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scot47
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343
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 Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 12:06 pm Post subject: |
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| The tribe of scot47 continues to increase. I am a great-grandfather now. |
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Jmbf
Joined: 29 Jun 2014
Posts: 663
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| Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 12:44 pm Post subject: |
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| scot47 wrote: |
| The tribe of scot47 continues to increase. I am a great-grandfather now. |
Congratulations! |
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naturegirl321
Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 9041
Location: home sweet home
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| Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 1:22 pm Post subject: |
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| nomad soul wrote: |
Hi, NG! Congrats on your marriage and new career path.  |
Thanks! It's education related. But not TEFL. I became a childbirth educator, postpartum doula, Dunstan Baby Language educator, and breastfeeding educator. Almost done with my La Leche League leader paperwork as well. Taking a massage cert class now and will be doing infant massage later. Also have plans to do fertility classes so that I can become a fertility doula as well. Got married this summer after a very fast courtship. It just all fell into place. |
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johnslat
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
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| Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 1:48 pm Post subject: |
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Dear scot47,
Welcome to the GGF Club. What took you so long? I've been one for nine years. 
Regards,
John |
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nomad soul
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
Posts: 11454
Location: The real world
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| Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 2:56 pm Post subject: |
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| scot47 wrote: |
| The tribe of scot47 continues to increase. I am a great-grandfather now. |
Oh, baby! You're now what my nephew refers to as "great papa."
Boy? Girl? Name? |
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nomad soul
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
Posts: 11454
Location: The real world
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| Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 2:58 pm Post subject: |
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| naturegirl321 wrote: |
| I became a childbirth educator, postpartum doula, Dunstan Baby Language educator, and breastfeeding educator. Almost done with my La Leche League leader paperwork as well. Taking a massage cert class now and will be doing infant massage later. Also have plans to do fertility classes so that I can become a fertility doula as well. Got married this summer after a very fast courtship. It just all fell into place. |
That's super! I remember you mentioning your interest in childbirth education a couple of years back.
I'm familiar with Dunstan Baby Language and infant communication; I presented on baby sign language for my language acquisition course for my teaching degree. Keep us in the loop about your experiences with clients using DBL across cultures.
By the way, I too am following a slightly different path and recently finished a degree in educational technology (instructional and multimedia design, eLearning).
There is life after TEFL. The experience and transferable teaching skills aren't meaningless.
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scot47
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343
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| Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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John
I was a late starter
His name is a state secret. He is with his mother in Kasama in Northern Province, Zambia. |
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gregory999
Joined: 29 Jul 2015
Posts: 372
Location: 999
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Knedliki
Joined: 08 May 2015
Posts: 160
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| Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2016 7:14 am Post subject: |
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| scot47 wrote: |
His name is a state secret. |
That's a funny name for a baby. |
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scot47
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343
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| Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2016 9:05 am Post subject: |
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We had considered "Melsor" but I am informed that name is out of fashion.
Marx
Engels
Lenin
Stalin
October
Revolution.
As are many of these -
http://www.soviet-empire.com/ussr/viewtopic.php?t=34446
Last edited by scot47 on Sat Mar 26, 2016 3:22 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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naturegirl321
Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 9041
Location: home sweet home
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| Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2016 5:21 am Post subject: |
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| nomad soul wrote: |
| naturegirl321 wrote: |
| I became a childbirth educator, postpartum doula, Dunstan Baby Language educator, and breastfeeding educator. Almost done with my La Leche League leader paperwork as well. Taking a massage cert class now and will be doing infant massage later. Also have plans to do fertility classes so that I can become a fertility doula as well. Got married this summer after a very fast courtship. It just all fell into place. |
That's super! I remember you mentioning your interest in childbirth education a couple of years back.
I'm familiar with Dunstan Baby Language and infant communication; I presented on baby sign language for my language acquisition course for my teaching degree. Keep us in the loop about your experiences with clients using DBL across cultures.
By the way, I too am following a slightly different path and recently finished a degree in educational technology (instructional and multimedia design, eLearning).
There is life after TEFL. The experience and transferable teaching skills aren't meaningless.
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That's pretty cool! I studied sign language in school and used it a bit with my daughter. I wish I had known about DBL when she was a baby. It would have helped a lot. It's neat when you hear a baby cry and you go, oh! I know what they want!
COngrats on your new degree! And yes, ther'es life after TEFL. |
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mambawamba
Joined: 12 Jun 2012
Posts: 311
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| Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2016 3:59 am Post subject: |
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Woah Naturegirl, congrats on everything! Glad to hear it worked out for you and love getting your Tender Embrace updates!
As for kids and teaching wages, of course it can be done even in low paid jobs but best to play it smart, either upscale your qualifications, go niche market or set up on your own.
