The International Schools Review Forum

Greetings Everyone,

This may be slightly outside the scope of the forum; however, I'm wondering if anyone knows of a person with specific international teaching expertise willing to do (paid) career counseling/consulting? Basically, I'm looking for someone that would give an honest appraisal of my application materials, what schools I should legitimately target, breaking into better schools, etc.

Thank you!

Sure, Search Associates (SA) and International School Service (ISS) register, pay your $200 (avg.) fee and your associate/counselor will answer (hopefully)l all your questions and give you plenty of feedback, and you get 3/2 years of jobs database access and access to recruiting fairs on top of that. Youd pay about the same for a couple hours of time with a consultant anyway, without the other benefits.
Avoid executive or career counselors who have a business or corporate background, what works in business doesnt work in IE.

The free option is you could post your questions and C.V. for the forum and have us take a look at it.

You will find lots of people to take your money but no one can tell you what any one admin is going to prefer on any particular given day when your application comes across their desk/screen. The real secret is that you need to be a bauble head with significant time of successful teaching on the IE circuit with good scores/performance and strong references, without having cancer, being too old, a minority, or too big a family, and then go to a fair.

Yeah, I know it sounds obvious. However, Search hasn't been much help, and I am a bit squeamish to post my CV on a public forum. I should utilize past supervisors, I just hate asking for favors. I should get over it, I guess.

You got one of the dead beat associates, sorry to hear that. You can always go to the Search page of consultants and send an email to another associate who might be more "helpful".

You dont have to post details actually, we dont need to know your name or where exactly you went to school (Ivy/non Ivy will be fine). We only need to know where youve worked and what tier school it is, your degrees, certifications, family situation, and any thing else thats NOT identifying you want to tell us. What have you done up until know and where do you want to be.

If you still want a private look and not get ripped off, Id direct you to the Career Services Center at the University of Northern Iowa, you can email them at:

overseas.placement@uni.edu

Theyve pre-advised people before in consideration of their fair, and they know at least know our field better then a general career consulting organization.

Very helpful and gracious, PsyGuy, thank you!

All good recommendations! Don't shy away from having a supervisor or mentor teacher look as well. I did exactly that and it paid off indeed. Both supervisors were more than happy to assist and it cost me a couple of lunches and postage for thank you notes. Both gave valuable input from formatting to verbage.

As long as it doesnt cost you anything (or much) theres little wrong with having a supervisor review your resume. You can always disregard their advice. The problem I have seen is that public/municipal/regulated school admins dont understand IE.

PsyGuy wrote:

what works in business doesnt work in IE.
>

i wish that was the norm! but i've been seeing the opposite lately... maybe some elements don't work.

but i would second psyguy - if you're gonna jump in, go with one of those 2. i've done search in the past but didn't really need to use my associate, though he seemed willing to help if needed...

v.

@vandsmith

Many elements dont work. In the business/corporate world you have budgets, reports, projects, titles (promotions) and quantifiable achievements. ITs dont have anyone that reports to them, we supervise young people. We dont manage budgets except for a few hundred dollars for a classroom budget. We dont manage projects (such as an advertising campaign/account), we get our students through the day with learning as much as they can. We dont have any promotions or advancement except for out of the classroom (we dont have "Junior teacher, Senior teacher, and Chief teacher), so we dont have a lot of means of reporting milestones in our professional development. If your an exit level course teacher the closest you have to the corporate world to demonstrate success is your students external assessment scores, but that doesnt help a primary teacher or lower secondary teacher. Most of the measurements you have are those you created yourself. Whereas in business you have sales, revenue, market share and many other metrics to demonstrate value.

Being a successful IT is about being likable, do your students and parents like you enough to keep your job? Do your admins like you enough they would hire you again, or they consider it a loss you left? Thats about it.