always learning

When I tell people back home in the US that I’m teaching in Thailand, they usually assume I teach English to Thai children. When I try to explain by saying “no, I teach at an international school”, I’m often met with a blank stare.

Understandable enough – before moving overseas, I never realized that there was a network of English-speaking American (or Canadian, Australian/New Zealand or British) curriculum schools all around the world. I have now worked at three international schools in three countries – Germany, Malaysia, and Thailand – and I often receive questions about where I work and how to start working overseas.

So, I thought I’d share some very basic information about this type of school for those who aren’t familiar with them.

What is an international school?

International schools are private schools serving mostly expatriate children (diplomats, multinational corporation executives, NGO staff), and usually some local families (that can afford the steep tuition). Student population is usually diverse, with students from many different countries. Most schools offer grades PK – 12 (ages 5 – 18), but some are restricted to high school or primary school, depending on the needs of the population.

International schools usually choose to follow a curriculum model from the US, UK, Canada or Australia/New Zealand. Sometimes you can tell by the name of the school (like the American School of Dubai) but others are more ambiguous (like the International School Bangkok). Still others choose to pull from all different curriculum options, finding the mix that best suits their student population.

Many international schools also choose to run the International Baccalaureate program, which consists of the IB Primary Years Program, IB Middle Years Program and the IB Diploma Program. Schools which run all three are referred to as IB World Schools. Usually students from international schools attend top universities around the world due to the high quality of their education, advanced placement and/or IGCSE course offerings, and test preparation (for US universities).

The language of instruction is usually English, but you can often find German, French, Japanese or other international-style schools in major capital cities as well. There is usually at least one international school in the major cities of every country in the world. Here in Bangkok we have over 90 “international” schools, although, as I will explain later, some are less international than others.

International schools are usually affiliated with other schools in their region by the following associations:

• CoIS: Council of International Schools
• ECIS: European Council of International Schools
• EARCOS: East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools
• NESA: Near East South Asia Association of Schools
• AASSA: Association of American Schools in South America
• MAIS: Mediterranean Association of International Schools

What are the differences between schools?

Every international school (with a few exceptions) is its own entity. Even though I’m using the term “network” here, they aren’t really connected to each other. What might be common practice in one school could be unheard of in another.

One of the biggest differences between international schools is their management/ownership. There are really two types of schools: non-profit, board governed schools and privately owned (usually for-profit) schools. It’s well worth checking in detail which kind of school you’re investigating as the management/ownership can have a huge impact on educational practices within the school.

It’s also worth noting that schools labeled “international,” “American,”etc, are not always such. It’s common practice in many countries (especially developing countries) to label privately owned, for-profit schools, “international” to secure native-English speaking teachers and to provide a high standard of education to local (usually wealthy) children. Although these schools often do provide a more international-style education, the student body is not usually as diverse as you would find in true international schools.

Who are the teachers at these schools?

Teachers in international schools are very diverse, as schools often make an effort to hire a mix of nationalities and ages. Most are native English speakers, but certainly not all. You will find teachers who have been overseas almost their entire career working alongside teachers who spent many years teaching in their home country before choosing to move abroad.

Interestingly, schools usually prefer teaching couples, where both spouses work at the same school, so it is quite common to be working with families where both parents are your colleagues and their children are your students. This helps build a close community, ensures that teachers have some stability in their lives (moving to a new country is stressful), and provides the most economic method of hiring and employing foreigners.

Teacher contracts are usually for 2 years initially, and then will be renewed on a year-by-year basis (though some also renew for two years). It’s fairly common to stay at a school for just two years, although plenty choose to stay much longer.

How do teachers get jobs in international schools?

This is rapidly changing as both Rhonda and Jeff have explained so well (so I won’t do it all over again). It’s worth noting that the “traditional” method of finding a job is still effective, and may be the best choice for teachers new to the international school network.

In the past, the majority of teachers would be hired at a job fair, the two major fair operators are International School Services and Search Associates (also COIS operates a fair as well as UNI and several others). Each company provides pre-screening for potential employers by requiring a detailed application process (plus fee). The companies then provide detailed listings of available jobs via a database. Finally, they organize “job fairs” in several locations around the world beginning in early January (usually Bangkok, Dubai, London, NY/Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia – but the locations change year by year).

