Traveling Around

Traveling Around: Sicily (The life of an international school teacher is good!)

June 6, 2022

Traveling Around: Sicily

Can you relate?

• entering a local deli shop by chance and being in awe of all the delicious food!

• getting an Airbnb right in a small harbor where the locals are doing their daily fishing.

• planning this trip with some international school teacher friends that you met at a conference many years ago.

• learning about the history of the island when you run into some ancient ruins.

• resisting the urge to buy things from the local market when you see that your partner is purchasing a number of things.

• Imagining what life would be like living in Sicily as you walk down cute and quaint narrow streets.

• running into huge packs of high school aged children all over the city and not understanding why they aren’t in school!

• succumbing to the urge and getting at least one delicious gelato a day.

• taking a detour two times during the trip and stopping at some remote, local beaches to just lay down and relax (some of us taking a dip as well).

• walking around the beautiful nature and being curious about all of the local wildflowers.

• going all the way up to Mount Etna and being amazed at the fact you are standing so close to an erupting volcano!

• ringing a doorbell of a closed store that sells honey only for the bell to be answered by the owner who then lets you in (the honey was delicious!)!

• loving the city life as you people-watch in downtown Catania.

• stopping the car to get out and buy four peaches from a local produce seller selling produce out of their truck.

• driving around and being scared because of the way the locals drive. It was like the driving rules there were merely suggestions.

• visiting a touristy town but realizing how amazing it was, especially the views of the sea.

• eating at a different restaurant every night and totally enjoying every meal and experience.

• running into a local wedding that was just ending and watching firsthand all of the traditions of their culture.

Currently, we have 39 international schools listed in Italy on International School Community. 21 of them have had comments submitted on them. Here are a few of those schools:

The Bilingual School of Monza – 29 Comments
International School Florence – 34 Comments
American Overseas School of Rome – 40 Comments
Bilingual European School of Milan – 79 Comments
St. Stephens School Rome – 29 Comments
Westminster International School– 29 Comments

If you are on a trip right now, away from your host country, write to us here with your “Can you relate?” traveling experiences.  Tell us where you are traveling in the world, what you are seeing, and how you are coping with any culture shock.  Once your Traveling Around experience is posted on our blog, International School Community will give you 6 free months of premium membership!

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Comment Topic Highlight

Why Are People Staying at or Leaving Your International School?

May 23, 2022

If you work at an international school, you know that your decision to stay or leave has already been decided by now. Teachers most likely have already decided whether they will stay for another year or two at their current school or move on back home or to another international school.  

At some international schools, 1/4 or 1/3 of their current teachers decide to let their school know that they will be moving on at the end of the school year. Though it is not the case necessarily at other international schools that have a lot of local hires (not necessarily on foreign-hired contracts). Those with lots of local hires generally tend to have teachers that want to stay there for longer periods of time because they have more ties to the local country (e.g. they are married to a local, etc.).

Regardless of the personal situation of the teacher, another big factor that guides a teacher’s decision to stay or leave is the school itself. For example, the school might be losing student numbers as of late. Fewer students mean less demand for all the teachers on the current staff roster, meaning some need to go whether they like it or not. Maybe even the school has decided to alter or eliminate the staff children benefit (to have them attend the school for free). And the list goes on…

There are of course even other factors that come into play that affect this big decision that a number of teachers need to make each year. One of these factors is that the school has decided to move in a direction that doesn’t match your teaching philosophy anymore. Staying at a school that doesn’t match you and your teaching style can be a serious concern leading you to search for other positions in a school that better suit you.

The biggest factor to stay or leave might just boil down to money, plain and simple. If the school isn’t meeting your needs financially anymore, there are many more that probably will.

So the question for you is why are YOU going to stay or leave your current school? It might be one of these reasons listed above or a combination of these and even other reasons.

Luckily, International School Community has a comment topic on our school profile pages related to this topic of staying or leaving, so you can stay the most informed as possible. There are a total of 477 comments (May 2022) that have been submitted by our veteran international school teachers in one of 67 comment topics called – “In general, why are people staying at or leaving this school?”

