Teach Overseas in Taiwan: An Unforgettable Experience

As followers of this blog may know, I began my illustrious career in education in a not so illustrious fashion.  Before Harvard, before KIPP, before Teach For America, I was a rakish college graduate unable to find a job in the television industry, moping around my parent's house searing the internet for work.

Right at the point where my moping had reached a zenith, I started exchanging e-mails with two of my friends from college who had moved to Taiwan to teach English.  They sent me pictures, like this one...

Memorial Hall Square: Taipei, Taiwan

In short, they were having a lot of fun: visiting national memorials, hanging around restaurants late at night, going to clubs, getting free drinks (apparently, Taiwanese love Westerners), and, in essence, hedonistically gallivanting like around the country, teaching a mere 4-5 hours a day and making more money than they could possibly spend in a months time. 

That sounded a lot better than sleeping on my parent's futon mattress in the bonus room, so I went.

Second to marrying Kendra, that was one of the best decisions I ever made.


And now, here I stand, nearly 6 years later, highly recommending to all of my recent college graduate readers, to all of my mid-life crisis readers, to all of my I-just-read-Eat-Pray-Love single readers. 

Go. 

Go to Taiwan and teach English.  You will likely make around $25 an hour, eat like a king, and see arguably the most spectacular part of the globe: Asia Pacific. 

In this short blog series about teaching overseas in Taiwan, I will:

1. explain how to get a job overseas by recommending schools


2.  report on what you will likely be doing as an ESL teacher overseas

3.  give you some tips about living in Taiwan.

Blog post 3 will be the piece de resistance of this series.  6 years later after reading research articles about teaching ESL in Taiwan and hearing from others who taught there, I realize that I made some mistakes.  Mistakes that cost me money, time, and - most importantly - fun.