The job fair is an intense experience, usually resulting in an emotional rollercoaster from moment to moment. You can walk in on the first day expecting to land a job in one region of the world, and walk out on the third day heading to an entirely different country (or, sometimes, without a job at all). Julie and Clay shared their ups and downs from the Bangkok fairs this year – so many of those points could have easily described my experiences at past fairs as well.

Most of these schools operate entirely independent of each other (though there are a few that are connected), so getting hired at one school does not ensure that you’ll be hired at another. Each school is privately owned and operated and some are more highly respected than others, so it’s worth investigating a school’s reputation before accepting an offer. However, it’s also worth noting that many school directors, principals and teachers move from school to school, bringing their previous connections with them.

What are the benefits of working in international schools?

The main benefit of teaching at an international school is going to work every day in a diverse and stimulating foreign cultural environment, with the chance to explore new places during every holiday break. As if the travel were not enough, there are tons of additional benefits to teaching overseas.

For starters, the less developed a country is, the more benefits schools usually offer, including: free (often furnished) housing, utilities paid for by the school, free tuition for children of teachers, annual flights to your home of record, shipping allowance, transportation allowance, Cost of Living Allowance (COLA), and local taxes paid for by the school.

Most schools offer comprehensive health insurance, transportation at the beginning and end of your contract, and a professional development fund. All of these benefits vary widely, usually dependent on the location of the school (for example, most schools in Italy offer a limited benefits package because so many people want to live there).

On the professional side, most international schools are very learning focused and provide extensive professional development for teachers, expectations are usually high, as is support for teachers. These schools are usually very well resourced in terms of both technology needs and teaching supplies and resources.

Of course, all of this is very general and should not be viewed as fact for every international school. This is just my opinion/perception of teaching overseas and working in international schools after 9 years abroad.

What other questions do you have about international schools? International school teachers, what did I miss in my basic overview here?

This weekend I discovered TweetDeck and I am totally in love! (Yes, I am late to the party with this one @JavaJive, Jeff showed it to me ages ago, but better late than never, right?).

As you may know, I am obsessively organized (often mocked for the obscene amount of folders I have for storing old e-mails) so the fact that I can actually organize my twitter friends is just about the best thing since sliced bread. All weekend, I’ve been categorizing and organizing all my twitter friends into convenient groupings – so much easier to follow what I want to follow, instead of just what rises to the top!

One of my fun new groups is “International Teachers.” I had been following quite a few teachers that I know personally, but being able to categorize them in TweetDeck has helped me find dozens more just this weekend – and now they’re all nicely organized into my “International Teachers” group, so when they post something new, I notice right away.

I love connecting with international school teachers, because even though our day-to-day experiences may be very different, we all share the common bond of teaching overseas, our schools are often very similar, and it’s amazing the number of times we will cross paths during our careers – despite the fact that we may currently be on opposite sides of the planet!

In an amazing coincidence, I woke up this morning (far too early, I might add), to see that Lucy and Vicki had found TwittGroups, a way to create groups of Twitterers with a common interest (Lucy started one for Apple Distinguished Educators Worldwide and Vicki started one for Teachers).

I figured this would be a great way to find even more international school teachers, so I created a group for us! I’m not so sure how this works yet, but even if it just ends up being an opt-in listing of international school teachers, this would be a great way to connect and find more international colleagues in one central place. Please, join!

I’m also curious about international school teachers that are blogging. I’ve been organizing (of course) my Google Reader account as well, and I have an “international teachers” folder that I’d love to add more feeds to – I just need to find them!

It’s amazing to see how we’re all connected – despite being so widely spread across the globe – connecting with one international school teacher in one city begins an amazing chain reaction of so many others in that city, and then their connections around the world. I love it!

Is there a central place where I can find a listing of international school teachers who are blogging? If not, anyone want to share some links in the comments here? I’ll be sure to write a follow up post with links to all the bloggers and twitterers that share! What a great way to connect with our fellow international school teachers!

Update: I just had a brainwave! I’ve been wanting to try out Google Forms for a while, so I just made one for international school teachers to share their blog and twitter info. If you’d like to be listed, please fill out the form here and check for the results here. Looking forward to connecting with even more international school teachers!