Here are a few of those submitted comments:

“People are staying because they are mostly not getting a better job anywhere else and people are leaving because of the rude behavior, less salary, false promises, promotion of wrong candidate, lack of resources and overloaded routine.” – Indus International School (Pune) (Pune, India) – 43 Total Comments

“Staying because the campus is nice, supply and PD budgets are generous, students are overall courteous and engaged, and because Berlin rocks. Leaving because salaries are too low, and some departments are more disorganized than others.” – Berlin Brandenburg International School (Berlin, Germany) – 87 Comments

“Staying: Turnover is low. In my opinion, people are staying because the school climate is generally very positive – it is a happy place to work. The school has generally got its act together (curriculum, policies, etc) very well so there are structures in place to make teaching positive. It is a vibrant, stimulating place to work. Japan is a lovely place to live. Leaving: The cliche is single females find it harder to date in Tokyo and that could be a reason to leave. The school’s pay is OK and the school’s reputation is good and growing but the pay is not as great as some other big-name schools. People leave as they get the experience and then are drawn to the lure of $$. This is especially the case of teachers in their late 40’s looking for a pension.” – Tokyo International School (Tokyo, Japan) – 140 Total Comments

“People stay a long time because the pay and benefits are great, the city is very livable, the cost of living is low and the classes are not too large.” – Anglo-American School of St. Petersburg (St. Petersburg, Russia) – 38 Comments

“The overall package is hard to beat and the staff is not overworked. Combined with minimal classroom management requirements due to small class sizes, DISK really is a great place to work.” – Doshisha International School Kyoto (Kyoto, Japan) – 140 Comments

“If you survive your first year most teachers stay on. The first year is a challenge, especially if you are late arriving (a common issue because of how long it takes to get a visa).” – Tsinghua International School (Beijing) (Beijing, China) – 193 Comments

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Information for Members

Become an ISC Mayor and Get Unlimited Free Premium Membership

April 17, 2022

Our mission for the International School Community website is to have the most updated information about what it is like to work at the numerous international schools around the world. One way to help us achieve that mission is to have Mayors.

Being a Mayor is super easy, and the best part is that you get unlimited free premium membership to our website!

And ANYONE can be the Mayor of their school. Most of our active Mayors are just regular teachers at their schools, but we also have heads of schools, HR representatives, principals, etc. as Mayors as well.

Mayors are commenting on the school and the benefits information, but they also comment on the city and travel information of the country as well. Mayors also don’t need to represent all aspects and perspectives of the school. They are recommended to just share their experience and perspective on living and working at that international school and in that city/country.

Mayor Responsibilities:

• Submit at least 3-6 new comments on your school every 1-2 months (on the 68 different comment topics). It takes like 5-8 minutes of your time to do this. It will take a Mayor 2 years to submit one comment in all 68 comment topics.

• Make sure to check on your school’s Wall and occasionally post updates about their school (any big changes to the school that are happening, good tips to know about, recent events at the schools, etc.)

• Make sure that your school has the most updated and correct information (e.g. basic info, links, Facebook page, Youtube video, etc.) on the Overview and Social Media tabs.

• Submit job vacancies that are currently available at your school.

Here are just a few of the almost 700+ schools that have or have had a Mayor on our website:

• Western International School of Shanghai (Shanghai, China) – 547 Comments

• NIST International School (Bangkok, Thailand) – 304 Comments

• Tarsus American College (Mersin, Turkey) – 278 Comments

• Canadian International School (Hong Kong) (Hong Kong, China) – 168 Comments

• American School Foundation of Monterrey (Monterrey, Mexico) – 129 Comments

• Concordia International School (Shanghai) (Shanghai, China) – 180 Comments

• Yongsan International School of Seoul (Seoul, South Korea) – 145 Comments

• Copenhagen International School (Copenhagen, Denmark) – 414 Comments

• Seoul Foreign School (Seoul, South Korea) – 223 Comments

• American International School Dhaka (Dhaka, Bangladesh) – 130 Comments

• International School of Kuala Lumpur (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) – 135 Comments

• Tsinghua International School (Beijing) (Beijing, China) – 193 Comments

• Hong Kong International School (Hong Kong, China) – 157 Comments

The more Mayors that we have on our website means the more our members will be informed; as there will be more up-to-date information on the schools they want to know about!

Become the Mayor of an international school that you work at today!

* Please note that being the Mayor of a school is anonymous and that all comments and job vacancies submitted on our website are also done so anonymously. Posting on the school profile page wall though is not anonymous.

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Traveling Around

Traveling Around: Småland, Sweden (The life of an international school teacher is good!)

March 6, 2022

Traveling Around: Småland, Sweden

Can you relate?

• getting a private tour of a crazy Swedish man’s small moose park. The moose were so big and cute!

• staying at two different Swedish hotels (here’s one in Kalmar) that offered not only breakfast but also dinner as included in the price of the room.

• taking the trains to get around from city to city, and splurging by buying the First Class ticket for some more comfort.

• going to a local restaurant and being the only guests in it. It is hard to do, but you can be surprised by some tasty food!

