I'd stay clear of ISHMC - they had a mass exodus of teachers leaving last year. It's turned into a very for-profit organization.

NIST is not top tier; it's 2nd tier.

JIS is good but pretty far away from everything. I spoke to a teacher there once and she said it takes 2-3 hours to get downtown.

ISKL takes a lot of startup money once hired (look at reviews for details).

At my previous school in China, I had a total of 7 sick days per year.

Good schools will give you time (usually 3-5 days) to go to a recruiting fair, and won't penalize you for it. I told my administrator last year; he said he'd let me go, but I would have to give up 5 of my sick days.

If the school won't give you the time off to go to a fair and refuses to give you a reference, I'd say you're making the right decision in getting away from that school.

I set it up before I headed out, but now I don't think it really matters. Playing Netflix will work, but your internet connection needs to be strong. Forget about doing it in China - even with a fast internet connection, the GFW makes surfing very slow.

And yes, you should be able to set up Astrill in the US and she can use it in KL - you just need to give her the user/pw.

There is a fee for joyjobs as well. I'll second Tie Online - I joined that one as well as Search and probably got 5 interviews from it.

The problem you're going to have is that schools will be very reluctant to hire you because you are not certified. So you need to look at 3rd tier schools who are desperate. What subject matter do you teach? What is your degree in? If it's math or science, then you might be able to get something.

Or you can just start looking at the websites for international schools - there are loads in China - and start looking for openings.

Astrill VPN is good - it's what I used and never had any problems.

10000 RMB is crap unless you are doing EFL work. What school is this?

The visa does take a month - that's no bullshit. There's nothing you can do about that.

Xian - I would never live there. It's out in the middle of nowhere so traveling to other parts of China will be difficult and expensive.

Stay away - it's very for-profit and the admins are useless.

Besides flights, your children are taking up free spaces in the classroom that the school could otherwise charge for. Many schools limit the number of spots they have for each year group, and if your kids are not paying tuition, then the school has to eat that loss. There are also visa expenses which the school normally pays for, along with bigger housing (which you mention) that has to be provided.

Schools are not usually anti-family, but if you are not a highly experienced (and I mean IB experienced) teaching couple, then the better schools are not going to hire you. All schools need to make a profit (even the non-profit ones) and without many years of IB experience (6+) you are too expensive a hire.

I'll go ahead and echo what others have already said - you have no chance. The school you mentioned might have told you that you were a finalist, but they were most likely lying to you or just being nice. With four kids, you are just too expensive to hire, especially without certification. My advice is to get certified (both of you) and apply in a few years. But even then, you will be looking at lower tier schools because you have four kids. You're better off staying where you are.

You've got a long way to go with many obstacles in your way.

Your degree in Philosophy is almost useless. You can't really teach humanities - you're looking at TOK (Theory of Knowledge) and most schools do not employ a teacher just to teach TOK.

First and foremost you need to get certification. If you have enough units you are probably looking at history and maybe English. A certification in Philosophy will be useless.

Because your certification is not an in-demand area, after you get your certification you will most likely have to go to an undesirable location to get your 2-3 years of IB experience. That means mainland China, ME, or any country with -stan at the end. After that then schools will start to look at you, provided you have no dependents and you're a good teacher.

Because you are not a native speaker, getting a school to hire you as an English teacher may be difficult. I think it probably depends on the school and how you come off in an interview, but if you look at it from the school's perspective (parents paying up to $30,000 for their kid to go to the school), then they will probably go for the native speaker to teach the kids English.

There are many MANY people who have been in the same place as you - they go to Thailand, fall in love with the country, and decide they want to stay there forever, so they go home and get certified in the hopes that they'll get hired by a great international school in Thailand. Most of the time it doesn't happen. Thailand is a VERY competitive country for international school teachers, and very few schools (especially good ones) will hire someone right out of teacher's college. Sorry to paint such a bleak picture, but like I said, you've got a long way to go.

Doing your field work in a hagwon is useless. You will learn nothing and come away with zero resources. Hagwons are money-making machines that normally have 100% turnover every year. None of them will be accredited, and it's rare that you'll find a certified teacher working for such institutions.

It's a small school. Honestly I'm surprised they pay that much. It's down one of the sois near Victory Monument - I remember looking at a few apartments around that area and I walked past the school. Most of the students are Thai.

I'm at a 3rd tier school and they gave me training my first month. But that was it - nothing else no matter how much I asked for it. They gave new teachers training this year but most of it was online, which in my opinion is fairly useless.

I do know that earlier this year they wanted all of PYP to do training onsite, but told them that they had to sign for another 2 years. Everyone refused and the admin quickly backed down.

My advice would be to wait out your two year contract and then leave for another school where you get regular training, or see if you can make some kind of deal with the school - like if the school pays for the IB training then you'll pay for the flights/hotel - I know teachers who have done this, although it's still costly, but when you're in a very for-profit school then your options for training are limited.