The International Schools Review Forum

Hello all. I am new here, and have never taught overseas. I am a secondary teacher in Arizona, endorsed to teach History and, if I pass the exam in Jan, English. I have 3 years of experience. My problem is thus: I have not taught for the last 2 years, and I have lost contact with some of my references. They moved on from the schools they were at and I do not have any current information as to their whereabouts and can not reach them. The school districts won't say if they know where they are. Confidentiality and all. I do have 3 or 4 good references, but only 1 principal. The others are 2 instructional supervisors and a school psychologist. I know that ISS's stringent reference requirements would preclude me, from how I read them. I think Search should be ok; I just need to track down a parent reference. Doable. Is this going to be a problem? Appreciate anyone's input. Please corect me if I am wrong in any of my assumptions. Thank you.

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I used the term "instructional supervisor" to refer to what one district called an "instructional coach" and the other district called an "instuctional specialist". They would do multiple observations throughout the year, offer advise and guidance about instructional strategies and techniques, and just be an expert mentor. I am open to other recruiting companies and fairs, and very open to just applying directly and interviewing with skype. Just trying to find the best route. Also worried because I have a wife and a teenage daughter. Don't want to stack the deck too much against my favor.

I'll put a second in for UNI. Especially for a first year overseas teacher. More teacher-friendly- Supts have to interview you. I also think, IMHO, schools at UNI are more apt to hire a first year teacher.

Better overall experience.... Been there twice.

Wouldn't sweat the recc's. I went with one from a summer camp I worked. I would make sure your reference contacts are in order though. Schools did call those.

I took a look at UNI's website. It is just discouraging to see so much made of the difficulty of getting a position with dependents. Their site said 95% of all teachers getting job offers are ones that are either single with no dependents or a married teaching couple. Then I have read on this forum of all these exceptions to this rule. One strategy is, I guess, to wait until the summer and schools get desperate to fill open positions, then they might be more willing to take someone with dependents. But, then again, these might not be the jobs one would want. But beggers can't be choosers.

I'll jump on that UNI bandwagon as well. I think that you will find that they are just being upfront with you, but will still work to support your job search. We applied to ISS one year and a month or so after mailing all our info to them we got the info back with a thanks but no thanks letter attached. We have three children. A year or two later we still had three children and we attended the UNI job fair for the first time, warnings and all and managed to talk our way into an interview and from there into a job. Six years later, the same thing happened. I wouldn't let the number of children schools desire discourage you but you need to go into the process with your eyes open, realizing that more than 2 kids is a roadblock for many schools.