Qsi off the beaten track...

[Teachermama]

Hey there. I would be super grateful if anyone who has worked at any of the qsi schools in places other than china and the Stans could give me any info on what the schools are like and what it is like to live there.
Also how often any of the smaller schools have positions that one can transfer into. Either here or on email bobstherooster@yahoo.com

Places like Benin, Dili, Skopje, Montenegro, Haiphong, Eastern Europe... Hearsay from colleagues is welcome too! :).

Thanks in advance!

[heyteach]

A good friend adores Bratislava the town and the excellent travel opportunities available.

[Teachermama]

Thanks heyteach. Bratislava would be great for us for a number of reasons so good to hear that people are happy there. Nt that anyone has offered us a job anywhere, but I feellike the more we know about places we would be happy going, the more we can focus our search.

[National]

FYI -- Many QSI schools off the beaten track have very small numbers and many do not have high school. Skopje in Macedonia and Dili in East Timor both have eliminated their high schools. Just something to keep in mind. You can see what their offerings are on each school's website (linked to from qsi.org).

[heyteach]

National makes a good point. My friend's school was quite small and he was teaching three subjects (one way outside his experience and training); I think he was coaching as well.

[Danda]

Like some people have already mentioned, many of the schools in remote locations have very few students. QSI handles this by either not offering a secondary program or spreading their secondary teachers very thin and providing a bare bones secondary program. Sometimes this means that one teacher will teach all literature, writing and history classes for every class from 7th to 12th grade. Another one will teach all science and math for 7th to 12th grade. It really isn’t an ideal setting for a secondary teacher. Some of the elementary teachers may also teach multiple age sets but nowhere near as many as the secondary teachers.

No matter what size school you teach at I would expect to teach many different subjects as a secondary teacher and some of those may be out of your certification or even comfort zone. I taught at one of the larger schools and taught 3 different subjects but all of them in my area of certification. I currently teach at a smaller school and have taught as many as 5 different subjects in a year with 2 of those being outside of my general area.

As a secondary teacher, I would never consider teaching at a QSI school of less than 150 kids because I don’t want to have to teach such a wide age range and so many different subjects. I enjoy actually teaching and the solution to these huge loads tends to be unit packets and no whole-class instruction. You basically have a group of kids working completely on their own. That to me sounds so lame. Plus, you’d have to cover the coaching and activities load.

Also, I wouldn’t get your heart set on Bratislava. It is one of the most desirable locations in all of QSI – in my opinion the best location in Europe. Usually people that get offered jobs there have been with QSI for a while. It also seems to have pretty low turnover compared to other locations. I’m sure there are exceptions to this though. I’ve also heard from a friend that because Slovakia is an expensive place for QSI to employ foreigners the workload there is very high compared to most other QSI schools (they need to get their money’s worth).

[Teachermama]

Thanks Danda. That is all really great information. I figured that Bratislava was probably one of the more popular locales. It just jumped out of the list at me because we have close family friends who are Slovakian and live there.