Hello! Part of why I opened this community, aside from the need to leave Reddit, is that I’m very curious about how being a teacher abroad looks like. My first question would be about the workload. Do you have dedicated time for desk work in your contract? What kind of obligations does it entail? If you have to do admin work, what do you have to do? How many hours of teaching would you have on a regular week? Let me know:)
I’m teaching in Ireland. I don’t have a desk but I’m based mostly out of a specialist classroom and I’m the main teacher so I tend to work there. If it’s in use then I use the staffroom. We teach 22hrs of contact time during the week (ages 12-18) and also 1hr supervision a week (of absent colleagues/lunch breaks etc). There’s no allocated hours for admin/prep. You do it until it’s done. So depending on the week that could be 40hrs alone if reports are due but the following week could drop to 10.
We have good holidays which is amazing as a parent. It’s summer here and I do not return to teaching until august 28th
That sounds pretty much like in French-speaking Belgium, where I’m located:) I teach 22 hours per week, I have to do my prepping at home because we don’t have desks, and since I don’t have an allotted classroom I can’t really stay there. Like you I appreciate our holidays, even though a lot of colleagues and parents complain because we changed that recently. The school year officially ends on July 7th and we also return on August 28th, people were used to leave on July 1st and start again on September 1st. With the new system we have generally 7-week periods of teaching spaced with 2 weeks of vacation. I like this rhythm but some people complain the kids come back having forgotten too much.