I have a lot of questions, but am not sure if you can answer them all here.

- Is it a good place for a childfree teaching couple that wants to save money and live comfortably?

- They say schools in Latin America are pretty chill in terms of work/life balance. Same for Colombia?

- My SO and I are both English teachers in different stages of our careers - he's been doing middle management for a while, while I have mixed English/EAL experience. If my SO got a job in Colombia, would I find a job easily?

- Any general tips on landing a job there? I've heard good things.

- Are there any bad things about living in Colombia?

Thanks!

In my limited experience, drinking among international school teachers is associated with places where you make lots of money but there's not much to do. This can make dry countries really bad for people managing a drinking problem, IMO.

The country where teachers had the least destructive drinking habits, in my experience, was Romania. It's not that people didn't drink, it's that there was a lot of social mixing between Romanians and expats, and Romanians tend to have a Latin/Mediterranean attitude toward drinking that is a lot less destructive than cultures that binge drink.

Chances are, 2nd tier British schools in high demand areas won't mind hiring Americans with teaching certs and experience. However, due to national educational policy changes in the UK more and more British teachers are getting fed up and working abroad. At the end of the day, a school is reasonable to hire the candidate with curriculum experience over the one without, assuming all other factors are the same. Curriculum knowledge as a qualification is a vicious cycle: schools don't really want to hire someone without curriculum experience, but you can't get curriculum experience without being hired. Less popular schools in less popular locations are more likely to bend this rule.

If you've been browsing the websites of British international schools, you'll probably notice that many run dual curricula, usually IGCSEs in the first half of upper secondary school and IB Diplomas for the second half. As a result, having IB experience could make you look more attractive to many British international schools.

@Nomad68

If the head teacher in question works at an international school, s/he is either woefully ignorant or lying to your face. There are local schools that hire ITs - maybe these visa requirements apply to them, but not ISs?

After two years in the US, see if you can get work in a top tier school in East Asia. Many international schools, especially in top tiers, have formal and informal connections with other international schools in their region. This makes it a lot easier to network your way into the job you really want - just make sure you don't piss off anyone in admin while you're in that school, as the connected-ness can work against you in that case.

My significant other is feeling a bit burnt out. We both think it would be good for him to take a year off to decompress, and possibly write or get his MA. However, we're worried that this could seriously damage his career prospects. Will it? Does it help to "spin" the time off as a sabbatical or will employers assume that he's some sort of slacker or suspect him of ghosting a reference?

Jerudong International School in Brunei hires teachers with dependents pretty regularly. Although, due to the fact Brunei is a very conservative country, getting a legit visa for a male trailing spouse is difficult - if that's your situation.

I worked at a school that tried to sack a teacher because she had to take a lot of time off to deal with a serious illness. She complained to her embassy. The next day the management told her it was all a "misunderstanding".

Not sure if this will work for all cases, but it's worth a shot, especially if you're teaching at a school connected to your nationality/national curriculum.

I have worked at such a school in Eastern Europe. I will never, ever work at one again. It would be one thing if members of the movement were on the board and hired staff who were competent and qualified regardless of background, but this is not the case. Senior management was entirely made up of Turkish Gulenites; these two qualities seemed more important for leadership than actual competence or qualifications.

Lots of teachers were Turkish Gulenities - some were good, most were terrible. They once had our English department train a Turkish English teacher whose English was so bad he asked me to repeat myself, an English teacher and native English speaker when I said, "Hi, I'm coin_operated, how are you?". When he attempted to teach a bottom set KS3 class the students were correcting his grammar. There was a Turkish teacher of the local language who would just let the kids do whatever he wanted while he stood awkwardly in the corner... But these teachers are never really sacked; if a teacher received enough complaints they were just moved to another Gulen school...

There was a constant low-level hostility between the Turkish staff and the foreign staff. This place had the lowest employee morale of anywhere I've worked. The management style was all about shows of power and authority and trying to swindle everything they could out of the (non-Turkish) teaching staff.

At best, you'll get an okay Tier 2 school where you'll be okay if you keep your head down and focus on the kids. At worst you'll get a terrible school with an administration that really screws you over. You'll have to do research on the individual school to suss it out.

If they're not showing you a contract until you get to Turkey, it's possibly because the contract is terrible. They may think that you'll accept whatever terms the contract has once you've moved your life to Turkey, because you can't be bothered to fly elsewhere, apply for a new job, etc.

I wouldn't trust them if I were you. If they try to screw you over before you even start working, imagine how it must be like to actually work for them...

@MartElla

Assuming an applicant is from a first world English-speaking country, experience with a school's curriculum trumps the applicant's nationality, in my experience. If you have IB experience and everything else is good, there's no reason why a British school or an American school with an IB curriculum would refuse to hire you.

Moving here. Having a bit of trouble figuring out what the dress code is supposed to be for women. All I've heard so far is that shorts (for women, obvs) is taboo, and to "use your common sense". Would anyone care to enlighten me? Are there any places (yacht club, certain housing complexes) where I can expect attitudes toward this sort of thing to be relaxed? What about swimwear?

My SO and I love Romania, and find Bucharest very comfortable place to live. Just don't go expecting something "like Budapest" (because the names sound similar, they must have similar architecture, right? *eyeroll*).

However we're not working for the fabulous school that doles out cars to teachers. If you do not get a position at that particular school everyone here is talking about, your work experience will probably be "meh" to bad: unpleasant, incompetent management, decent but not fabulous compensation (is cash in hand okay?), limited room for career progression, kids who are spoiled, unmotivated, and protected from negative repercussions of their actions, etc. Some ITs are fine with this stuff, but at my school in particular the teacher morale was very low indeed.

We're relocating at the end of this term to a place that lacks the livability of Romania to a higher-tier school with better compensation and career progression opportunities. We'll miss Romania though (even ugly little Bucharest) and will keep tabs on schools in Romania to see if any start to get their poop in a group.