Job Discussion Forums

[minoritygirl]

I am currently browsing around the different forums, trying to gauge what is out there, but what I've seen so far doesn't seem too promising. I am not looking to make or spend a lot of money, but I am concerned about safety and friendliness in each country/continent. I would like to know which countries are safe for women and have a lot of teaching opportunities. I only drink with my friends and rarely at that, I hate clubs, but I do like to walk around and visit historical places. I'm from New York so I know all about watching my back, so I just want to go to a country that isn't worse than what I deal with in New York.

I have been teaching for two years and have an M.S. in education, and I"m also working on a TESOL certification. Thank you.

[naturegirl321]

That's a broad question. DO you have your heart set on a certain language or area? I felt safe in Europe, Asia and Latin America. You can save money in Taiwan and Korea. Also if you have an MA, you'll be able to get a job in the Middle East, thinks are a bit difficult for women though I heard.

[nineisone]

Hi Minority girl,

I read a blog a while back about an African American ESL instructor in South Korea. I think I googled Korea+Expat+Blog to find it. She gave a pretty good impression of living there and a rebuttal to the mostly Caucasian bloggers who have branded Korea as the most racist of all far east nations.

As naturegirl alluded to, if your credentials are good you can land about anywhere. Mexico, Costa Rica, and Chile seem to have the most developed and plentiful ESL markets. I could vouch for Costa Rica as being easy on 1st time Latin American travelers as it is relatively safe, friendly, and easier to accomplish day to day living without a lot of needed Spanish. I used it as a base for my travels through the Central American isthumus.

Good luck...........

[MELEE]

Mexico sounds like a good choice for you. Over on the Mexico forum, there were a couple of threads on minorities in Mexico fairly recently, come on over and have a read.

[Justin Trullinger]

There's plenty of work for teachers in most of the Andean countries- including Ecuador, which is really my area of expertise. But a teacher with a masters is likely to find work in many places.

I've lived in Quito for a while, and spent a fair bit of time in NY- overall, I think QUito compares favourably in terms of safety. We get a fair number of foreigners (and locals) who complain about how dangerous it is- but most of them come from small, rural towns. If you're used to cities, you can handle Quito.

Gotta warn you though- stereoptypes abound. There is a fairly large Afro-Ecuadorian population here, and a fair amount of discrimination against them. While in this, as in many things, foreigners get cut a certain amount of slack, too many people here still believe that an English speaker should be a white person, preferably with blond hair and blue eyes. If you were to come here, you'd find work, with your qualifications. But you could count on spending a lot of time being asked (without rancor or bad intentions, for the most part) where you're really from. You'll run into some racism, and, in my opinion, a lot of other things that look like racism at first glance, and might not be.

Ecuadorians are much less sensitive about politically correct language than North Americans- in some ways, this can be refreshing, but it does mean that they are a LOT less shy about referring to people by physical characteristics. I have a student whose classmates (who are also his co-workers of many years) refer to him as "negro." To an american ear like mine, it seems a bit racist. But they also refer to me as "pelado." (Literally, "skinned" or "peeled," used to refer to bald guys like me.) My predecessor was refered to as "fat." It took some getting used to.

I'm not trying to scare you off. On the contrary, I feel like minority teachers can do some really valuable work here, in terms of letting students know about the many varieties of "English speakers" the world holds, and reinforcing the values of multi-culture versus mono-culture. It would be great to have you teaching in Quito.

But it isn't for the faint of heart, or the thin skinned.


All the best,
Justin

[matttheboy]

It's true that a lot of people in South America just cannot grasp the concept that a black or asian person can be english, french, american etc. I met a black german girl in buenos aires and no matter how many times she told people she was german, they refused to believe her. they believed she was born in germany, grew up in germany and lived in germany but insisted she was actually from Cameroon where her parents were originally from. This kind of stubborness is really common here.

I had the same problem with my girlfriend's little sister (13 years old)-i was telling her about an ex girlfriend, half italian, half indian but 100% english and she couldn't get her head around it. She kept insisting my ex was not english because her parents/ancestors were not originally from england. So i asked her where Will Smith was from. 'Oh, he's american.' I think she got the point.

So it's often not outright racism (although that obviously exists, just like anywhere). It's usually a sort of ignorance which i imagine can become very tiresome if you're on the receiving end of it- but it's not usually malicious.