Amongst the Flags by thadman

My wonderful new teaching partner, Tara, and I have had a number of conversations about a recent trend I’ve seen within my personal learning network to remove the word “technology” from our discussions about teaching and learning in a digital world (see, there! I just did it!).

We’ve developed all sorts of phrasing and terminology that seem to deliberately avoid using the word technology: 21st century, integration, eLearning, school 2.0, mLearning, digital literacy, etc. In fact, we seem to be coming up with words to describe what we’re doing with technology much faster than the general teaching population can catch on.

How many teachers in your school know what the term “21st century literacy” (or any of the above terms) means? I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that it’s not too many people.

It seems that we’re developing this terminology for several reasons (in my opinion):

• We don’t want it to be all about the technology – of course, that’s the change we’re talking about, but it’s still all about the learning, right?
• We don’t want to scare teachers off – and we all know “technology” can be scary, so let’s just take it out of the conversation.
• We want to avoid the “oh I’m not responsible for teaching technology” phenomenon, we want to make it clear that teaching these skills are everyone’s responsibility. If you teach safety with scissors and safety with strangers, you should also be teaching safety online.

But here are the problems:

• We seem to go through these terms quicker than anyone else can catch up, coining phrases and dropping them, saying they are passe already. To the general teaching population, I’m not sure that’s true. We’re just making it harder and harder for teachers to stay current by moving faster and faster in our shared language about teaching and learning.
• If the terminology is too vague or not transparent enough, it’s easy to say “I’m already doing that” – even when you’re not doing it in the way that reflects new methods of learning. What teacher doesn’t work on communication or collaboration or creating in class?

I believe we are all technology teachers because of the very fact that technology is so tightly woven into the fabric of our society, but does everyone feel that way? And if they don’t, are we helping them build their understanding of that reality if we’re constantly removing the critical facet of the terms and then changing them so quickly? I think it’s great to have online discussions about terminology, but I’m wondering about the link between the philosophical debates educators might have among themselves, and then bringing something useful back to the institutions we work in.

And here’s the thing, in the end, what we’re asking teachers to do is different than what they’re already doing. Even though I believe digital/visual/media literacy is just literacy, and even though I would love if every teacher understood that shift, the reality is that is not the case. So, we do need a commonly understood label or a term or a name that will help teachers understand that we are asking for different teaching and learning experiences. We are expecting changes in the classroom that reflect the changes in society.

So, how can we ask them to make changes if we’re not describing that change in our everyday language? Is there a way we can find some terminology that both represents this constantly changing learning landscape, but also is meaningful for our colleagues that aren’t as involved in the world of educational technology?

What do you think?

One of the most interesting aspects of my job is figuring out how to best support teachers – everyone is at a different comfort and experience level with technology, and most are uncomfortable admitting what they don’t know. Building individual relationships with new colleagues, as well as getting to know team, department and faculty dynamics are a critical factor to my success as a 21st Century Literacy Specialist (or as a Technology Facilitator, for that matter).

Over the past few weeks, one thing has really stood out for me: Just like I believe I need to get to know a class and their teacher when working on a collaborative project, getting to know the team is essential to deeper, more authentic and appropriate support, for both the curricular needs and the needs of the individual teachers on the team.

Towards the end of last year I realized that I was able to make connections with a number of individual staff members, and therefore help shift those teachers through projects at every grade level. But, I realized I still wasn’t starting the shift with any groups of teachers.  Most of the teachers were at different grade levels and didn’t regularly cross paths with the other teachers I was working with. The momentum was with individuals only.

As powerful as that momentum had been, I started to realize that teachers truly appreciate support and common goals with their team. If they can try something new with their team members, they have a built-in support structure that fits easily into their daily practice of teaching and learning that also conveniently slots right into the existing infrastructure of the school. Plus the added benefits of a safety-net: everyone participates, everyone helps, everyone agrees that this is the path to take. Convenience, comfort and accessibility are all be strong benefits to working through the process as a team.

So, this year I started my quest to find a team at ISB that would allow me to be a mostly-silent, but always willing to help, member. Luckily the wonderful and welcoming grade 4 team allowed me to join, sit in on their weekly team meetings, and offer my two cents when appropriate. It has truly been a valuable learning experience.

