After four years of trying we are finally becoming expats… international teaching here we come!

What’s my Australian family of four doing this July? We’re moving to West Africa! What a crazy sentence to write. And I can hear many of you saying… “you’re doing what now?”. Well, it’s true and its happening. Once I sell everything I own and travel 40 hours down the east coast of Australia that is…… then, I can finally say that I am an international educator.

I want to share the story of how I was inspired to become an international educator. Like so many who embark on this life it was a ‘who you know’ or ‘who you speak to’ kind of scenario. My cousin — through marriage — and I had become close because we were both Drama teachers. She was working at an exceptional State school in Australia that tested the latest educational trends and through this school she had found out about the International sector of education. She used the international agency Search Associates and secured a position in Vilnius, Lithuania.

It took us another year or so to be ready to follow in her footsteps but I too decided to sign up Search Associates and take the leap into International teaching. Unfortunately, a pandemic got in the way of my first attempt to embark on this adventure and it took us a few years to re-group and try again.

I actually wasn’t sure we would ever try again as we had moved States in Australia; bought a house and had enrolled the kids in an excellent school. However, fate intervened in the form of my cousin returning from Lithuania — for the first time since before the pandemic. I drove 4 hours to catch up with her for one afternoon. As we chatted I felt myself being re-inspired by the possibilities that international teaching presented and when I got home I said to my husband — “what do you think about trying this teaching overseas thing again?”.

So we began again …

I actually blame my mum or even my grandparents for planting the seed of living overseas. My mother was born in Papua New Guinea — as an expat. Her father was based there as a pilot and his first 3 children were born there. My mum lived there until she was 8 and began her schooling there.

She used to tell us the most fabulous tales of playing with the locals, story time with her Aya, falling down poo-pits (an event she is lucky to have survived I might add because the other children were so afraid of getting into trouble that they didn’t report the accident and she treaded.. well ‘poo’ .. for a few hours until her mother stormed the houses of her friends and shook them until they admitted where she was. They mounted a rescue and got her out. She was smelly and tired but otherwise fine).

Her stories of growing up an expat (their 2nd posting was Nauru) and living in different places excited and inspired me. My husband also spent two years of his childhood in Malaysia — the child of Airforce parents — and I am similarly intrigued by the photos and stories of his time there.

It is an experience that I think I always longed for. My childhood escape was imagining that I was a princess from a foreign land who had been kidnapped to be raised on a farm in Queensland, Australia. I think I wished my childhood had been more exciting and that I had been able to do more travelling. I didn’t leave Australia until I was 21 — under my own steam.

So, when I discovered that there was a way to transplant my career and my family overseas I was hooked. I was fascinated by the different types of curriculum, the far flung locations of schools, I used to look up schools on maps in the most far flung and exotic locations — picturing what life would be like there.

I knew that to make this dream a reality for my family and I we would need a decent expat package so I concentrated my efforts on areas of the world that had a decent savings potential and guaranteed fee-free places for both my children.

I was drawn to places that I already knew or had travelled to. SE Asia was high on my list — as I had travelled both Thailand and Malaysia and I had driven past an international school in Vanuatu — which I also applied to directly. However, I was surprised by just how competitive the international sector was to get into. This drove me to learn everything I could to nail a job.

I asked my cousin in Lithuania to send me lists of educational innovations she was training in or reading about so I could investigate them also. I doubled down and signed up with the international agencies of Search Associates and what was then ISS-Schrole — to increase my chances. I cleared my calendar around the next Australian Search Associates Fair and in readiness I studied every piece of information about the fair, its processes and the schools attending.

The Search Associates fair in Jan of 2020, Melbourne, Australia was absolutely incredible. There were 60 schools, over 300 candidates and an incredible buzz across a 3 day interview bonanza. I interviewed with at least ten schools and proceeded to second interviews with many. I was offered jobs on the spot, pressured by HR in elevators to accept contracts and ultimately I selected a school in China that offered me the chance to return to a Leadership position in the Arts with a fantastic package.

Then… a … pandemic … broke out.

By mid-2020 we had sold most of our furniture, I had quit my job and I was sitting amongst boxes with two children who had to be home-schooled at what was the beginning of a new school year in China (northern hemisphere calendar schools begin in late July/early Aug); grappling with a 3 hour time difference; teaching through a computer; managing a team (some of whom were stuck in other parts of the world); writing curriculum for a school/children I had never met and battling with the Chinese Embassy in Melbourne over delayed visa’s.

In the end I did this for 6 months and then the school terminated my contract and I was paid out as an ‘educational consultant’ — as wages cannot be paid outside of China. I have no hard feelings. It was no-ones fault. And, I was grateful for their support all the way up to the bittersweet end.

We rallied and tried again — during the pandemic — this time securing a job through ISS-Schrole in northern China this time. However, once again delays began and the school and I quickly decided to pre-emptively end our association so they could concentrate on trying to find a local hire and I could try to find a way to sticky tape my life back together again.

Melbourne, Australia — as you might know — had some of the strictest lockdowns in the world so it was an incredibly stressful, albeit safe location to see out a pandemic. However, we had really itchy feet by this time. There was a lull in 2021 whereby the Queensland borders opened (if you haven’t been to Queensland imagine a hot place 20 hours north of Melbourne with some great beaches!) so we jumped on a plane and booked a kid-friendly resort for a few days. We had a brilliant few days and then Queensland issued a snap lockdown. We tried to look on the bright side — this was our first lockdown with a beach! However, we had had enough and I began googling for options to ‘get out’ of lockdowns.

I discovered that North Queensland (which had borne the pandemic well) was paying to relocate teachers from Melbourne and that housing was affordable. So, we made a snap decision and applied. We were accepted immediately (#teachershortage). So, we flew back to Melbourne, told our families, packed up our lives and jumped back on a plane whilst the borders were still open. Except…. they closed whilst we were in the air.

We were met at the Townsville airport by Queensland police who promptly escorted us back to Brisbane (capital of Queensland — 20 hours south of Townsville) under guard and installed us in a quarantine hotel for 14 days.

14 days with two children in a hotel room! How did we do it? By this stage I think we were just grateful for the peace. We were well looked after, well fed (I think they must have had an Indian chef because we had some brilliant curries), we could order in (hello evening donut order and what now? Dan Murphy’s delivers? Bring it on!), we concentrated on our fitness (daily 1 hour exercise routines) and lovely friends and family sent care packages filled with games, puzzles and colouring in - which kept us amused for hours.

We emerged two weeks later (slightly calmer and fatter) and were flown back to North Queensland. We bought a house, got jobs and put the kids into a fabulous school. However, I discovered that pursuing my career in middle leadership was exceptionally difficult in the smaller towns (which by comparison were the size of my municipality back in Melbourne). There just weren’t enough schools or enough movement of staff in the positions I was after. So, I ended up living and working in a town 1.5 hours away from my family and coming home on the weekends. After 18 months of this we were done. Our family life was strained, my husband was struggling doing it solo and I missed them all terribly. So, we made the decision to move back to Melbourne, however, fate intervened and an offer to work in an international school presented itself (more on this later).

So, here we are, contracts are signed, visa’s have been delivered, flights are booked and we are staring down the barrel of exactly 31 days until we board a plane to Abuja, Nigeria in West Africa!

We know that this will be a HUGE change for our family and that there are bound to be adjustment challenges. However, after four years of working to make this a reality — we are ready! Stay tuned for my next instalment as the 30 day countdown looms closer.

#internationaleducators #expats #thirdculturekids #crossculturalkids #africa