• finding a unique Italian restaurant run by actual Italians (in a Swedish city of around 50000 people) and being treated to such a wonderfully authentic Italian meal.

• stepping into a small butcher’s shop and buying unique locally-made products like jams and crackers.

• driving around to find a castle that is also a hotel and realizing we should’ve stayed there instead!

• traveling to a water tower that also doubled as an echo chamber. I wouldn’t have believed it until we got there. It was super amazing!

• driving by a huge outlet area and agreeing to stop and check it out. We bought some discounted clothes!

• driving off the beaten path a number of times on very dirt, bumpy roads. Super exciting and fun!

• taking in the view of the beautiful nature. Even though it was winter and very cold, the sunny days still made the views so wonderful.

• getting a bit of a snowstorm one night and waking up to everything covered in snow.

• making sure to buy some local bread at a fancy Swedish bakery to bring back home with us.

• stopping by the local mall for some shopping. We bought a pot of a Swedish knockoff of le Creuset.

• having the easiest pick up of a rental car….EVER!

• wondering why we went traveling for a week in small-town Sweden only to realize that it was super relaxed and cozy…just want needed.

• taking the free pass from the hotel to the local “spa/pool” and then seeing that it was overrun by small children!

• stopping by the IKEA museum and learning about the amazing history of this iconic store.

Currently, we have 14 international schools listed in Sweden on International School Community. 7 of them have had comments submitted on them. Here are a few of those schools:

Bladins International School of Malmo – 33 Comments
International School of Almhult – 141 Comments
International School of Helsingborg – 28 Comments
International School of the Gothenburg Region – 6 Comments
Stockholm International School – 11 Comments

If you are on a trip right now, away from your host country, write to us here with your “Can you relate?” traveling experiences.  Tell us where you are traveling in the world, what you are seeing and how you are coping with any culture shock.  Once your Traveling Around experience is posted on our blog, International School Community will give you 6 free months of premium membership!

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Information for Members

Top 40 International Schools with the Most ISC Members (UPDATE)

February 27, 2022

How many times have you applied to a school wishing that you knew somebody that worked there?

Knowing somebody and getting the ‘inside scoop’ on an international school could definitely help you in your quest to set up an interview there.

At International School Community, we made that search for ‘informed people’ even easier with our Top 40 Schools with the Most Members page.

Currently, our top 40 international schools with the most members are (6 December 2020):

30 members – American International School in Egypt

28 members –International School of Kuala Lumpur
27 members – Copenhagen International School
25 members – International School Manila
24 members – MEF International School Istanbul
23 members – Western International School of Shanghai
21 members – Fairview International School
21 members – Brent International School Manila

21 members – Seoul Foreign School
21 members – American International School (Vietnam)
21 members – American School Foundation of Mexico City
20 members – International School Dhaka
20 members – International School of Tanganyika
19 members – Jakarta Intercultural School
19 members – Seoul International School
19 members – Graded School Sao Paulo
18 members – Shanghai United International School (Hongqiao)

18 members – Shanghai Community International School
18 members – American School of Barcelona
18 members – Aga Khan Academy Mombasa
17 members – Nazarbayev Intellectual School of Astana
17 members – Qatar Academy (Doha)
17 members – International School Panama
17 members – Pathways World School
17 members – International School of Phnom Penh (ISPP)
17 members – American International School of Johannesburg
17 members – International School Bangkok
17 members – Good Shepherd International School
17 members – Singapore American School

17 members – American International School Dhaka
16 members – United Nations International School (Vietnam)
16 members – Cairo American College
16 members – Suzhou Singapore International School
16 members – Western Academy of Beijing
16 members – NIST International School
16 members – Anglo-American School of Moscow

15 members – Canadian International School (Singapore)
15 members – American School of Kuwait
15 members – Chadwick International School – Songdo
15 members – American School of Bombay

With 100-200 new members joining each month, this list will continue to grow and grow; with even more members showing up as potential people to network with.

It is simple to network on our website: just click on a member and then click on the ‘Contact this member’ button (premium member feature).  Then write him/her a message.  When your message is sent, the other member will get an email alert letting them know that they have a new message waiting for them on our website (so, hopefully he/she/they will get back to you in a timely manner!). Numerous International School Community members have already taken advantage of this unique feature on our website!

As far as we know, International School Community is one of the only websites where you can quickly and easily network with real people at a specific international school.  Meaning, if you want to get in touch with somebody from Suzhou Singapore International School in China and you are currently a premium member of International School Community, you now have 16 members that you can contact on our website that either work there now or have worked there in the past.  Get the answers to your questions; now that is easy networking!

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