Hello everyone,

I’ve been lurking around these boards the past few weeks as I’m interested into making steps towards entering into international teaching. While I’ve tried to cover as many posts as possible I’ve found it hard to apply advice to my own situation from other people’s instances, so I wanted to drop a post of my own. Please feel free to direct me towards other posts if this would help!

To give some background on myself, I’ve got BA’s in psychology and international relations (emph: Japanese). I went into college wanting to become a clinical psychologist and had a passion for research within the realm of cross-cultural psychology as well as desire to teach courses concerning cross-cultural psychology. So, before going to graduate school, I decided to teach ESL via an ALT dispatch company (no TEFL cert, was mainly hired due to previous teaching and tutoring experience abroad and in low-income areas) in order to gain some cross-cultural experience.

After two years I decided to head back to the states. I loved the job, but (of course) saw a certain threshold in personal and professional growth that can’t be breached unless one is trained to be a certified teacher. Coming back to the states, I took a job as a Behavioral Health Technician/Child Care Specialist (they never seem to be able to decide what I am) at a psychiatric treatment center. My duties entail creating curriculum for educational groups delivered to adolescent and pediatric patients according to the wishes of physicians and acting as a liaison between treatment staff and patient’s schools. In the meantime I’ve been going through the dreaded PhD application process.

However, for a myriad of both idealistic and economic reasons, I’m finding the field of psychology not to be the path I originally hoped it to be. As I re-assess why I chose psychology and how I’ve grown since that time, I find that my passions at the end of the day lie within teaching and learning from individuals of different cultures more-so than working in a lab. I live for those little “aha!” moments of understanding you share with students from backgrounds very different from your own, as well as being able to learn as much from them as they do from you. (I also thrive from being a fish out of water and dread reverse-culture shock much more than culture shock itself).

Recently, some friends from my time abroad have encouraged me to look into the world of international teaching, and I find that it hits my passions in all the right places. However, I’m unsure how to go about getting my feet wet. I was an ALT in Japan, and would be happy to return there, but ultimately I have no particular inclination as far as what population I would prefer to be working with. Certainly, traveling is also a great opportunity (who doesn’t love traveling?) but what’s more important to me is cross-cultural communication, and I’d be open to pursuing a career stateside teaching diverse populations as well. Looking into local programs (I live in a major city in the Midwest) I’ve found a 12~15 month program from a reputable university which would allow me to both earn a masters in primary education and a teaching license for my state. I’m most interested in teaching primary education and subjects such as English, literature, history, and ESL. However, I don’t find teaching in this city particularly appealing, as there is not a great deal of ethnic stratification (for example, the ESL market is non-existent and first and second generation immigrant students are fairly rare). Likewise, I’m looking into other teaching programs, and I’ve found George Mason’s program (formerly known as FASTTRAIN) to be tantalizing. However, being new to this world, I have no idea how much such programs actually prepare you for teaching international populations, as well as how marketable they make you in the real world/what the chances are of finding a job post-graduation (It also seems difficult trying to find numbers as far as how much such programs would run me). I want a program that is going to prepare me to succeed in this profession, but I also already have 35k in student loans to pay off from my undergrad and I’m not sure how much more would be viable to borrow in anticipation of becoming a teacher.

If anyone has any suggestions for me, I would greatly appreciate it. I could certainly go more in depth about different factors of my current situation, but I felt as though I already wrote enough David Copperfield-ing it. I’m willing to take risks in order to make my ambitions a reality (i.e. moving to a different city, take a road less traveled), I just don’t want to find myself graduating with a ton of debt which I can’t pay off with a teacher’s salary.

Thank you so much for the help!