A Round-up of the Best Teaching Abroad Blogs
by Greg Beatty
Maybe you’re tired of the job prospects here at home. Maybe you’ve always wanted to travel. Shoot, maybe you’re just restless. You’re scanning the Chronicle and a job opening catches your eye. Where exactly is Tashkent? What would it be like to teach in Turkey—and are the challenges greater than teaching in Korea— or just different? You’ve looked at books like Susan’s Griffith’s Teaching English Abroad, or Pamela George’s College Teaching Abroad, and they’re helpful—but you want something more. You want the inside dirt. Where do you turn?
The Internet. To find ESL jobs, visit sites like Dave’s ESL Café (http://www.eslcafe.com/joblist/), which lists everything from short-term positions, such as summer camps, to multi-year contracts, teaching everyone from preschoolers to adults.
Sites like this one should have your mind racing with possibilities, and perhaps some of the more brightly-colored drawbacks. If you want more details on what teaching abroad is like day to day, you turn not to job-board sites, or even their forums (useful though they are), but instead to blogs written by people living and teaching in those countries. Below you’ll find reviews of several such blogs that discuss what each offers in particular, and as a whole.
The View From Taiwan (http://michaelturton.blogspot.com)
Michael Turton teaches English on the university level in Taiwan. His site, Teaching English in Taiwan (http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/teach_index.html), is dedicated to providing information for those who think they’d like to teach English in Taiwan. Teaching English provides what you might call information for the outsider: pictures, FAQs, links to articles, etc. It is incredibly useful. However, The View From Taiwan gives the more inside view. For example, the entry for November 9, 2005 is subtitled “My Student Kills Himself” (http://michaelturton.blogspot.com/2005/11/my-student-kills-himself.html). That entry is simple and dignified. What’s disturbing, but useful for those who might teach in Taiwan, are the links to other discussions of suicide, which is among the top ten causes of death in Taiwan. Posters to Turton’s site regularly discuss some of the minutiae of life in Taiwan, down to street signs and parking habits.
Fred Shannon (http://fredshannon.blogspot.com)
While the blog of Fred Shannon, also an EFL teacher in Taiwan, and also on the university level, does feature a few photos from time to time, on the whole it lacks both the bright illustrations and the discussions of broad topics that Turton offers. Where Shannon is quite useful, though, is in the discussion of the mechanics of teaching. He examines the principles of teaching English and of teaching students not in their first language, and the nuts and bolts of mid-terms, office visits, and student interaction. He also considers large scale institutional factors of great importance: training programs, government policies, and social attitudes such as racism.
The Grey Notebook (http://www.greynotebook.com/blog/)
The Grey Notebook is a blog covering the time Jon Buscall taught at Stockholm University as a lecturer in creative writing. It is no longer active, but that’s one of its advantages: you can follow Buscall’s time in Stockholm from the beginning of the blog through its end, which roughly coincides with the end of his time there. Most of the blog is an extension of Buscall’s notebooks, and so is largely personal and reflective. As such, it is still useful because Buscall sounds isolated despite a very active professional life as both a teacher and writer. Some posts discuss the specifics of both professions in Sweden and the EU in general.
Euen Harvey (http://euanharvey.typepad.com/)
By contrast, Euen Harvey’s blog is very active, and very much in process. How much so? If you hurry, you can get a bid in on some of the Thai consumer goods Harvey is selling through eBay via Euen’s Thai Things (http://stores.ebay.com/Euans-Thai-Things). Like Buscall, Harvey is a creative writer, but where Buscall’s blog concerns itself with economics and organizational structures, Harvey focuses on the experiential, alternating pictures of his impossibly cute child with pictures of tasty food, and personal or trivia-related comments (giant squid, etc.) with detailed discussions of how to bargain in the marketplaces of Thailand and what different teaching positions pay.
EFL in Japan (http://yokkaichi1.blogspot.com/)
The subtitle of Daniel Kirk’s blog states its focus clearly: “The Politics, Economics, Education and Environment of EFL in Japan.” Kirk teaches English in Japan and studied Japanese culture for his Masters in Japan Studies, and so brings both practical and academic perspectives to bear. The result is a blog that does share teaching tips, but that more often reflects on current news stories, government policies, and, frequently, educational policies and structures. The blog is enlivened from time to time with striking photos, and Kirk frequently links to other blogs and websites grappling with the same issues. If you go back and read through the posts from the beginning, you can track Kirk’s growing ease with and acceptance by Japanese society.
A Lecturer’s Tale (http://www.keznjames.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/weblog/ALT.html) and Elle (http://pebblesnb.blogspot.com/) are both blogs by individuals teaching in the UK. On A Lecturer’s Tale James buzzes through a range of personal and professional concerns, often via links and very brief posts. He seems free to focus on technological issues, and carp about specific student excuses. Elle likewise blends issues, often sharing jokes and heartfelt dedications. These blogs are interesting not for the amount of help they provide, but for their perspective—the greater ease of working in a country where they speak the language fluently leaves a lot more blogspace for the personal and the casual. So, do you want this lightness of burden—or the fuller engagement of the earlier blogs?
This is definitely not simply a matter of the British/European education system being easier to navigate; for testimonial to this, and to more of the structural details of the system, see Jozefa Fawcett’s blog, Jozefa ‘the pole’ Fawcett (http://jozefa.blogspot.com/). Fawcett’s blog is useful because of the many hats she wears—lecturer, business person involved in knowledge management for the private sector, workshop and conference organizer. Reading Fawcett’s blog is like peering over the shoulder of a very professional networker; you see the ins and outs of how things are planned, organized, and brought to fruition across national borders.
Despite the generosity of these far-ranging bloggers, whose talents are as diverse as their locations, sampling their sites will only scratch the surface. If you want more, and especially, to sample specific accounts from many more countries, each of which will offer its specific challenges, try visiting TESall.com’s Bloglog (“http://www.tesall.com/bloglog.php) and ESL Teaching Job Journal (http://www.eslmonkeys.com/teacher/jobjournal.php).
The Bloglog offers a lively array of links to blogs on the subject, and feels like listening in on the gripe/bull/sharing sessions that go on in a lounge full of experienced teachers. ESL Teaching Job Journal actively solicits stories about teaching experiences, and includes some pretty dour warnings about specific employers, even specific individuals preying on the international ESL community.
Browse through them, and you should have enough of a sense of the challenges and joys of teaching abroad to decide if want to move to someplace new, say, Kuala Lumpur, and start your own blog.
