Regardless of where they teach, the sad fact remains that most teachers earn less than contemporaries with backgrounds in similar fields. School holidays provide prime opportunities to earn more money to save for a house, travel, pay down bills, or stash away into a retirement fund. The following list includes ideas on how you can parlay your teaching skills into viable income whether during school breaks or school terms.
Sell Your Materials
You’ve created and taught lessons, curricula, and activities. Why not upload those plans to Teachers Pay Teachers or another online marketplace where teachers can purchase and sell their creations? Once you start, everything you sell generates passive income.
Write Curricula
In addition to education giants like Pearson, Houghton-Mifflin, and others, many companies who employ in-house curriculum writers also hire contract writers to pick up the slack. Some of these companies, who write curricula designed to be taught in different countries, occasionally hire experts familiar with a specific country’s culture and customs to advise on curriculum projects.
Teach Anything Online
Qualified to teach levels other than those you’re teaching in a traditional classroom? Hook up with an online course. Many school districts offer online classes, and there are other online education sites seeking teachers in the primary and secondary school levels. Consider teaching higher education online, too, or connecting with an online tutoring service.
Take it a step further! If you’re teaching ELL abroad, you can also contract with various online platforms, like VIPkid, to teach English.
Blog
Love to write? Create a blog about your experiences teaching, living abroad, or any number of topics. You can partner with advertisers or affiliates, even sell products and services, and parlay a fun hobby into something that generates steady income. Or, you can write an eBook and share your expertise with others.
Start an Edtech
The global investment in edtech is set to reach $252 billion by 2020. You’ve already got your finger on the pulse of education. Why not contribute your observations to developing solutions that incorporate technological processes and resources to improve education?
Become a Test Scorer or Grader
Whether you live in the States or abroad, you can pick up side work for grading district or state exams and standardized tests. The Higher Ed remote job board is a good place to start.
Work at a Museum
If there’s a museum with exhibits in which you specialize, reach out to see if you can work as a docent or guide or perhaps collaborate with their staff to create and teach a class or two.
Write City Guides
Live in an area dependent upon the tourist trade? Travel and tourism and real estate businesses often contract writers to write neighborhood/city guides, information about amusements and entertainment, restaurants, transport, accommodations, and more.
Join Airbnb
If you’ve got the space to rent a room or you’re traveling for a month and don’t want your home untended, become an Airbnb host. It’s a neat way to generate income and meet new people.
Translate
Are you multilingual? Consider translation work. You can work with translation agencies or for a multinational company. Check out websites like Gengo.com for job listings.
Creating the Perfect Home Workspace
If your side gig includes working from home — or you’re looking for a better atmosphere for grading papers and lesson prep — make sure you have a workspace carved out where you can work without distractions. Set office hours so your family knows your schedule, too.
A good, usable workspace should have proper lighting, a solid table or desk, laptop or desktop, a comfy chair, and printer. If you’re working from multiple documents or have many tabs open at once, splurge for a second monitor to save your eyes and sanity.
Extra Credit
Whether you’re looking for a second gig related to your career or something completely new, there’s a wide variety of options available. You’re blessed with a skill set that lets you explore many opportunities — whether you want to expand your current knowledge or learn something completely new!
This article was submitted by guest author and ISC Member, Jenny Wise. She created Special Home Educator as a forum for sharing her adventures in homeschooling and connecting with other homeschooling families.
Photo Credit: Pexels.com
Favorite Restaurants, Places to Go to and Things to Do in Your Host Country
Eating out and finding a really tasty restaurant in your host city is the best. Such delicious local food (or ‘expat food’ cuisine) to be had! While not all local restaurants will be the best, there are sure to be some excellent ones. Typically you find these out from the veteran teachers at your school. They’ve been there awhile, so they are the best ones to let you know where to eat out at. And if the cost of living is low where you are, you might just find yourself eating out all the time (see How NOT to save money when working as an international school teacher #2: Go out to eat all the time!)
