Job Discussion Forums

[Author]

I'm a U.S. citizen with an MSEd (TESOL), 6 years' full-time EFL teaching experience at the university level in Japan, and 10 solo publications & 1 shared authorship in not-great journals.

What kind of university work and what kind of working conditions could I expect in Warsaw? I love city life and would rather work at a lower-level university in Warsaw than a mid-level university outside Warsaw.

Thanks!

[dragonpiwo]

Expect long hours and low pay if you work for anyone. Freelance or the BC you can make 100 PLN/hour. Noone will give a rat's **** about your experience quite honestly.
you'll struggle to get into a uni. My mates who work for unis have been there over a decade. My son's at uni in Warsaw and he doesn't even do English.

[sparks]

I'll second what the Dragon says…. publications? What are you going to do? make your students read them? It may be sad, but it is true, no one will care. Figure out how to get people to pay you the most per hour that you can and make yourself a schedule you can live with. Oh, they students will probably like you and pay you more if you're friendly, have a good sense of humor and are generally a decent conversationalist. Those are the three tenets of TESOL Poland.

[dragonpiwo]

So now we've established that the job will likely involve running around like a blue-arsed fly, low pay and uncertain hours we can talk about what you can expect in Warsaw. What you can expect on a TEFL salary is a flat somewhere away from the centre, horrible weather for at least 6 months a year, the pain of looking in the windows of shops you can't afford and tonnes of cheap beer, which in my opinion trumps the bad things I mentioned. If you don't drink, I'd give Poland and indeed all of Eastern Europe a wide berth. You may or may not end up with a really attractive wife. It's not like the old days when Polish girls put on their native speaker beer goggles. Think 'hobo' and you've got what most educated Poles think about their Brit/Canadian/Irish/US teacher. Warsaw is no longer cheap, so you'll get a shock as like things cost what they would in western Europe. If you've got a load of money, it's a good place to have a laugh for the summer but you'd have more fun in Thailand, sitting on a beach in Phuket. It's no place to be starting off nowadays. The veterans, who are largely established, married long ago and have the luxury of dual income and cheap flats they bought long ago for peanuts.

[sparks]

I would also recommend not working for schools. If you come here and have some business sense (that means advertising) , a bit of savings to live off of for a few months while you get going and are somewhat of a decent/likeable teacher, you can do ok in Warsaw. I recently saw an advert for a school saying that if you're experienced and work full time you can earn UP TO 8,000 zl/month, as if it were some kind of king's ransom. 8k a month is nothing in Warsaw, flat rental prices are climbing by the week.