My Perspective on Teaching Internationally — Black Edition (1/9)

Teaching internationally is a wonderful experience with distinct ups and downs but the downs can be navigated or even avoided with appropriate planning. The decision to move abroad will likely lead to the greatest growth during your life and teaching career and such a step should be taken with full consideration.

If you are looking for a community of teachers in preparation for an international role, or are interested in connecting with those who are, please join our LinkedIn community to support teachers investigating their next opportunity: BAME International Teachers Support Network (Free Resources).

Within my own experiences, there was greater growth in the two years of my first international placement, both as a human being and as a teacher, than in the previous 5 years at a state school in the UK. I am still teaching internationally today and have experience in international schools in China and Germany, alongside working at a French international school in London. I hope to weave my experiences into the following articles to support other's planning and journeys. Though I have experienced some of the harshest racism, xenophobia, prejudice, and isolation during this journey, I firmly believe that with appropriate guidance this does not need to be the case for everyone.

I started my international teaching career after 5 years of teaching in the UK. I was looking for a fresh start, a new challenge and life experiences that I had been dreaming about since I was young. I grew up with a father who frequently took on work contracts abroad and our family travelled frequently with uncles and aunts based in the US, Caribbean, and various European countries. The idea of travel was something deeply embedded in me.

Through our travels, I saw the ways my family adapted to new scenarios and opportunities. The steps they took to enjoy and explore while also ensuring we were always safe. Their ability to code-switch[1] based on their experiences with diverse groups of people stood out to me; the conscious ability to ensure you are understood by people by respecting the ways that they communicate is one of the characteristics which I believe makes a successful teacher.

When originally looking for teaching work abroad, I was more focused on the idea of being somewhere new and exploring a new way of life. I wanted to avoid the surface-level learning and generalising you do through holidays and come back with a new perspective. But today reflecting on my green-thumbed naivety and rose-tinted glasses, I will be the first to admit that I did not do enough research.

Unfortunately, nearly all the authors of literature I read online and the people I spoke to about teaching abroad were middle-aged white men and women. My BAME[2] colleagues had either not travelled or had specifically gone to places they shared a language or culture with. Though there is a growing collection of BAME teachers who have worked abroad outside of their cultural networks, within my social network at the time, I only knew one and he was of the mindset of ‘just go for it’.

My white friends and colleagues spoke richly about expat communities, weird food, women, cheap living, massages, and being the richest people in town. The accounts were always positive, and I was somewhat blinded by the pervasive concept that, ‘it’s easy to make your life out there similar to your life here’.

Although I didn’t realise it at the time, the accounts reflected experiences that are not always readily accessed by members of the BAME communities. Often living in or with access to some version of a diaspora to access foods, beauty products, cultural events from our community, we will not always find that depending on where we go in the world. Yet I perceived myself without the label of BAME, I was simply going to be an ‘international teacher’ and let this thought dull my research and allowed me to follow the most popular resources and advice which patently was not written for me.

I began to seek out recruitment agencies and the guidance they shared only reinforced what I had heard. The sales pitch accounts of people’s experiences and smiling pictures with foreign students and local wonders made it seem that the only real things to worry about were;

• Liking the local food (but you can always go to restaurants for foriegners/expats)
• Adapting to local customs (but having your own driver and staying within your compound/expat community will protect you)
• Learning the local language (but, again, having a driver and staying within the expat community will make this largely unnecessary)
• Dealing with currency and currency exchanges (but you’re contextually so rich and there is like no tax so who cares)
• Being homesick (tough it out or fly home regularly).

So, as you can imagine, once I travelled abroad, I experienced several challenges which no one had mentioned. I have ultimately had a fantastic time teaching internationally and continue to do so today. I hope that many more BAME teachers can enter this space which sorely needs them and I want to support this happening safely.

By sharing some of what I have learned with teachers who may be considering their first international roles may there be more success internationally in the BAME community.

Despite some of the serious and deep challenges that will be discussed, teaching abroad is definitely something you should look into if it interests you and I am confident that it will be a life-changing experience. But, as with all things, good planning and being informed will help you to be more successful than if you were not.

As a precursor to the subsequent articles, I want to draw attention to the language used; this article will refer to dominant or common cultures but will never and does not ever seek to generalise whole populations on the basis of their ethnicity or culture. I will discuss elements of cultures and attitudes which may present challenges to BAME teachers while acknowledging that a culture being present, or even dominant, in a country does NOT mean that EVERY person from there aligns with those ideas.

I have chosen not to speak specifically about the challenges regarding LGBTQ+ community members as it is not an area of personal experience nor is my voice appropriate to speak for those communities — but many of the general points and strategies covered in the following articles will have some contextualised value to all minority groups including the LGBTQ+ community.

I hope you enjoy the articles!

· Abstract

1. Introduction: My Perspective on Teaching Internationally — Black Edition

2. Introduction: Why You Should Teach Internationally — Black Edition

3. How to Secure an International Teaching Job — Black Edition

4. Safety Checks: How to Research the Locale of your International Teaching Opportunity — Black Edition

5. Three Reasons Why International Teachers Quit and How to Buck the Trend — Black Edition

6. Navigating the Expat Community as an International Teacher — Black Edition

7. How I Used Dating Apps to Find Companionship as an International Teacher — Black Edition

8. For the Money or for the Experience? The Moral Dilemma of International Teaching — Black Edition

9. International Teaching; It’s Okay to Say No — Black Edition

[1] Code-switching refers to using different dialects, accents, or variations of a language in order to best communicate with different groups of people. A simple example is the different language you might use when at a staff party compared to a party with your closest friends. In teaching, this may be the ability to speak in a way that is best understood by your students or even your school leadership, to support getting your point across.

[2] Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic. For the purposes of these articles, I have opted to use the term BAME in order to encompass the people who are most greatly affected by the challenges addressed. I also use terms such as ‘global majority’ and ‘people of colour’ but for the sake of familiarity in a British context and the focus on the experiences of people whose teaching careers have been situated in Europe and the West where White Caucasian is the majority, I felt that BAME was most applicable. Not all people identify with this label and I do not see it as the definitive or only option but it is my chosen term for this context.