cdmxpaisa wrote:

> 1) I did teacher ready and then switched my (now expired) FL license to
> Wash St to avoid renewing FL license and to get a license that wont expire.

Sorry, unrelated to your question about China, but will you please let me know the process of how you transferred your license to non-expiring Washington State. I would love to do the same.

Thank you!

I appreciate everyone’s input. It does help.

Thank you, Psy!
Both schools are legit and have decent reviews here. The packages are okay….definitely not as comprehensive as I would like to see in the future. The IB school has had a DP program for about 7 years (based on ibo.org). I’m not interested in teaching above grade 8 though.

We’ll see what happens with the offers. There are still a couple of unknown’s that I want to clarify with both schools. I also want to do a bit more investigating of employee turnover and overall stability before making a decision.

Hello,
I have an opportunity to get some IB experience. I’ve never worked at an IB school. I also don’t have any IB training, but the school promised to pay for some classes.
This will be a new contract and I can pick PYP or MYP (both jobs are opening up).

If I continue with Common Core, I will get about 25% more pay for the next 2-year contract.

Both schools are lower tier 2.

I’m very curious about IB and reading about it never does justice compared to practicing it.

What about the future carrier possibilities? In your opinion, is it worth taking a pay cut for 2 years to get IB experience? I hope to stay within Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Asia geographic area.

I love teaching both age groups (elementary and middle school). Is one of more value than the other in the job market when it comes to IB?

Thank you!

fine dude wrote:
> A good friend of mine accepted a middle leader position at a charter school
> in North Carolina last year and the family is quite happy with the
> decision.

Makes sense for the family to be happy. Wonder if the friend is.

Well, well, well...the lovely customer care lady at the NJ DOE who answered the phone this time (instead of the nasty guy we used to get) came through on her promise to email the license examiner, and my wife now has her NJ certification.

I just wanted to update this and thank everyone for your replies!

P.S. The process can take 5-6 months now.

it’s interesting to observe what’s happening with several schools where some of my friends work in Asian countries that went on a serious lockdown. A couple of schools are asking their teachers to renew contracts now (mid October).
I’m just wondering how in the world these schools are not even considering that this may encourage contract breaking when the teachers see much better opportunities during the peak season.

Does anyone expect for the job market (from the teachers’ perspective) to worsen in 2023-24 school year compared to the upcoming school year?
Of course it’s hard to predict the pandemic situation, but from the worsening situation between the West and China.
Some of my colleagues are trying to decide whether to accept financial incentives from their schools early on and to commit to one more year or to try and go somewhere else while they can.
They also think that it’s awfully quiet this year. I’m not experienced enough to know.

Thank you very much @Sid and @PsyGuy!

You have been very helpful to me and to many people on this forum.

Yes, wife doesn’t quiet meet the requirement for the current state, even though she’d had lots of teaching experience prior to receiving the license. We jumped on a very good opportunity to teach abroad before she met the state requirement and hoped we could easily transfer to NJ, but didn’t realize it was going to take this long. Our fault.

We’re definitely going to give it a few more weeks before freezing. Called them last night and got a nice customer service lady for the first time who said she was going to contact the license examiner to see why it’s taking so long. Hopefully, something will move soon.

Thank you for responding, muguet!
It's good to know that they didn't give you any more hard time, other than making your communication with them worthless.

The guy who picks up the phone over there thinks really highly of himself.

Can anyone chip in about my wife's certificate becoming non-active but still valid?

While we have a few more weeks left to give NJ a chance, we don't want to wait too long and for the certificate to not be valid anymore.

Hello,
My wife and I are teaching in SE Asia. Her elementary teaching certificate expires at the end of November. She's been trying to transfer it to NJ, but they are taking forever to do it, and we applied for this transfer several months ago.

We tried to contact them several times, and they just kept telling us that we had to wait longer but are not telling us why. It's so unprofessional and just as bad of a bureaucratic situation as in any (not the 1st world) country.

What can she do?

Her current state DOE offers freezing it. They sent us a sample of what it looks like. The header of the certificate states that it is "valid" for 50 years, but there's a note towards the bottom of the certificate that states that the status is in "non-practicing" status. It's followed by this sentence:

"While in non-practicing status, the certificate remains valid with validity preserved. The certificate will be placed back into practicing status if and when the certificate holder returns to practice." The state's DOE says that they don't recognize teaching abroad.

Do you think my wife will have issues with getting work visas/employment if she freezes her certificate (in case if NJ doesn't come through in the next few weeks)?

We're getting really nervous about this and can't believe NJ is already taking 5 months to process the paperwork.

Thank you for any help or advice!

Thank you everyone for your responses!
There was quite a bit of development happening in the last few weeks and I landed a teaching job. I plan to focus on getting experience for now and revisit getting a Master's in the near future.
DaZhu, I'm glad that you find a Master's in TESOL useful in teaching ESL. It was my main reason for considering one.
It does make sense to get some experience first though.
I certainly appreciate all the good advice here.

@PsyGuy - Thank you! Yes, it all depends on a variety of scenarios. I have done as much research as I could about both schools.

I have very little teaching experience, but I'm very upfront about it with the schools' administration.

Last week I was notified that the position at the established school did not open up after all. The teacher who was leaving decided to stay.
I guess I'm going with the new school after all. The good thing is that the person who ran the sister school for several years is now moving to the new campus and several teachers are moving to the new campus from the sister campus as well.

Either way, I'm looking forward to living in Asia and thank you all again for your replies!

@Heliotrope and @Sid,
Thank you for responding! My logic tells me the same since I really want to have some support of experienced colleagues when I need it.

Thank you Sid!

What you said definitely makes sense.

Does it change anything if the brand new school is part of a small chain of schools and already has a running sister school in the same city? What attracted me about the new school is a couple of people I met who will be working there in the next school year.

The principal at the established IS sounded a bit stiff, but it maybe a good thing.