Job Discussion Forums

[PhilOffice]

Hi everyone,

I'm a 26 year old Canadian teacher with a Bachelor's degree in ESL (4 year program), as well as 2 years of experience working full-time in a private school here in Canada. I can teach both English and French.

I am not looking for a city in particular, it could be in either NZ or Australia.

Ideally I would like to speak with someone living there already that could guide me towards the right track.
I am looking for schools where I could send my CV/cover letter directly.

Also, what are my chances of finding something starting around july/august 2016?

Thank you

[mmcmorrow]

About NZ,

If you mean working in a private ESL school with adults, then you would need to first get a visa that entitles you to work in NZ and then apply to schools (they are unlikely to sponsor you). The easiest way would be to apply for a working holiday visa (use Google to find out the conditions for the Canada-NZ scheme). There's no particular start time in this sector.

If you want to work in mainstream education, with children in regular schools (either state or private), you'll need to have accredited teacher status for NZ. Look at the Immigration New Zealand website for details of this. It's possible that your Canadian teaching qualification might be deemed equivalent to a NZ one. Anyway, uou may find it useful to contact a teacher exchange or placement agency - again, I can only recommend that you Google these things, as I don't have direct experience. You could also try contacting someone through the ESL teachers' association, TESOLANZ.

Generally, languages are not very popular subjects at NZ high schools and French comes down the list, after Spanish and (I think) Chinese and possibly Japanese, so I'm not sure how big a demand there would be for your French teaching skills here.

Good luck. Australia is a much bigger market, but for migration, my impression is that it's a bit more complicated than NZ.

Martin McMorrow, Massey University, NZ