Teaching English in Taiwan: Part 1 - Getting a Job

Jimmie Collins, blogger/creator of Texan in Taiwan, describes why she went to Taiwan; after graduating from college, she could not find a job that paid a decent salary.  A friend of hers was teaching English in Taiwan and recommended Jimmie look into it.  She surprisingly discovered that any westerner with a bachelors degree can teach English, and it took her no time at all to land a job:

"I scored interviews — and subsequently jobs — with both the Gloria English School and Reach to Teach Recruitment within the next week." 
-(Quote from Jimmie's May 25, 2009 Blog post)

Jimmie's story is identical to my own: unable to find a lucrative job in the states, we met someone who was teaching English in Taiwan, working 4-6 hours a day, and making nearly $2,000 a month with virtually no expenses.  Both Jimmie and I couldn't pass up the opportunity; likewise, we both chose to worked for the same English cram school Gloria. 

When I started looking for a teaching job in Taiwan, I applied to Gloria and Hess.  Both schools seemed established and trustworthy.  As I was researching Taiwanese English teaching jobs, I came across several blog posts that mentioned English teaching positions that were scams.  For instance, on livelearnteach.com, blogger Antonio Graceffo writes:

"WARNING; There are a number of scams on the internet where a company charges you a fee to get you a certificate and then promises to place you in a job overseas. Don’t fall for these...the companies who place you in these jobs often keep a percentage of your earnings..."

When you're looking for positions, I recommend talking to or e-mailing someone you know who taught in Taiwan (like me:  Click here to e-mail) and get recommendations for reputable schools.  In virtually no time, I was offered a teaching position at both schools I applied to, but I eventually went with Gloria because my friends were there.  Which reminds me: If at all possible, go with a friend.  Like all adventures, traveling with a companion makes the experience memorable and alleviates homesickness. 

My friends and I on our scooters by the beach

My friend and I posing with the locals.  I'm on the right.

My final parting wisdom before you go about applying for teaching jobs in Taiwan is this:  read Pei-Chia Lan's research article, "White Privilege, Language Capital and Cultural Ghettoisation: Western High-Skilled Migrants in Taiwan".  Pei-Chia Lan is an an award winning researcher from National Taiwan University, and she wrote an eye-opening piece about western migration to Taiwan.  Essentially, she notes that westerns who migrate to Taiwan to teach in English schools are 'privileged' because their westernesss is considered cosmopolitan and hip; consequently, these westerners are given special treatment by Taiwanese people and businesses.  This was unquestionably the case for me; I received plenty of freebees while there, which I will write about more in Part 2 and Part 3 of this series...

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.

3-Minute Story of How I Became an Educator - Guided By Questions

My friends and I in Taiwan.  I'm on the far right.

(Originally prepared for my leadership class at Harvard Graduate School of Education)

I have always been guided by questions, not answers.  The question the jumpstarted my career was a very noble one: How do I impress this one girl? 

In college, I dated a girl who grew up in South Korea; her parents were teachers at an international school.  She would always say that when she graduated she would become an overseas teacher, and I vowed to join her because I was, frankly, infatuated.  In essence, I became a teacher to impress her.  Long story short, we broke up, and she got engaged to another.  But I was still determined impress her, so I moved to Taiwan to become an ESL teacher.

Taiwan was my Damascus road experience.  It was the first time I was a minority, and that was a transformative experience.  I couldn’t read the signs on street corners, couldn’t read food menus in restaurants, and my skin color and culture were radically different from the people who surrounded me.   

It was in Taiwan that I was reminded of an important question my professor once asked me, “How would your life be different if you were a minority?”  I grew up in suburban, white, middle-class, evangelical Christian America, and my whole life was characteristically homogenous.  Even in college, I went to a nearly all white middle-class, evangelical, Christian university in Kentucky.  To say we lacked diversity would be a tragic understatement.  However, this one professor wanted to push me out of the box, into a world characterized by difference.

Determined to discover the answer to my professor’s question, I continued putting myself in situations where I was the minority.  I worked in an urban high school in Memphis, Tennessee and then in an urban middle school in a large city in North Carolina.  In both cities, most of my students were African-American and Latino, and most of my colleagues were not of the same race as I.  I was learning what it meant to be wholly different.  The outsider.

 When I think back on these two questions that have guided the past 8 years of my life, I’m perplexed because I didn’t answer either of them.  I never figured out how to impress that girl, and I never figured out what it truly meant to be a minority.  However, along the way I began to ask myself new questions about my life.  How did I end up marrying somehow as wonderful as Kendra?  Why do I love my dog so much?  How do I create a school where all kids can learn?  How do I make school feel a lot less like school?  In essence, what I learned is that questions guide me, not answers.  In fact, I rarely find the answers to my questions, but the questions I ask beget more questions.  And each successive question brings me a little bit closer to what I want to become.