Job Discussion Forums

[Anidaane]

I'm an American who will be graduating next week from NYU with a BA in Comparative Literature. I'm fluent in French and I speak a little Arabic. I'll be obtaining my TESL certificate from Oxford Seminars within the month. Also, I just got accepted into a State Department program, so they'll be flying me out to Ankara for two months of intensive language study (in Turkish � which I definitely don�t speak yet). After that, I'm on my own.

I'd like to move to Istanbul directly after the program (mid-August) and get a job teaching English and I was wondering if anyone could suggest good areas to live in/find a job in. There seem to be an awful lot of warnings about terrible schools but not so many threads on good schools. Thanks in advance.

[tararu]

It sounds that you will be quite well qualified in the certificate sense when you get here. After a couple of months in Ankara, you will be happy to finally get to Istanbul.
Eventhough you have educated yourself quite well, you will probably be regarded as a first time teacher by most schools, and therefore, your pay will be according. Whether or not a school is deemed as bad usually rides on the manager at the establishment, so one branch of that school may be crappy, whereas another is just fine. My advice is to ask about specific branches of a school and not necessarily the whole school itself. I am sure that other people on this site will give you their ideas on this topic.

Regarding places to live, well, l think it is best to live somewhere near your place of work. The three main centres of work are Taksim, Kadik�y and Bakırk�y. My advice would be to figure out where you are going to work and then find a place somewhere nearby. You don't have to live next door to where you work, but try and find a place that is 30 minutes away in bad traffic. Having a supermarket or permanent street market nearby is a must.
Anyway, l hope that this has been some help.
Good Luck!!