What to Expect When You…Teach At An International School

In our podcast and other pages, we’ve discussed why someone might want to teach at an international school. However, we often read others’ ideas about teaching internationally or are asked if we travel all the time or relax (such as going to the beach when we lived in the Dominican or hiking when we lived in Korea). It isn’t always peaches. To teach at an international school means you’re working in a full-time position. Here, we’ll talk briefly about the day-to-day and overall lifestyle expectations.

Teaching at an International School – The Day-to-Day Grind

We are often asked what it’s like to live in a foreign country and teach at a school there. It’s a lot like working at any school anywhere. From a day-to-day perspective, let’s examine the pros and cons of teaching at an international school.

The Upsides When You Teach at an International School

Teaching at an international school has many advantages, including contact hours, prep periods, support, and more. However, these advantages are not necessarily present at every school, as each has its own culture.

Work Day

Everywhere we’ve taught internationally, schools generally run from 7:30 to 3:30 (give or take 30 minutes). Unlike teaching English overseas, you’re not working weird hours with no combination of maybe 20-hour or 80 work weeks. Speaking with people back home or who are curious, there can often be a disconnect between what a day of international teaching is actually like. In many respects, your day will look like it would back in your home country, though some schools impose more, such as after-school activities.

Preps

One of the upsides of teaching at an international school is that you’re likely to get more preps (less contact time) as a teacher, at least compared to many US public schools. International schools often tend to have greater access to resources (physical, not necessarily other teachers). For me, this has meant less contact time and more time, in theory, to plan and grade.

Our contact time is about 21 hours a week, or about 4 hours daily. Considering our contractual hours with students are 7:50-2:30, 4 hours per day (sometimes less, sometimes more) is pretty great. I am guaranteed at least an hour daily to catch up on work. As I peruse the International Teachers sub on Reddit, I see more of the same. Average contact hours range from around 14 to around 24. Remember, this is entirely dependent on the country and school. This can be a significant drop compared to the US, where teachers might have 30+ hours of contact time.

Student Support

Due to their location and student and parent populations, most international schools are far less likely to have students with special needs. This is changing as more schools add programs like speech therapy or focus on Response to Intervention (RTI) and Multi-Tiered Student Support (MTSS). As private schools, international schools can often add student support positions and sometimes have multiple student support specialists per division. This means that there are fewer high-needs students, so those who do need extra help usually receive it from those in student support. This can tell you that you are able, as a teacher, to focus on differentiating your student learning to support students in all ranges.

Commutes

We’ll comment on this, but it will depend highly on the city and the school’s location in the town. Like any big city, you might have an absolute bear of a commute if you want to live in the thick of it. However, many schools also have housing near and/or on campus, meaning you’ll have little to no commute! The downside is that it can be difficult to set and maintain boundaries between work and home.

Bringing Work Home

On average, how much work you do at home depends on your school, as it would in the US. If you teach at an international school and it’s a top-tier school, you may find it necessary to bring home more work (read more about international school tiers). However, many schools and administrators also realize that one of the main reasons you’re living abroad is to explore. We’ve had many administrators who strongly advocate for creating a solid teacher-work-life balance. This doesn’t mean you don’t do anything ever at home; you’re a teacher first, but it means there can be more understanding if you choose not to take work home or come in on the weekends.

We rarely take work home these days. Yes, sometimes we need to finish reports or get some grading done. Overall, however, we have found support from our schools in maintaining that work-life balance.

There are, however, some downsides to your everyday life at an international school.

The Downsides When You Teach at an International School

Not everything is all glitz and glam at an international school. There are many benefits when you teach at an international school (check out our post – Why You Should Teach Abroad for more info), but within the day-to-day grind, there are some downsides, too.

Work Days, Hours, & Preps

While contact days and contracted work days don’t generally differ from back home, you may find yourself with some differences. After-school activities are the norm at many international schools. Some schools will require teachers to hold these (I’ve worked at a school where we essentially had to do four each week). Other schools might need one a term or quarter, while others may offer to pay each participating teacher. Either way, you should be prepared to do an after-school activity, just in case. Previous experience running after-school activities, supervising clubs, etc., can also help you show in interviews how you may contribute to the school community beyond classroom or subject matter duties.

While you should not have a workday any longer than you would at home, you might. With a top-tier school, you’ll unlikely work, at least contractually, longer than you might at home. However, with other schools, you never know.

Not all of us can work for a tier-one school. There are schools whose contract hours typically run until 4:30 pm. Others might go until 5. Occasionally, schools might ask you to work Saturdays, which is a big red flag. An occasional Saturday might happen as well, depending on the school. Some schools, especially boarding schools, might ask teachers to handle residency duties. These often occur at night and can be a massive drag for teachers, especially if you weren’t expecting such responsibilities.

While you’ll typically have more preps, better resources, and a manageable workday, you might still encounter problems, such as getting a sub.

Getting a Sub

Living and working in your home country means plenty (usually) of substitute or supply teachers are likely available. This may not be the case, depending on where you live and work internationally. Often, schools have a list of possible supply teachers, including the occasional parent, but you may also be asked to cover for other teachers’ absences. This is certainly something that happens back home, but it can still occur abroad. Be prepared to have to cover another teacher’s class and, consequently, have fewer prep periods available.

Student Support

As mentioned above, many international schools do not have students who need the types of support that you’ll find in the US. However, you might still come across schools whose students need extra support. While student support in international schools is increasing overall, it can still be lacking. This could be an individualized student need or something more prevalent, such as students who need English language support. Whatever the case, you may find the support you need unavailable.

