Newbie Questions?

[CSX]

New to this site and just registered. I appreciate all the questions and answers. Found a lot of my questions were already answered in what I read. Definately had some good laughs with some of the comments that I read also. Have not had a chance to read them all, so please forgive if I am redundant. My wife and I are in our 40s. She is Chinese from Taiwan (now U.S. citizen) and I am U.S. born and raised. We're looking at slowing it down quite a bit in the near future. I do not have a degree. She does. We were thinking of relocating to Thailand and she would teach Chinese since that is her primary language. I would enjoy teaching some English if I could. My main question is... From all I read about the contracts and all the does and don'ts, Can you tell me which schools or Universities to stay away from? You know, the ones that don't help with the visa or WP.

[Bluffer]

Hmm. You really know how to pick a difficult situation.

First up your wife. To teach Chinese - Mandarin? She would be competing against Thai Chinese and Chinese who will be paid a lot less than your wife would like. I think that will rule her out of a lot of jobs in government and middle order schools. Maybe if she has education credits there will be some better schools that want an American doing it.

(this is going on speaking to a couple of the chinese teachers at my old school )

You - without a degree. Look forward to lower end schools and probably no work permit.

But all of this depends exactly where you end up, the needs of the area, how desperate they are etc etc All schools can be good or bad. Its impossible to give a good or bad list about all the places in thailand. At least try to narrow it down geographically for us.

[kenkannif]

We had a Singaporean girl here that got a job teaching Mandarin (with ECC), I think they waived her need to have a degree due to fluency in the language??? I think the money is/was around the same as teaching English, maybe a tad more.

Ooops messed up there. She could also speak nigh on fluent Thai as well as English which is a pretty big advantage (in teaching as it gives here more flexibility, and also in finding work).

Other than that Bluffer has hit the nail....!

Edited September 6, 2005 by kenkannif

[CSX]

I did not even think about all the other Thai-Chinese. My wife does have quite a resume. Before we started our own business she use to teach in the local school district. She substituted for a while and would of had full time if some one else did not get juiced in, in front of her. Were in Vegas and it's not what you know, it's who you know.

We don't want to work for free, we would just like to make a couple of bucks and stay busy so we don't just spend our retirement money.

We were also looking at doing business of some sort if that would enable us to buy a home and stay there. I had the idea of teaching because I read about the hours, there not to bad. I currently teach, but it is not what you might think. I am a NRA Law Enforcement Firearms Instructor. I teach civilians also.

I will go to Siam this Feb. or March with a Thai customer of ours and visit and check it out. The idea is to get the "B" type visa and WP. We are currently starting to try and learn the language. Any and all comments are appreciated.

[Ijustwannateach]

To get a better idea about teaching in Thailand (from various angles) the pinned thread "Questions About Qualifications" is a good place to start, and includes a list of links to other recommended threads on the site. I'm afraid I don't really know much about non-English language teaching in Thailand, though I would suspect jobs in it follow the same pattern as many TEFL jobs- depending on the language and supply/demand, salaries may be higher or lower. Your other questions are a bit too general and you may just need to do a lot of reading on the site so you can ask more specific questions. There is a site (thaischoolwatch) which you can put www in front of and com after, and that place is for complaining about schools in Thailand- however, take what is written there with a grain of salt. Most of the complaints are related to TEFL, though some of those schools may also employ teachers of other languages.

I don't think there is a specific list anywhere of schools which do or do not employ based on a degree; and since it would technically be illegal to employ someone without providing visa and WP you won't find a list of those either, though some schools are honest/dumb enough to say so even in their ads. Better to do a lot of reading here and on TSW.

"Steven"