If you’re looking to make the most of your teaching career you might be thinking about job opportunities teaching internationally. There are loads of job opportunities all over the globe, especially for those with experience in education and travelling abroad to teach might just be your ticket to a new life. Pureteach can help you find a whole new career in schools from Asia to Africa, South America to the UAE, but what are the main reasons you might want to teach abroad?
1. Professional Development and Career Growth
One of the primary benefits of moving abroad to teach is the boost to personal and professional development your new working life can provide. You will diversify your teaching style, learning new methodologies and classroom techniques, you may even have a chance to meet other educators at global conferences and seminars. Many international schools provide continued training for teachers, allowing you to gain valuable experience and become more qualified as you work.
Alongside this the change in environment will give you the chance to demonstrate your ability to overcome new challenges. Teachers who move abroad to work often find themselves with more chances for promotion in a working structure with better support, pay and benefits. Having an international job, potentially from a prestigious school, can massively boost the viability of your CV for future job applications showing a willingness to take on new challenges and a broader wealth of experience.
2. Travel
Teaching abroad can be a life-changing decision, the beginning of a professional journey that can take you to exciting places and make your working life more fulfilling. The desire to see new places and explore new cultures is what drives most people who decide to travel and work abroad. By finding work with a company like Pureteach you can travel to some of the farthest and lesser seen corners of the world whilst still being supported by a UK-based business.
Living in countries in South America and Asia, where travel can be complicated by visas, cultural differences and access to jobs, finding work through a UK-based company can allow you to visit and live in places you could never otherwise travel to.
3. Improved Work Environment
Teaching jobs overseas can give educators an opportunity to work in private international schools where the professional environment is more balanced than in the UK. Smaller class sizes allow for more personal attention and effective teaching and often international schools will have access to multiple world-class resources and equipment. Teachers who work abroad often say they encounter a more engaging classroom environment, which allows them to greatly improve the learning outcomes for their classes.
The work/life balance in the international teaching community can be much healthier as well, teachers find they have more free time, less work to take home, and a more comfortable daily work life. Maybe this is why many UK teachers moving abroad report better mental well-being and less burnout, describing a much less stressful and more fulfilling working life than before.
4. Improve Your Chances to Earn
Working internationally can be a great way to maximise your income, something on everybody’s mind at a time of soaring cost-of-living increases.
Finding a new career path in a different part of the world can come with some great financial benefits. You might find your new job teaching abroad comes with an appealing pay package, additional benefits such as housing support, relocation bonuses, comprehensive health insurance packages, some countries even offer tax reductions for teachers working abroad. This means that teachers working abroad often have a better quality of life, more opportunity to save, greater financial security and potentially a much higher disposable income.
5. Learn New Skills
Working abroad can be a major boost to your CV, teaching abroad requires patience, people skills and general smarts, all of which make for great transferable skills on your CV. Living in a new country provides loads of new challenges, even going to the supermarket is an adventure, this can boost your confidence in new and different scenarios, teaching you how to communicate across cultural and language divides. All of this can go into shaping the person you are in the future, more confident, more skilled and experienced.
6. Immerse Yourself in Different Cultures
Teaching abroad is not just a job, it can be the start of a highly rewarding personal and professional journey. When you work in a different country it is a totally different experience to simply travelling through. You will have to learn to buy food, meet people and get around in the country you are working in, you will meet and work with locals on a day to day basis and it’s these moments when you learn the most about yourself and the culture which you have chosen to live in.
An overseas teaching job can transform daily routines, allowing you to take on exciting challenges and make new experiences, learning more about yourself and other cultures at the same time.
7. Learn Another Language
Whether you want to learn a whole new language or improve your fluency in a foreign language you already speak, teaching internationally offers unique opportunities for language learning. Working abroad long-term means building good professional relationships with local people. When you’re working closely like this with native speakers you will gain an in-depth understanding of the language of the country you are living in.
Combine this with the opportunity to speak that language to native speakers on a day-to-day basis, in the supermarket, at restaurants or at home, and you have a great environment for picking up a language effectively.
8. Unique Job Opportunities
Teachers trained in the UK are highly valued workers in international education, they are renowned for having a strong educational foundation as well as being abreast of modern teaching methodologies and techniques, this means you will be entering the job market as a strong candidate, sought after by the institutes you will be potentially working with.
Pureteach can assist you in finding an array of education and teaching jobs overseas; jobs in school administration, management, teaching English, P.E. or Drama as well as 100’s of other potential positions in all aspects of education. These long-term positions offer exciting career opportunities not available in the UK. Working in international education can provide great chances for promotion, substantially enhance your CV, and provide experiences that make you stand out in the global job market. Teaching abroad adds prestige to a career profile, it demonstrates adaptability and cultural knowhow — qualities highly valued by employers.
If you feel lost in the education system in the UK, moving abroad can allow you a fresh start, a chance to challenge and prove yourself in an environment where your skills and experience are appreciated.
9. Meeting New People
When you’re living and working abroad the people you meet every day will be those from whichever country you are travelling in, those you meet in the workplace, and those you meet as you immerse yourself in their culture. There is no opportunity like working abroad for talking to people with a totally different experience to you, for learning new perspectives and ideas from people you could never imagine meeting here in the UK.
10. Time Off
With the opportunities for better work/life balance that teaching internationally can provide you’re likely to find yourself with quite a bit more free time outside of the work environment. This leaves plenty of time to explore totally different countries, enjoy new places, enjoy the bars, restaurants and nightlife or hop on a quick cheap international flight to somewhere local and new. With your potential extra income you’ll have freedom to choose how you enjoy your extra time off.
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If this article makes you even more motivated to get out there and take on a new challenge, teaching internationally and starting a new life abroad, meeting and helping different types of people. If the potential improvements to your working environment and the opportunities for professional growth working abroad can provide might seem too good an opportunity to miss, then maybe it’s time to take the next step and start your international education journey.