It's when education for the kids kicks in that it's more of a worry. Then you start looking at jobs with subsidised school places, international schools, home schooling vs local education. The choices you have to make are more to do with what your own projected path in life are, is it a good idea to put your kid in a monolingual local school if you plan to go home or move to another country? If you move a lot then you have to balance consistency and educational need. |
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scot47
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343
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| Posted: Wed May 04, 2016 8:16 am Post subject: |
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| Go "home" ? Where is that ? like most TEFLers I long ago became a rootless cosmopolitan. |
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danshengou
Joined: 17 Feb 2016
Posts: 434
Location: A bizarre overcrowded hole
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| Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2016 9:44 pm Post subject: |
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| pooroldedgar wrote: |
Ahhh, can a ESLer raise a family. The age old question. Seems to me the two biggest issues of trying to make a normal career and have a family as an ESL teacher are going to schooling and saving for retirement. And as far schooling goes, it seems that you have four options:
A) Put them in the local government school.
B) Home school
C) Get a job with an education allowance.
D) Get a job at an international school they can attend.
For the first one, for many countries I think it wouldn't be an option. Both because they might not allow it and also because would you really want your child going to a public school in many areas of the world? Even the ones that have decent educations such as Korea or Japan seem brutal in other ways. So i doubt I would consider them.
Homeschooling is likely not as easy as it sounds, but I've had several colleagues do this. Not sure what happens when it's time for Junior to apply for colleges but clearly it is done.
As far as I know, getting a job with an educational allowance means getting a job in the Gulf. That was my strategy. As scot47 knows, I got a job in Dhahran. The plan was to live there and send my kid to an international school using the allowance. The money offered in KSA would have sent him to a respectable school, or, if we'd chosen we could have supplemented it be about 800 dollars a month to send him to a highfalutin one. Luckily, Gulf salaries make this feasible.
However, while KSA's ridiculous visa process pretty much shot that idea dead and now I'm going to be working in an International School in South East Asia. Well, an "international" school anyway. But just because it ain't the fanciest school in the world doesn't mean he won't get a decent education.
It's sounds weird, but the lifestyle we would have had in KSA and what we will have in SE Asia is likely highly comparable, despite the KSA salary being literally twice as much. In SE Asia if you can work your way up a little bit you can be making decent money. The only difference is that it doesn't really amount to much outside of South East Asia. So no spending every summer in the US, which KSA would have permitted.
Also, the retirement fund isn't really going to be there. I had thought that if I did 20 years in the gulf, I could retire to an island and enjoy my golden years. But now....I don't know.
Teaching english in southeast asia, the best retirement plan i can come up with it is basically to spend the next 30 years making sure my son is able to establish his own life, and that my wife has enough money for the rest of her life. Then, head to Sumatra, and wait for a nice night. And the the moon is just right, and everything is peaceful and right, I'll take some of Sumatra's wonderful magic mushrooms, down a couple glasses of arak, and go for one last swim.
An appropriate end to a life spent floating through the world... |
Good post! From what I've seen over the years, being a TEFL dad means the man is usually footing the bill for a foreign spouse too. So forget retirement and hope you can at least afford decent schooling. Financially, it is therefore a bad move having a kid unless you have these things covered. Because when you have no retirement income or can't find work in your golden years, taking the Sumatra swim might just be the only thing left. |
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nomad soul
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
Posts: 11454
Location: The real world
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| Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2016 3:44 am Post subject: |
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| pooroldedgar wrote: |
As far as I know, getting a job with an educational allowance means getting a job in the Gulf. That was my strategy. As scot47 knows, I got a job in Dhahran. The plan was to live there and send my kid to an international school using the allowance. The money offered in KSA would have sent him to a respectable school, or, if we'd chosen we could have supplemented it be about 800 dollars a month to send him to a highfalutin one. Luckily, Gulf salaries make this feasible.
However, while KSA's ridiculous visa process pretty much shot that idea dead and now I'm going to be working in an International School in South East Asia. Well, an "international" school anyway. But just because it ain't the fanciest school in the world doesn't mean he won't get a decent education.
It's sounds weird, but the lifestyle we would have had in KSA and what we will have in SE Asia is likely highly comparable, despite the KSA salary being literally twice as much. In SE Asia if you can work your way up a little bit you can be making decent money. The only difference is that it doesn't really amount to much outside of South East Asia. So no spending every summer in the US, which KSA would have permitted.
Also, the retirement fund isn't really going to be there. I had thought that if I did 20 years in the gulf, I could retire to an island and enjoy my golden years. But now....I don't know. |
My understanding is that the part of Saudi Arabia's visa process you considered "ridiculous" had to do with your BA (from what you referred to as a non-traditional/"hippie" US university) --- whether the Saudi Ministry of Education viewed it as an accepted/relevant major. Apparently, this ended up being an issue in terms of that Dhahran position.
To get those top salaries and benefits in the GCC, you'd pretty much need a TEFL-related MA, at minimum, to satisfy the degree requirement. Although it's not a substitute for the master's degree, a Delta adds some value and appeals to Gulf employers. Something to consider as you think about your family's future needs. In fact, anyone supporting a spouse and dependent children on one income should seriously plan on bumping up their qualifications regardless of where in the world they teach. |
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