Living in the Emirates

[Guest]

Hello, I'm living in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and might be able to help answer general questions about living in this region. I have been living here for the last 14 months and generally really like it. I am now a counsellor in training, but have been known to publish a book on living abroad, and teach philosophy at the IB level. My husband, 8 year old, and I have lived previously in Ankara, Turkey (for five years) and previous to that in Hong Kong (for six years). My husband and I are in the international school circuit, so if there's potential teachers out there that want to know what it's like, I might be able to offer suggestions etc.

Cheers,
Expatmich

[lauralie]

hi expatmich,
thanks for the offer of help/advice. i am going to school right now to get my teaching degree and when i finish i would like to work overseas. i am thinking about going to the middle east but don't really know what to expect. are there jobs where you are? i would ideally like to work in an international school, teaching at the elementary level. what are the salaries like? are there jobs for beginning teachers? any info you can give me would be much appreciated!!

also, if you know of any recruitment agencies or websites that i should be checking out that would be awesome too!
thanks so much

laura

[expatmich]

HI Laurlie,

While you are at home, and finishing your teaching certification, you should look into Search Associates. They are an international conglomerate of teacher headhunters. There is a website you can visit for more information: www.search-associates.com To get a job at an international school abroad, as a teacher with little or no teaching experience (that is, teaching experience after you have finished your practicums) is very difficult. More and more, hiring agencies like to see at least two years of teaching experience before they will consider your application. With search, you might be looking at an internship as opposed to being hired as a full time teacher.

In the middle east, the money is good, the packages are great, but it's rare that an inexperienced teacher would land one of the jobs at these international schools. There are some smaller schools or less well known schools that might consider looking at teachers with less experience, but they will also have a lot less to offer (barring the experience of living abroad of course!)

There is also another website you can look into at the university of Iowa's site. THere is a huge recruitment fair there too, but you will most likely find the same thing abou requiring experience. Your best bet is to look for an internship at a very good school, or look towards South East Asia doing ESL or even South America doing ESL. Put your two years into a lesser known school doing something like ESL and that will open the applicaiton doors for you at least.

Hope some of this is helpful.....

Expatmich

[lauralie]

thanks so much for all your info, it was very helpful. i have some more questions though =) what is the cost of living like in UAE? what about hong kong? i am also thinking about jobs in china and will probably end up going to one of those job fairs because it sounds like a lot of schools go there to hire. i am not really sure also what the salaries are like in the middle east. what is a typical salary for a elementary teacher there? thanks again! also, what is it like living in the UAE as a female?

lauralie

[expatmich]

Hi Lauralie,

The cost of living here is difficult for me to assess for you since I've lived out of Canada for the last 13 years.....rent, if it's not included in a package you get (i.e. if you're a local hire) is very expensive in Abu Dhabi, but a bit cheaper in Dubai (but a small flat for a singler person will run you about 35,000-40,000 dirhams per year). Food and clothes are reasonable as far as I'm concerned, and I tend to buy things here and not in Canada and drag them back since I just don't see the point.

Depending on what kind of school you work for (international, national, proprietary), your salary, as a new teacher can range anywhere between 6,500 dirhams per month to about 9,000 dirhams per month. If you get a package deal as an expatriate teacher, you will most likely get your apartment included in the deal, as well as flights home at the beginning and end of your contract (and maybe the years in between, again depending on the kind of school you work for).

It's very safe for women in the UAE, there's no big deal about being a woman though maybe 80 percent of the population is muslim. ( I also don't wear tube tops or shorty shorts, but I do that out of respect for the local population here--I have seen however tons of women wearing things that they maybe shouldn't! but hey, I haven't seen anyone get groped in public either). There's a lot of other religious groups here too I've heard, and I have friends that belong to bible study groups etc. Image wise, it's not what you see in Iran, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Picture a Muslim Miami, and that's what Dubai and Abu Dhabi are.

There are teaching opportunities in Hong Kong as well, and some schools take on new teachers but you will have to go to a hiring fair to search them out. We lived in Hong Kong for 6 years and know that a few new schools crop up every other year.....I think I forgot to mention that Queen's University has a teacher hiring fair, but it might be for 'registered' and 'experienced' teachers, I'm not sure. It's worth finding out though. Your best bet, at getting hired for an expatriate classroom teacher is to do the two years as an ESL teacher at a lesser known school somewhere in the world, or two years as an internship (which search associates can place you in) at a better school and go from there. There's a lot of international school teachers in the world right now, and with some schools closing in the middle east (Saudi) there's going to be a bit of a surplus for a while, so take whatever you can and go with it.

Hope this is helpful ....

Expatmich

[expatmich]

The other thing I forgot Lauralie is the JET program. If Japan interests you, look up the Japanese Exchange Teaching program. My Husband did that for a year back in 1988, after he got his BA. He was in a concurrent BEd program and took a year off in between the BA and the BEd to do the JET program. He lived in Kobe for a year, learned Japanese and had a great time and banked quite a bit of money (paid off his university loans with that money). He was a 7-12 English/History/Drama teacher by training but did a year of ESL there, went back to finish his BEd in Canada, then got a job teaching in Hong Kong after that from the Queen's university hiring fair. We have had tons of friends do the JET program since then and they have all loved the experience....

They must have a website, you should check this out if Japan is at all interesting to you......

[leighbutler]

See this site http://dwc.hct.ac.ae/expatinfo/

Leigh

[Tida]

Hi Expatmich - can you advise on if a package of 9K USD per month plus a flight back to Canada once per year, inclusive of car and housing allowances is a decent package for a marketing manager considering the cost of living in Abu Dhabi? (single female, no dependents.

Thanks,