Teaching Abroad is a wonderful experience that I recommend to anyone who loves to travel and loves education. It is a once in a lifetime experience filled with rich experiences and new self-discoveries. However, along with all of the good, there can be hiccups along the way. Today I will share My 8 Survival Tips for Teaching Abroad.
1. Be Flexible
Depending on which country you move to, you may or may not encounter a lot of differences in how your country operates. But either way there will be changes. I learned early on to be flexible and patient. As an American I am used to efficiency, fast pacing, and convenient methods of handling business. Here, in Colombia everything is significantly slower, non-efficient, and completely and utterly inconvenient.
Paying bills, broken ATM machines, getting maintenance to fix things in my apartment, and inconsistent WIFI were my number one struggles. It took a few weeks/months to learn how to fix these issues but being flexible helped me not to let the issues stress me out. I learned to pay bills like the locals without credit or bank accounts (at the grocery store), I learned to very, very, very patiently wait for items to get fixed, and I started to do non-WIFI required activities.
If your new country is anything like mine. First, recognizing this fact makes all the difference. Remind yourself you’re in a different country and there will be differences. Then relax, and focus on what you can control or better yet release control all together and learn how the locals make do.
As fellow San Franciscan, Bruce Lee say’s “be like water my friend”.
2. Remember Your Best Teaching Practices
When joining a new team at a new school, change is inevitable. In order to have successful collaboration we have to be open to new curriculum, ideas, and teaching expectations. Through these adjustments it’s easy to lose sight of our own teaching style. Without our own teaching style we may miss opportunities to make authentic connections with our students. We need these connections to create a trusting learning environment.
So my advice is definitely follow the new expectations, the new curriculum, and be collaborative-but always remember your own best practices. Best practices are the teaching strategies you learned, that work, and you’ve witnessed the results in your past experience.
Your best practices will keep you grounded in your classroom and allow you to make authentic connections with your students. In addition, your best practices will reveal your passion for teaching and ultimately positively impact student learning.
It is important to stay true to you. So much around you will be different. You and your students cannot afford for you to compromise your teaching and their learning to appease others. Make a list of your best practices immediately and put them somewhere where you can refer to them often.
You were hired for a reason. Your presence makes a difference. Show up daily for your students and lean on your best practices.
3. Create a Work/Life balance
Adjusting to a new country, school, and team can be a lot. It is easy to find your first few months consumed with work both at school and at home. My word of advice is to pick a time and make a to-do list. Pick a time when you will stop working and thinking about work; then create a to-do list or brain dump of everything you want/need to do for the next day or week and leave it on the page.
So many changes occur in the process of preparing to live abroad and then actually living abroad. It is so important to honor and give space to the impact change has on us. In order to do that, we have to create balance.
4. Invest in the Culture
Choosing to live abroad means you will inevitably be immersed into a new culture. But you decide how much you’ll invest in it. What do I mean by invest? I mean taking the time to learn the language, customs, traditions, eat the food, and learn about the community you live in and serve.
Living abroad for some is a lifestyle and for others it’s just for a few years. Either way time is so precious, the memories you’ll create investing in another culture are priceless.
5. Create A Self-Grounding Routine
It is so important to create grounding routines. Being in a new place means a lot of changes and self discoveries. A grounding routine is anything that supports your peace, calm and helps bring you back to center. A grounding routine could include morning meditation, daily exercise, a consistent yoga practice, or journaling. I promise you these routines will be your saving grace after a long day, when missing home, or when in need of self-care.
6. Reconnect to Your WHY and a lot more questions….
First, it’s super important to know your WHY. Which means you have some questions to ask yourself like:
- Who are you?
- What do you stand for?
- What are your values?
- Why did you become an educator?
- Why did you choose to teach abroad?
- What do you want from the experience?
Having answers to these questions will anchor and guide you through your abroad experience. As you begin to adjust and even change in your new country and new school, revisiting these questions and your answers will reconnect you to your passion and purpose.
7. Travel and Explore
First, make a bucket list of everything you want to do in your new country. Then once you feel settled or have your first school break begin checking off your list. I highly recommend using Pinterest to help create a board or get ideas for your bucket list. They are full of great tips to help with travel plans. Also, consult with the locals, ask what tours or locations they recommend you visiting.
The memories you make exploring your new country and surrounding countries will be priceless. I truly believe as we explore new external places the more we are pushed to explore within ourselves. So cheers to self discovery and travel.
8. Build Community Outside of School
Teaching abroad communities tend to blur the lines of work and personal. When groups of foreign teachers gather it’s easy to gravitate to each other and next thing you know you’re only socializing with foreigners and not with the community you moved to teach and learn from. So with that said, get uncomfortable…yes more uncomfortable. Go to restaurants, cafes, and shopping alone. Use these opportunities to meet new people, practice the language, and observe how your new home interacts. I recommend doing this with your neighbors, local grocery stores, and markets first. Soon enough you will make friendly acquaintances that will make the once strange place feel more like home.
So that’s it, these are my top 8 tips for not just surviving but thriving in international teaching. Stay tuned for more tips. In the meantime please, let me know what resonated with you in the comments below.
You can find me on Instagram: @ms.cleverly.beverly
