If you are just getting started on your teaching adventure, it is important to note that “teaching abroad” encompasses many, many different kinds of opportunities. I don’t mean just the type of students or the pay, either, but also the working conditions, requirements, responsibilities, benefits, expectations, etc. Understanding the difference between the different kinds of teaching jobs abroad is the key to ending up in a situation that you are happy in.

Many teachers enter their first teaching position expecting to “feel it out” and to explore a new culture, only to find that they took a position that demands a high degree of expertise and contact hours. Conversely, experienced teachers often accept positions abroad expecting a great deal of responsibility and autonomy, only to find out that they are stuck taking a back seat to a native counterpart. Both will end up unhappy right? But if they understood the industry better (and perhaps swapped positions), they could have both ended up in a job that suited them much, much better.

To help you understand the different kinds of teaching jobs abroad, I’ve compiled a list of the most common ones. I’ve also included a few tips on where to go looking for them:

Language Schools.

This is by far the most common type of teaching job abroad. You can find them in just about every country that employs foreign English teachers. They are typically open from late morning/early afternoon to late evening, e.g. 11 – 8. The reason for this being students are coming either after school or after work. You will usually teach school-aged children of all ages, but many also mix in adult lessons as well. It is not uncommon to have to work Saturday and/or Sunday and have two weekdays off as your weekend. There is also a difference between corporate owned language schools vs. privately owned ones, mainly being the amount of autonomy over the content you teach in your classes. Corporate language school curriculums tend to be VERY proscribed. Best countries for language school jobs: Japan, Korea, Indonesia.

Public Schools.

Teaching in public schools looks very different from country to country. The reason for this being each country has a different threshold of tolerance regarding how comfortable they are letting (relatively) unqualified people waltz into their schools and teach their children. It can range from letting you come in and let you join the ranks of the teaching cadre, to bringing you in the classroom in a very controlled way and essentially aiding a “qualified” native teacher, and everything in between. Typically the more well-off the country is, the more trivialized your role will be, unless you hold proper teaching credentials. Korea has a great government program called EPIK that recruits native speakers with or without teaching certificates to “co-teach” in their public schools, while Hong Kong has an amazing program called the NET scheme to recruit credentialed teachers from English speaking countries. Best Countries for public school jobs: Korea, Hong Kong, Japan (if direct hire).

Universities.

Universities jobs are beloved by all for their (typically) low number of contact hours. It’s also a good way to interact with adult students, and you are generally given more autonomy over what you teach than in the first two types of schools. In most cases, though, university jobs for English teachers are different from what you might expect. In the vast majority of cases, you will essentially teach in a general-education sort of institute run within the university system to offer English classes to students for a variety of purposes. Either the students want to get into a program where English is needed, or their requisite score in English was below standard when they were admitted to the university. You can identify whether this is the case or not because the entity will often have the word “institute” attached to it, i.e. the English Language Institute of Seoul University. Best countries for uni jobs: China, Thailand, Middle East.

Technical Institutes.

This is a big catch-all category that encompasses schools that sort of look like a cross between a private language school and a university. They are typically set up by private companies who are wanting to train their workers – or future workers – in English because they may need it in some capacity in the future. They can also be a sort of vocational school run by the government, it just depends on the country. Quite common in the oil industry, they also exist for soldiers, telecommunications workers, etc. These jobs tend to pay more than the other types of teaching jobs mentioned, but by and large they can be quite challenging with a lot of contact hours. Best countries for jobs at technical institutes: Middle East, China.

Military.

 I feel like I had to throw this one in, even though it is not as common as the other kinds of opportunities. If you have read my bio, you know that I have spent a large chunk of my career teaching in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, mostly on military contracts. In short: governments who sell weapons systems or training programs to other countries also need to include language training to complete the package. Why? Well, if the US government sells a round of F-15 fighter planes to a country, they need to provide training to that country on how to use them. This includes pilot training and maintenance training, which will usually be done in English. This is where you come in. It’s a complicated dynamic one which I explain more in my article on what it’s like to teach for the military. Best countries for jobs working with the military: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan.

And there you have it. Five kinds of teaching jobs abroad that are obviously quite different. Which one is best for you depends on the age of the students you are looking to teach and the conditions that you are looking to teach under. In my opinion, it would be best to start with the least taxing/least amount of responsibility and then go deeper if you think it suits you. You can always level up by doing a TESOL certification or getting your teaching license if you decide you want to stay for the long term.