Job Discussion Forums

[tvik]

does anyone have experience working in antalya???
are there jobs there?

[dmb]

tvik, this has been asked a few times... and there aren't that many leads. Have a search or look on mymerhaba. From memory the work tends to be seasonal or privates.

[tararu]

I think that TED has a school down there.

[yaramaz]

They do indeed. Our ghost worked there for, well, a spell. Maybe ask him how his month went.

[tararu]

I could take a wild stab in the dark and say he didnt like it.

[yaramaz]

Um, yeah, and he was fired for allowing a child to fling itself at the blackboard. (I will admit that kolej kids can be a handful- my 2 years at TED put me off teaching kids for quite a while, but it wasn't totally unbearable. )

[ghost]

If you have "real" teaching credentials (B.Ed. or PGCE) there are 3 private "Kolej" in the west part of the city....all pretty close to the huge Migros shopping area. Having said that, ghost knows of teachers without those credentials who were taken......the credentials will get you in the door, but class management skills in a chaotic environment will help you last your contract.

There is "Antalya Kolej" (affiliated to the International schools association of schools), "Akdeniz Kolej" and another Kolej...but forget the name (think it also starts with an "A").

Antalya Kolej has the best conditions, facilities and pay....but if you want to avoid high stress, you should steer clear of the primary section, which ghost knows something about. You should aim for the secondary school, and the "academic" section where students are hand picked for their advanced classes. Typically, in any given year, there are at least 2 firings of foreign teachers per year at Antaly Kolej, not to mention people who resign at Christmas or before. There are real issues there to do with discipline, but at the end of the day, we (the foreign teachers) are small players in the overall equation, as the parents pay big bucks (or lira) to have their kids "educated" there.

On a side note - the Antalya Kolej female basketball team is one of the best in the country, run by the famous and feared coach - Nuri Koc. Watching the practices, was the highlight of ghost's stay at A.K., although it felt a lot of sympathy for the poor female players who were constantly berated and humiliated by Mr Koc....

The Director has now moved to the new TED Kolej, located on the other side of the city, near the Airport....but that is a noisy area to live in, for obvious reasons....and even the teachers at Antalya Kolej will attest to that, as their apartments are located near the airport, and your t.v. programs will be compromised by the noise and rumbles emanating from the plane traffic...basically every 5 minutes in the 'warm' months.

Aside from those 4 Kolejiler....there is the University, located (again) near Migros, and then there are a few language schools in the centre of town, including the "Amerkan Kultur" language school, run by a friendly chap by the name of Halil Cil....who also runs schools in Eskisehir and Istanbul....very enterprising chap, with fluent English....and a new baby in the house.

There are, surprisingly, very few language schools in Antalya, for a city of its size, and those that do exist tend to be picky and not very keen on hiring foreign teachers...and the pay and conditions tend to be much less compared with what is on offer in Istanbul/Izmir/Ankara.

Yes, Yaramaz's comments about ghost's tenure at the aforementioned school are correct, but everyone is different, and perhaps ghost failed because the fuse it was born with happens to be quite short....with a longer fuse you might be more successful.

ghost, substitute teacher, French Montreal school board

[tvik]

thank you for such a comprehensive answer. i thought that antalya might be a pleasant place to live. it was the city that first made me partial to the country