Working with an entire team has helped me understand each individual member of the team better through their interactions with others. I also have a deeper understanding of their needs for curricular support, as well as the challenges they are facing in their classrooms. I hope that, by being there for them, they also see me as a productive and contributing member of their team. I try to offer ideas that will streamline their daily tasks, help engage their students, and add a digital literacy component to their units of study.

One of the most powerful experiences has been over the past week and a half while the team has been discussing their current social studies unit, Influence. The team had previously decided on their Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions, but were not sure how they wanted to assess student learning.

As a member of the team, I was part of all of the discussions about how the unit went last year, struggles and successes, ideas for improvement, concerns and how it all fits into the bigger picture of student learning in grade four. Because I had all of that background, I was able to share an idea for a final assessment that (hopefully) will meet the needs for this unit, adding in a 21st century-style approach, and also take into consideration time factors, other units of study that need to be completed, technical resources, and teacher and student comfort level with technology tools.

Without being a participant in all of those discussions I would have only had a one-sided view of the need at hand, and certainly would not have been able to put the curricular needs of the unit into the context of the entire grade level. Just stepping in to offer my ideas for a quick 10-minute discussion once in a while would not have prepared me to truly meet the needs of the team. I have also been able to spend dedicated time with some of the team members and our Curriculum Coordinator to fully flesh out this unit so that it meets the needs of the teachers and the students. Now this unit will be part of the grade 4 curriculum for years to come.

To truly collaborate with teachers, I am starting to believe that we, as resource people, need to be part of their team environment. I can certainly work individually with teachers to help them with their specific classroom needs, but to make any major shifts in the thinking of the school or to effect change in the curriculum, the collaboration needs to come at the team level.

What do you think? How are you best supporting your teams or departments at your school?

Move Over Clematis by neon.mamcita
Seedling from twenty-questions

Woo hoo! Only one week to go before I head out to Shanghai with Chrissy and Tara for the amazing Learning 2.008 conference! Check out the fantastic line-up of presenters:

I’ve basically been looking forward to this conference since the day I left Shanghai last year, so I’m a little bit over excited. I love getting to meet and see my virtual friends face to face, and I can’t think of a better way to spend a long weekend than talking with them (and all the new friends I’m sure I’ll make) about learning in the 21st century.

Plus, I get the added bonus of presenting three sessions (along with my amazing international school colleagues Julie Lindsay, Tod Baker, and of course, Jeff Utecht)!

Thankfully, my presentations are (finally) pretty much finished and ready to go, but I would love to get some feedback. I’ve made an effort to create them with a presentation zen attitude, so they will not be as meaningful without my narration (I definitely need to learn how to create a slidecast next). I can’t believe how different and how much more engaging my slides look with less text and pictures that bleed off the edge – a huge thanks to Jeff for loaning me the book!

Please take a look and let me know what you think:

What do you think? Am I missing anything?

Eureka! I think I’ve got it! Thanks to all of your fantastic feedback on my previous posts, I realized that the Collaboration Continuum I started this weekend isn’t really a continuum at all – it’s a cycle:

To me, the cycle idea makes much more sense than a continuum. For starters, I really didn’t like the idea that teachers would feel that they should be at one end of the continuum – the pressure to “figure out” where you are on the path and how you compare to others is just too tempting (and intimidating).  I also didn’t like the visual impression that it was a finite process, appearing as if once you make it to the mentoring stage you’re done.

So, I went back to the drawing board, and came up with the concept of a cycle.

I love the fact that there’s no definite beginning or end, which acknowledges the fact that all teachers come to a school with different history and different needs. Not everyone will need to start with “full collaboration” when they come to ISB because they might have already done something like that at a previous school.

I also like the idea that the cycle builds in a support infrastructure for continuing this process indefinitely – once a teacher has been through the process and reaches the mentoring stage, s/he will go on to be a fully collaborative with another teacher who’s ready on their team, and then that teacher will do the same for another member of the team. This way the learning and experience of one teacher turn into the learning and experience of many – especially important in international schools where we tend to have lots of staff turnover.

What do you think? Is this better? More approachable and less intimidating to staff? Any other ideas for improvement?

Just out of curiosity, could/would you use this at your school? Do you have someone who could be responsible for implementing this process and begin the collaboration cycle with a group of willing teachers?