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[Jizzo T. Clown]

[biffinbridge]

Back in 95 in the Czech Republic native speakers were made to feel very welcome and had something akin to 'celebrity status'.This was also true for Poland in the late nineties.I returned to Poland to teach last year and noticed that a lot had changed.Non-native colleagues regarded many of the native speakers as clowns and the students were quite open about the bad reputation that boozy, womanising, scruffy English teachers had attained.In Libya,the ex-pat non-teaching staff regarded the entire English teaching department as a bunch of weirdos but the students were very grateful.In Qatar, to be an English teacher was to be a social pariah outside the English teaching community.English teacher status is an oxymoron.Funnily enough though a lot of deluded teachers believe that there is still some 'kudos' in what is ultimately a non-profession.

[TravellingAround]

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[ls650]

[Jizzo T. Clown]

ls650 -

So you're saying that those who choose to stay in their home countries are losers? Why?

[sidjameson]

Jizo, many people are of the mind that a TEFL or TESL teacher in a their home country pays by the hour and rather poorly at that. Can a teacher make enough money to pay the mortgage on a comfortable but modest apartment in a large city in America? Probably not. If that is the case then anybody who does the job long term might be considered a loser and in an economic sense they are, at least in so much that they are "losing out" when compared to what other people with the fortune of having a high quality education from a rich western nation would expect out of life.

Put it this way:

How much did your entire western education cost? Who paid for it? How much do you earn a year? How long would it take to repayment that investment made in you?

Of course that's using the harsh reality of modern economics and not all things can be judged that way, but then again, somebody footed the bill and if you aren't earning enough (and paying taxes) to justify that outlay then you should feel rather fortunate that your unproductiveness has been subsidised.

If you have been subsidised then "yes" I guess that some may consider you a loser.

[gaijinalways]

Hold on, but you have to factor in the cost of living, which in Japan is high. So just comparing salaries across the board (or to your education cost) isn't a good comparison.

From what Jizzo tells me, he makes a decent living and doesn't have the thrill (and the agony ) of living abroad. Why that would make him a loser is beyond me. Recently as my parents get older, I have been thinking the same thing; it'd be nice to live closer to help my parents out when they need it. At the moment they are still pretty independent, but juding from my wife's parents, those days might be numbered.

Yes, living overseas can be a lot of fun, but it can also be a headache. But it all depends on where you feel comfortable, and teaching at home is just that, teaching, ESL or not.

[Jizzo T. Clown]

Well some may consider some losers. That's a fact of life. What matters is that those who truly love what they do don't have to subject themselves to the "harsh realities" of others.

Did it ever occur that many at home consider those abroad losers in the sense that they can't hack it back home?

I don't live in a big city and have no desire to do so. It's true that I'd have a hard time making ends meet on my current salary if the cost of living where I'm at weren't so low.

And what about those in less developed countries? sid, by your standards, they are perhaps the ones who are "losing out" most of all, since you measure a person's worth by the amount they earn relative to the amount they paid for their education.

[dmb]

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Status, Schmatus...I am concerned with the Do of being a Road Warrior; think about it. In a few short years we'll all be dead if not sooner by some accident and there is the whole world to explore and there are the many cultures and languages out there. So much knowledge, geography, culture; why given our brief lives would anyone opt to stay in the same country, always the same, boring and in my case fast turning into a Christian theocracy. At the end of the day it comes down to Willy Shake's line; There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. People who hang out in the same country their whole lives don't get it and those who go back semi-permanently never did get it...

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

So I guess you would also have a problem with anyone who goes from their country to one other country and makes their career teaching English to that single other group- like many of the career EFL professionals out there who stay in a single country for virually their entire career (especially those who get married to someone from the other country).

When I taught ESL in Canada, I talked to people from all over the world on a daily basis. I have been in Japan for over three years, so other than to other foreigners (usually, though not exclusively, from English speaking countries) I talk to Japanese people within Japanese society all day every day. That means that I had much more exposure to totally different points of view in Canada than I do in Japan, not to mention that staying in a single other country changes your own culture around so that you become more like the people of the host nation, and that's why it becomes just like a different version o home- not more exciting, not less. Just different. And the people who travel overseas to study often have a more worldly point of view than many of the people who have never left their country- exactly the same as the people who refuse to leave our own countries and have very limited interaction with anyone from another culture.

[gaijinalways]

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