Thanks all for the responses! And I want to take a moment to say big thank you for volunteering your time to answer questions on this forum from folks like myself. With every post you really are helping others and making a positive impact to the online community with your honest feedback so keep doing what you’re doing!

Reading the responses there seemed to be a good mix of positive and negative. Out of the positive side, I noticed there seemed to be more folks who had a teaching background teaching in the US or UK before going international. From that perspective, I completely understand as I know many teachers in the US who have it rough. Something else that struck me was the issue of ageism in teaching. This was another factor in my decision to investigate teaching because in the technology world this is an issue as well. On my technology projects I rarely see anyone in their 50s unless they are senior directors. Unlike technology, I thought teaching was a profession where the older more experienced folks would be more valuable.

After consideration – I think I will stick with my current situation for now. At its peak, corporate world really does become insanely busy, but at the same time, there are days where I am way ahead schedule and I can take a breather. Just like teaching, it seems to just be luck about what situation, role, and employer you happen to fall into. All in all, both professions might actually even out from a busy-ness perspective, in which case it would be silly to take 4x less money. Plus I do enjoy what I do, I’m not dreading going to work every day. I try to make those around me happy and myself happy in turn. I know some folks who get into a 24x7 churn every year no matter what client or role they accept. In that situation I completely understand looking into a change, but for me that has not been the case so far. I do feel teaching would be more meaningful. Slaving away for a corporate mission objective that really has no meaningful impact on society, and in many cases can even be said to be doing more harm than good, is the one thing I don’t like about my line of work. The indirect consequences. So I’ve always had a great admiration for those in education. Plus I still do have opportunities to travel and potentially get into a position where my language abilities are a big asset in the international business world.

Hi all,

I am currently working as a project management consultant for one of the Big 4 accounting firms. The pay is great and I like what I do. Only thing is, outside of work I would like to have more time to do other things - side projects, play music, learn languages, family, etc. I also think education would be more meaningful as a profession. We are an international family (wife and 2 kids). I speak fluent Chinese as I went to a university in China to receive a degree in Chinese and worked in China for 4 years (also consulting). I am currently at intermediate level Japanese and working hard everyday to improve. My wife worked a few years in the international school systems as a Chinese teacher in China and US and she suggested that I consider switching to international school teacher in order to have more time to do the things that I want. We would be interested in the Asia Pacific region only. If something worth pursuing, I can spend the next 3 years or so preparing for the switch.

Has anyone ever switched from a busy consulting or much higher paying corporate job to become an international school teacher? What has your experience been like? Positive, negative, neutral? Regrets? I’ve been looking on the forums and I do see a lot of folks complaining about Asian country schools overworking teachers. But this is contradictory to what I saw of the international school teachers in China at least. I would also be curious as to overworked means to you.

Appreciate any help!!

Thanks,
J