Job Discussion Forums

[tesolmaster]

I am 37 year old African American man - it's interesting I have to mention my race, since "race" in parts of Asia still matter* - who would like to return to Singapore to teach. I recently graduated with my Bachelor's this June in American Studies, focused on Asian American Studies; and, I studied at NUS Fall 2011. However, I now realized that I primarily experienced Singapore within NUS (well, NUS, Clementi Mall, Pulau Ubin). As of now, I don't have teaching credentials, just my Bachelor's; I'm still debating on doing the offline $600 TEFL course.

I actually want to someday return to either NUS and NTU to get my Master's, and I would like to work in their film industry (which is lacking in strong storylines, but that is for another thread). As I am working towards those goals, I do want to go for a job in teaching; I understand there is the MOE and businesses like I Can Read. I did send an email to the MOE asking for qualifications needed for teaching, as well as to the Singapore I Can Read email:[email protected] I haven't received a reply from since I sent that email 15 days ago.

And, yes, I've read the reviews on I Can Read...not only on this site, but another site, which name escapes me.

A little more background: Initially I was set to go to Korea - working with the recruiter, AST Korea - after I graduated, but my criminal background checks (needed for Korean immigration) were lost in the mail, and I had to go through the process again. However, some friends of mine weren't feeling entirely convinced when I told them my experience with the recruiter I was working with, and suggested I look into more options....particularly stable. (I was actually looking to stay in Korea for a year, and hopefully go back to Singapore for grad school after I got my teaching experience). On the other hand, another option is to go to Taiwan through Reach to Teach.

I'm probably repeating some of which has been posted before by other site newbies, and there are probably some grammatical errors in this post (since I'm typing this at 4:17am). However, any suggestions would be helpful; I'm actually looking at the earlier posts as well as other online forums.

*I actually only had issues with one Singaporean, many of my issues were with fellow American students. Actually, during my entire time, I was mainly hanging around with Singaporeans. Too, I took a class at NUS -taught by a Caucasian woman- called "African American Literature"...where I was the only black student, and everyone else was Singaporean; it was really interesting some of the insights...and I touched bases with the instructor a few weeks back.

[Amalia83]

In my experience the real killer race-wise if you want to teach in Asia is being... euh... Asian. Schools like to have someone foreign-looking - parents have more faith in them

Though I did once know an old guy from Jamaica who had no end of trouble finding a teaching job in China because people thought he looked Tibetan...

[tesolmaster]