There are also just your favorite things to do in the city. Maybe it is taking a jog around the corniche if you live in a city in the Middle East. Maybe it is going to a posh bar downtown where a lot of expats frequent, like the Bund in Shanghai, China. Maybe it is just a quiet park that you like in Western Europe where people go to just relax and enjoy the clean air and surrounding nature (and people watch). The best part is you don’t know your favorite things to do in your host city until you arrive. You could say this aspect is one of the more exciting part of living abroad and teaching internationally.
Another cool thing to do in your host country and traveling around and exploring the different places it offers. If you like the mountains, hopefully you will live not too far away from one that you go to do on the weekend (let’s say if you live in Zurich). If you like the sea, maybe there will be a nice coast that you can take a local bus to (let’s say north of Barcelona). Enjoying your day at the beach can be a great getaway from your sometimes busy life at your international school. In China, they have these really beautiful water towns. Many international school teachers in Shanghai are bound to have a favorite water town that they frequent every so often.
So many favorite things, so little time. Especially if your plan is to only stay 2-3 years in your current host country, it is good to frequent your favorite places and often! Soon enough, you’ll be moving away to live in your next location and you’ll certainly miss all of your current favorite things! (see Going back to a place you once lived – I almost cried!)
Luckily, International School Community has a comment topic on our school profile pages related to this topic of your favorite host country restaurants, places and things to do. There are a total of 394 comments (May 2018) that have been submitted by our veteran international school teachers in one of 65 comment topics called – “Name your favorite restaurants, favorite places to go to and favorite things to do in the city.”
Here are a few of those submitted comments:
“Cheongna it is pretty easy to get to the famous Hongdae area of Seoul. The area has tons of restaurants, cafes, bars, street food vendors, and live performances. In Cheongna itself, there are new places opening all the time. Current favorites are Roy’s (a Mexican place), Wembley’s Bar, Chicken & Beer, Big Grill (a Korean BBQ place), Texas BBQ, and Hans Craft (craft beer pub). For activities, many teachers like to use the boats in Lake Park or go for a picnic. Many teachers enjoy mountain biking and hiking on the nearby trails. Screen golf and screen baseball are fun activities and of course noraebang (singing rooms).” – Cheongna Dalton School (Incheon, South Korea) – 42 Total Comments
“Oslo has an amazing fjord. Its cheap and plenty of little islands can be got to for the normal cost of your monthly T-Bane card. There are fantastic restaurants – but you will need a mortgage before going out for a good dinner here. Skiing and hiking are cheap or free and we spend our summers picking berries in the forests and winters skiing or skating. Its a paradise in truth.” – Northern Lights International School (Oslo, Norway) – 28 Comments
“Zurich is definitely a city worth walking through. Ambling through the narrow lanes of the old town is a treat. Pop into either the Fraumunster church to see the stunning Chagall windows or walk to up the tower of the Grossmunster church, or walk into the cript of the Water Church. On a nice day a short boat ride (Kleine rundfahrt) which starts at the main boat docks near Burkliplatz is worth the time.” – Zurich International School (Zurich, Switzerland) – 33 Total Comments
“Tianjin is a very beautiful city with lots of canals and urban parks and greenways. It is incredibly flat. There are two lakes next to school and expat teachers live in apartments around the lakes. It is a wonderful location for running and exercise in all seasons of the year.” – HIKSVS International School (Tianjin, China) – 30 Comments
“One of my personal favorites is a nice place in Paragon called Midtown. They have a large menu with a lot of traditional Thai dishes and a few international options. Some of their spicy dishes are fantastic (if you can handle Thai chili peppers).” – NIST International School (Bangkok, Thailand) – 242 Comments
“We just went to Bait Al Luban near to the Corniche Mutrah. The food there is delicious! It really seems like they use fresh ingredients and things made there are done to a really nice perfection. Another favorite restaurant that we’ve been to is in the Wave area. It is a Lebanese restaurant that’s called Zahr El Laymoun. We got some hot and cold mezza dishes and every single one was so tasty. Will definitely be going back to these places soon.” – American International School of Muscat (Muscat, Oman) – 34 Comments