‘sell’ oneself to principals and directors from schools all over the world. I myself have been to several and it is a very exhausting procedure!

I have been to four job fairs in my career and I had no desire to attend another one due to the time and effort involved in attending one and not to mention the cost of attending them. I much rather communicate with the schools directly when I see there is a job opening that I might be able to fill. I just kept putting myself out there and had faith that the right job would come my way! I am in no means saying do not attend these fairs, I am just saying I prefer not to go to them.

I feel the best way to see which international schools have teaching positions is to sign up onto one of the various international job sites such as TIE On-line, Search Associates or ISS to name a few. And in recent years it seems like some folks are cashing in on the international job search market and are becoming ‘head hunters’ of sorts to locate teachers for the various openings that are still not filled after the job fairs. Getting your resume/CV on there is of utmost importance. This way the schools can see that you are interested in relocating.

imagesAfter being in the international teaching profession myself since 1995, I have encountered countless connections with educational professionals who are now spread out all over the world. Through these connections I have been able to reach out and obtain inside information on various openings that I might be able to fill. But it seemed that even with these connections I still had a hard time getting a Skype interview after applying to numerous openings.

Just recently, another venue for locating an international teaching post is by joining one of the Facebook groups ‘International Teachers’ or ‘International Language Teachers’. These groups are very helpful in letting one know if there is an opening at their school. It is also a good place for a teacher to post a desired job in hopes that one of the members will know of an opening.

I believe the key in acquiring the desired job is networking, networking, networking! Tell people what you want and keep putting yourself out there. Persistence does pay; do not give up! Those last-minute jobs are out there, you just need to your eyes peeled to your computer screen to locate them. It is possible to get a job in June!

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UntitledThis article was written by International School Community member Joni Kerr.

If you would like to be a guest author on our blog, email us here.  All guest authors get six free months of premium membership!

International School Community is also an excellent place to network with other international school teachers. All premium members are able to send a private messages to one or all of our 7700+ members.

The Journey to School: Rasami (Thai-British) International School in Bangkok, Thailand

The journey to work is indeed an important one.  The journey though is not so clear for international school teachers, when looking for jobs at schools and cities/countries to which they have never been.  So let’s share what we know!

One of our members, who works at the Rasami (Thai-British) International School, in Bangkok, Thailand, described his way to work as follows:

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I open my front door to the sound of a disparate chorus of tropical birds and the waning night time sounds of cicadas and bullfrogs. Bangkok is one of the hottest and busiest metropolises on the planet and by 7am it is already nearly 30 degrees Celsius and my shirt is sticking to my back before I have walked downstairs, past the spirit house that is a feature of almost every building in Thailand, with its strong sweet scent of burning incense sticks and onto the soi (narrow side street) below. The traffic congestion on the soi is considerable, though it never reaches the proportions of the average Bangkok street as one end leads into an army base through which only authorised vehicles may pass. Fortunately working at RBIS entitles me to one of these passes for the princely sum of 200 Baht (about GBP4) per year. I don’t drive the 300 metres to school though! If the morning is cool enough I elect to walk, but on particularly sultry mornings I take a motor-cycle taxi which costs 10 Baht. The journey may be short but it is not uneventful.

The morning aroma emanating from the Bougainvillea and Frangipani is a delightful treat for the nostrils and its heady perfume more than compensates for the less appealing stench of the Bangkok sewage system which competes for nasal attention. The vivid colours of the flowers against the almost ubiquitous azure blue sky, relax my eyes and help to mentally prepare me for the impending day’s teaching. There is no pavement (sidewalk) on the soi, so one can never entirely drift off as the need to avoid military vehicles, taxis and scurrying motorcycles as well as the cars of our parents hurrying to drop their offspring at school before going on the lucrative employment that enables them to send their children to an international school.

When I arrive at the school, I greet the School Director – a former army officer, who is always present to greet staff and children – with a wai, a prayer like gesture which he cheerfully returns, before entering the compact campus and commencing the days teaching.

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Currently, we have 38 international schools listed in Bangkok on our website.  19 of them have had comments submitted on them by our members. Check out which ones here by using our school search feature.

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So what is your journey to the international school you work at?  Earn 6 free months of premium membership to our website if you participate in this blog series – ‘The Journey to School’.  Email us here if you are interested.

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