Finding it Hard to Secure a Teaching Job? How About Zimbabwe?

English teaching opportunities exist in almost all developing markets.

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For young, adventuresome teaching graduates, the prospects have never looked better—that is, in the international education markets. The competition for new teaching jobs at home is intense. In many international markets, however, teachers have a lot of choice. Before settling down with a family, why not see the world?  If you have a family, take the opportunity to immerse them in new cultures. English teaching opportunities exist in almost all developing markets. Here is a quick world view of interesting teaching markets. 

Asia

Asia continues to be the number one market for teachers and tutors. In China, 400 million people, or one third of the population, are studying English.* The demand for native English teachers is so high that many schools ask Europeans to feign an American or British identity.  Just a few years ago, until recently being eclipsed by China, South Korea spent the most amount of money on English education in the world.

Creative distance learning solutions are being developed to compensate for the teacher shortage but, without a doubt, a live in-person English teacher is preferable. South Korean schools have introduced robots that teach English to the classroom. EngKey, for example, is a robot whose face is a monitor from which a live teacher provides English lessons, and singing and dancing.** Through online learning, some schools have hundreds of students linked into one English tutoring session. This is more common in China where schools are scrambling to meet the demand. 

Africa

Humanitarian teaching opportunities provide an opportunity to gain multicultural teaching experience. Zimbabwe has 15,000 vacant teaching positions. It is not currently churning enough teachers out of its teaching schools and, therefore, suffers from a brain drain to other parts of Africa, where inflation does not take such a big chunk out of salaries. With a high level of poverty, AIDs and corruption, this former British colony has had a harder time attracting foreign teachers. It is an opportunity for those who truly want to make a difference in the lives of Zimbabwean children.  Some teachers choose to take these more challenging humanitarian assignments on a short-term basis, such as for a summer or a semester.

Middle East

Toronto-based TeachAway says it will place 10,000 teachers in the Middle East this year. There are plenty of attractive and high paying teaching opportunities in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait. These are conservative Islamic countries that, for some, can be a very uncomfortable living situation. For the conservative teacher, however, you will enjoy a high standard of living and warm climate in these oil rich countries which, despite their strict moral codes, have large English-speaking expat communities. Salaries are high and the cost of living low. Wealthy cosmopolitan cities such as Dubai have traditionally attracted families. The high quality of life is attracting American teachers with 10 or 15 years of experience and families in tow who have been struggling to find work in Western countries due to budget cuts.

Go ahead! Throw a dart at a map of the world. The opportunities are so numerous that you are likely to hit an attractive teaching job opportunity. 

*http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ugly-truth-about-english-teachers-in-china-2011-7

**http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/South-Korean-Students-Learn-English-from-Robot-Teacher-117640783.html

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