Narrowing International Teaching Options as an Expat Family

Knowing that there are always trade-offs with any international teaching position, with the multitude of options that are seemingly available, it helps us to have a way to narrow options. All of the following criteria does not have to be met, of course, but it does help serve as a filter! (So, in no particular order:)

1. Do they pay for everyone's flight, not just the person who will be teaching?

2. What other benefits are offered? (Summer flights home for the family, housing, insurance, etc.)

3. Is there enough religious freedom in that country that there is a church we could attend?

4. What does the culture have that would benefit our family or that we would find interesting? Languages, useful or easy to learn? future business opportunities?

5. Are fruits and vegetables readily available? How accessible is a healthy lifestyle?

6. How large is the expat and/or Spanish-speaking community? (If it is not a Spanish-speaking country.)

7. How does that country view child-rearing? Homeschooling?

8. Is there a supported midwife community? Is home-birth available or even legal?

9. Is freedom of speech and technology available? (Are certain sites blocked on the internet in that country? If so is there a way around it?)

10. What is the teaching position available and would the person applying for it enjoy it, or simply endure it for the experience in another country.

Final Teaching Thoughts 2010-2011

At the end of every teaching year, every teacher has some sort of self-evaluation. It's part of being a teacher. It's impossible not to worry that you could have done something better or to be excited about the successes you witnessed. Self-reflection encourages growth... and helps me stay sane! So here are some thoughts from my teaching experience this year:

1. I greatly prefer rotation to self-contained teaching. If I went back into the teaching arena, I would prefer to start with 6th grade if necessary so that I could be back on a rotation schedule. However, I stretched academically this year by teaching all subjects and I feel like I did a good job at it.

2. I still have a lot to learn. For some reason, this never changes. I think maybe it shouldn't.

3. Kids teach just as much as the teacher. Sometimes things that are more important.

4. Though I'm not naturally a social person, every relationship I have put effort into has always paid back exponentially.

5. I shouldn't be scared of parents.

6. The year will end. Show your students that you love them while you can.

7. We taught so much academic stuff! Sometimes I wonder how much social training we gave? So much teaching is intertwined with little "non-teaching" moments: on the playground, in out-of-class discussions, at the lockers in the hallways. How well did we teach there?

8. I will forever remember that ALT + 64 is another way to get the @ sign. (Spanish keyboard.)

9. Teaching Second-Language-Learners can be highly entertaining: One very naive girl wrote in a story that she was playing "high and sick" with her friends. Pronounced the Spanish way, it's easy to see that she meant "hide and seek." English is so much more complicated than Spanish. ;)

10. The people you work with can make or break a teaching position. I was blessed to work with an amazing, supportive community of educators. We all need a good community to do our best.

I am so proud of my students this year. They conquered things they didn't even think were possible! Adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions really gave some of them trouble, but in the end they DID IT! Every single one of them advanced in reading comprehension, some above the 6th grade level! It's so exciting when a student gets something and then runs with it, learning even more with their interest.

If you can love the act of learning, you will never get "old."

Awesome 5th Grade Projects from 2010-2011

One of the many benefits of working in the upper elementary grades is that you can do some really cool projects because the kids have developed critical thinking skills and most have a good grasp on logic, cause and effect. Some of the amazing things we have done this year include:

Creating a door decoration that was based on a book for Children's Book Week. My class voted on books and chose "The Diary of a Wimpy Kid." They made the door decoration into a Pacman game with the Pacman as Greg, the antagonists as the ghost guys and the other protagonists as safe places on the game board for Greg to get to. I loved their ideas and the fact that they came up with it by themselves! The art wasn't excellent, but we worked with what we had. ;)


An awesome Science Fair with some great experiments including:
1)How does the color of food affect a person's choice of that food, (girls generally chose pink or purple tinted icing, boys- blue or green.)
2)Which gender can average more push ups in a minute, male or female? (male)
3)Will an older parrot or a younger parrot learn a phrase quicker? (Older in this experiment.)
4)Does the brand of balloon affect the amount of static electricity produced?

While studying integers, we made cartoons explaining absolute value. My kids came up with some interesting things! So far it has worked to keep it stuck in their heads that the absolute value sign means the distance from zero, so it's not negative!


We created a movie utilizing the archetypal patterns of a hero in which my kids came up with a spin-off of the Harry Potter characters: Hairy Potter was the hero, Bald-e-mort was the villain, Dumbledora was the guide, just to name a few. Just the fact that they felt comfortable enough with English to be making puns made up for any of the cheesiness in my opinion. Each section of 5th grade had their own version of a hero archetype based movie. We created a script and recorded the movie and at the end we presented it as a huge 5th grade premiere and invited the principals. They had a lot of fun and really put their spoken English to the test. They also get an awesome keepsake for this year!

We have done a lot of really interesting Science experiments, but one of the prettiest was the "Convection Currents" one. We set up a clear aquarium on wooden blocks with room temperature water. Then, a quarter-sized dot of red dye was injected onto the bottom of one side. A cup of boiling water was placed under the red dye. On the opposite end, we placed a very blue-tinted ice cube. The ice cube represented one of the poles and the hot water represented the equator. The hot, red water rose and moved toward the cold area, while the cold, blue water sank and went towards the warm. This created an amazing visual with swirling red and blue.

Coming up next are some great persuasive topics in our Language debate unit. We plan on getting each section to debate within their classroom and have a winner who will compete against the debate teams who win in each section. They have to use good debate etiquette, such as showing the opponent respect by calling them the "honorable opposition." We have practiced with some fun, but easy topics such as "which is better, chocolate or vanilla?" and they have to come up with arguments for both sides. I feel like a good set of debate skills will prepare them for the future. They need to know where they stand on issues and how to defend their stance! The kids are really getting into this and showing good use of logical reasoning, persuasion and passion! In English! Any second-language learner knows that it's harder to use a second language about something you feel passionately about and are trying to persuade someone with... I love it when they get excited about what they are learning and really get involved!

I truly believe that I am teaching Guatemala's future leaders and I can't wait to see what these kids do with their lives!