Bringing Work Home

We mentioned above that working at home is highly dependent on your school. Unfortunately, some international schools feel they have to uphold some exceptionally high standards, which means weighing down teachers with extra work or expecting them to be “on the clock” and far beyond what they might be used to. This could mean more after-work activities, weekend workdays, longer working hours, or assigning teachers more work. It’s not always glam and travel in the international school world.

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Teach at an International School – The Bigger Picture

Beyond the day-to-day aspects of teaching at an international school, there are several bigger-picture items you need to consider. Some of these are good, some are bad, and some are in the eye of the beholder. Let’s look at a year or even years-long picture when you teach at an international school.

Professional Development

Professional development at many international schools can be significant! This doesn’t necessarily mean that all in-house professional development will be good; instead, the opportunities for PD are usually plentiful. Schools often allot a stipend for teachers to attend different professional development (see International School Salaries).

Along with what is frequently substantial (in quantity, not necessarily quality) in-house professional development, when you teach at an international school, you also have the opportunity to travel to new countries for PD. Maybe you live in Thailand and get to attend an IB training in Singapore. Perhaps you’re in Dubai and get to head to Muscat, Oman, for training on NGSS. Whatever the case, opportunities abound for significant professional development in unique places when you teach at an international school.

Curricula & Standards

Curriculum is an exciting topic when you consider international schools. Any school worth its salt will have a curriculum, and most will have set standards (e.g., Common Core, AERO, etc.). However, some factors can make understanding or working with these curricula and standards more difficult.

Unlike in the US, curriculums aren’t mandated by the government similarly. Many countries have specific requirements about what is taught, usually about the host country’s language, culture, or religion, but that’s about it. Schools are generally free to choose which curriculums they follow or how strictly they might adhere to them. This means that while your school will almost certainly have a curriculum, there might be instances where it isn’t documented anywhere. This can be especially tricky for new staff who come in hoping to know what they will need to teach. Many teachers often resort to looking up content and ideas for their programs of study in the classroom.

Another contributing factor to non-standard curricula or learning standards is staff turnover. Unlike teachers in their home countries, international school teachers (and admin/leadership) move more frequently. The average (anecdotal evidence here!) tenure for most international schools probably runs anywhere from 2-6 years. This means the curriculum can quickly change between classes and grade levels. Not every school requires teachers to leave behind outlined units or lessons; not every teacher would do so even if they had to. Remember how we mentioned that much of the material gets created from scratch? This is one possible reason for this. A.I. can be your friend here!

Overall, the curriculum when you teach at an international school can vary from place to place and even year to year. This might mean more work in building something from the ground up, but it can also mean a bit more flexibility on what exactly you get to teach!

The Lifestyle When You Teach at an International School

Again, one question we often ask is our lives outside of school. Are we able to travel or enjoy our time? And the answer is a resounding YES! However, like many aspects of teaching abroad, this can and is entirely dependent on location, school, and package. If you’re curious about what often goes into a salary when you teach at an international school, we will cover that in our post, the breakdown of international school salaries.

Travel

One of the biggest, if not the biggest, perks of teaching abroad is the ability to travel. We cover the many reasons “why you should teach at an international school,” but here we’ll dig into the logistics of traveling while teaching.

Your breaks at an international school aren’t wildly different from those back home. This means a winter break (often three weeks, but not always), spring break, and usually fall and mid-winter breaks. Some places mean more breaks than others, such as the Chinese New Year in some Asian countries and Eid al-Fitr in the Middle East.

Teaching abroad means lots of travel opportunities. The downside? You’re often, though not always, traveling at peak times such as Christmas and summer holidays. When you teach at an international school, though, you do get to travel frequently. Even if you don’t leave your working country, it’s somewhere new to explore! That might mean beaches in Thailand, hiking in the Alps, or desert camping in the Arabian Gulf!

Expat Bubbles

We all have bubbles; no matter where we live, expats are no different. When you teach at an international school, finding yourself in an expat bubble is easy. What does this mean? Many, if not most, expats tend to mingle with other expats. This highly depends on where you are, but generally, cultural similarity means more in common.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of expats with local friends and connections, but it’s probably not the norm. It does mean that you’ll end up seeing many of the same people in the same places. Take Shanghai, for example. Westerners tend to congregate in similar areas. It was pretty amazing how easy it was to see a familiar face in Shanghai, a city of 26 million people, when out and about.

When you teach at an international school, you’ll likely have colleagues who become good friends regardless of the city. If you’re in a smaller area or city, it’s possible these colleagues and parents could be the only friends available. In a larger city, though, you can expand that expat bubble through different activities you might be interested in. So, if you live in a city like Shanghai, there are many opportunities to engage with other foreigners who are not teachers, so you don’t spend your entire time outside of work discussing work!

That said, you do not have to stay in the expat bubble. Whether or not you’re interested in the bubble is entirely up to you. When you teach at an international school, you can mix in with the local population with just a little initiative. Learning the local language, even just a little bit, is a great start!

Final Thoughts

Teaching in international schools is not unlike teaching elsewhere in terms of some of the pains that come with the job. At the same time, you may enjoy more support and autonomy in your practice and spend most of your time supporting student learning. Outside of school, challenges may be similar to what you experience at home. Still, the new, stimulating opportunities you may find in your new environment, such as new travel opportunities, may help you bring a level of balance and personal enrichment to your life that, overall, can help you build a better quality of life for yourself, and become the teacher you’ve always wanted to be.

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