Larson - Miss teacher international

Miss TEACHERINTERNATIO NAL :

THE SINGLE WOMANS GUIDE TO HERFIRST TEACHING CONTRACT OVERSEAS

Jessica Marie

Smashwords

Mexico City, Mexico

Copyright 2014 by JessicaMarie.

All rights reserved. No part ofthis publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted inany form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, orother electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior writtenpermission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotationsembodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial usespermitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to thepublisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at theaddress below.

Jessica Marie/Smashwords

35 Toledo

Ciudad de Mexico, 06600

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Miss Teacher International/Jessica Larson. 1st ed.

ISBN 978-0-0000000-0-0

Recognize 1

Landing Your First Contract 7

After You Have Signed 13

Est-Ce Que Tu Parles? 19

The School 23

Your Roomie 27

Oh The Expats You Will Be 33

Finances 43

Health and Safety 45

Be Prepared to Lose It 49

Get Spiritual 55

You Are Going To Get Lonely 57

Dating 61

Sex 65

Discover Hidden Talents 67

A Little Pessimism Goes A Long Way 71

Do Not Quit After One Year 77

Visiting Home 81

Finishing Your Contract 85

Now What? 89

To my mother, Pamela Ann, forinsisting that I go

All Journeys Have SecretDestinations Of Which The Traveler Is Unaware.

MARTIN BUBER

RECOGNIZE

This book is for you if there isobviously something very different about you. Maybe you have had asimilar experience like me in that most of your friends and familycommend you on your desire to travel, but also think that you arecrazy. Or, perhaps, you have just recently graduated from collegeand again, like me, know that you were not ready to justsettle down into the American 9-5 quite yet. I am sure thatthere are even some of you who have taught a few, or even severalyears in the public school system and are already ready to get out.Well, whatever it is I would like to congratulate you on boldlystepping out and venturing off to where few woman have gone before.As a woman of recent generations you have opportunities that ourgrandmothers, and most of our mothers did not have. Instead ofracing off (or being expected) to get married, have children andmove into the white picket fence house in the suburbs, you aregoing against tradition to do something far better, which is toactually live. (Dont get me wrong. Kids, husbands and whitepicket fences are fabulous, but there is plenty of time for thatdown the road right?)

There is a huge, amazing world out there justwaiting for you to discover, and something inside you already knowsthis. Whether you went to China on a family trip a few years ago,studied abroad in college, or just always knew that you wanted totravel, the end result is the same. Something about thoseexperiences has made you not only want to do it again, but to do itlonger. Even though traveling to a foreign country is verydifferent from living in one (and anybody who has reallydone both knows what I mean), you are the type of woman who is upfor the challenge!

This whole traveling and wanting to liveabroad thing may be so obvious that you cannot even containyourself. Or, it may be that it is so subtle, like it was for me,that you really do not know, or can even explain why.

My Experience

I actually hated to travel. First of all, Iwas scared to death of flying (even after hundreds of times I amstill a bit weary). Second of all, I had always had very closerelationships with my family and friends too. In fact, for most ofmy travels I only looked forward to going there, because Icould start counting down the days until I would be comingback! So why did I do it then? Like I said before, my desireto travel was just something that I knew. I knew thattraveling would be the best thing that I could ever afford myselfbeing a single woman in my twenties who was not ready to settledown. Besides, have you ever spent the evening drinking red wine onthe lawn in front of the Eiffel tower at dusk? Have you ever beeninvited into the warm home of a Mexican national to the bestdancing, conversation and food that you could ever imagine? Haveyou ever dared to go horseback riding in the Andes (even though youare deathly afraid of heights and horses) in South America? Well. Ihave, and I suppose it was the thrill of such magical moments (thatmost people only dream about or see on T.V) that were responsiblefor making me come back for more. It was chasing the high of thenext big trip to the pyramids in Cairo or off to see the Lion Kingin London that kept me traveling year after year as I went back andforth until one day, I took the big plunge, and decided to not onlygo again, but to go for good.

This is a big deal. Whether you already havea teaching job, or are abandoning the big job search on the homefront altogether, you will be leaving behind quite the cushyopportunity called employment which equals benefits, stablepaychecks and even tenure (soon to be obsolete so get it while youcan like my father once said). Yet, do I think you should let thisstop you? Not in a million years! After all, you and I both knowthat there is something in you that is telling, if not screaming atyou to get out and see the world while you still can. So with thatthere is only one thing left to do; start packing!

The information in this book should be readwith caution if

• You are a single male. Although you can feel free toread this book (in a weird way I kind-of hope that you do), theinformation provided in this book is assuming that you are, like Iwas, a single female. I do not think it would be fair, evenin this day and age to assume that a single man would have the sameexperience. I just do not know enough about this interestingspecies called man to even go there!

• You are planning on going abroad as a teachingcouple. Couples seem to have had their own very unique experience.In fact, it would be very interesting if one of them were to writea book about how their first year teaching abroad affected themseparately, and as a couple. Off the top of my head, I noticed howgoing internationally brought some couples closer, but tore otherscompletely apart.

• You plan on going overseas without a teachinglicense. Securing employment overseas is a whole other beast(literally) if you do not have a teaching license. Although it ispossible to get a teaching position internationally without ateaching license, I think that the experiences between licensed andnon-licensed overseas teachers are very different. Non-licensedteachers tend to only be able to get contracts in small, privatelanguage schools (not big name international schools), get paid alot less, and have less benefits. Non-Licensed teachers are usuallynot allowed to attend job fairs (unless they are, lets just say,about to be finishing up their student teaching or something) andcan usually only find jobs from postings on websites like DavesESL caf. I just do not know enough about how it has been fornon-licensed teachers to write about it. If you are serious aboutlanding a good job overseas, and possibly making a career out ofthis, I would strongly suggest getting an actual teaching licensefirst.

This book is not yet for recentcollege graduates who have teaching licenses, but no experience.Most, if not all, serious recruitment agencies (certainly the onesI mention in this book) often require at least two years teachingexperience before being accepted. Oddly enough, I have since runinto a few colleagues who claim that they were allowed to attend ajob fair, or who were even recruited through a recruitment agencythat did not have the required two years teaching experience. Theseindividuals however, were not the norm.