Recognising Culture Shock When Teaching Overseas

Recognising culture shock for what it is and acknowledging which stage you’re in is the first step to lessening the grip it has on you.

For example, if you suddenly feel like you hate your new teaching job because of how hard it is to make the purchasing department understand what it is you’re trying to order, recognising that this as an effect of culture shock can help you adjust your behaviour and let it go before it cripples you.

When you first get to your new home you’ll feel happy to be there and everything you see or experience will be wonderful and new. This is the ‘honeymoon’ stage of culture shock and it feels great! It can last from several days to several months. This is the time where you’ll be sending loads of emails to your friend using words and phrases like ‘awesome’, ‘best decision I’ve ever made’, ‘don’t know why I didn’t do this years ago’.

Recognise this stage of culture shock and enjoy it.

Next comes the period of frustration, full of situations like the first example above. When you sink into this part of the cycle you’ll begin to dislike everything about your new home. It’ll be too hard, too smelly, too hot, too loud, and everything else ‘too’!

This is also when homesickness could strike you with a vengeance. You may find yourself developing a hostile attitude towards every one not of your own nationality and culture. Your old home will suddenly seem like the best place in the world and you may regret ever leaving it.


Strategies to cope with the stress of culture shock

1. Learn some of the local language before you leave home. You’ve signed a contract that means you’re going to be living in your host country for 1-2 years, learning the language will help you get around and make friends. Some great ways to learn the local language while you’re still at home…

2. Take time to get used to the new time zone, the different weather and smells, sounds etc.

3. Begin building friendships as soon as you arrive and meet the other new teachers. You’ll form a bond with these teachers in the first year especially because they’ll be coping with culture shock as well. This will be your support group.

4. Stay in touch with people you’ve left at home. In my most recent move I found the best medicine for the frustration phase was an email from my old colleagues telling me how unsatisfied they were at my previous school.

5. Cut yourself some slack. When you recognise the symptoms of culture shock, give yourself a break, watch a favourite movie, look at pictures from home, have a meal at your favourite restaurant. Revel in the great things you’re experiencing in your new home so that you can put your frustration in perspective.

Recognising culture shock when you're teaching overseas

Dealing with Culture Shock When You're Teaching Overseas

Culture shock is the term used to describe how people feel when they are exposed to an unfamiliar culture or way of life, and the feeling of disorientation and separateness they experience. It’s a condition that every teacher working overseas feels in varying degrees, whether they’re new to teaching abroad or old hands at it.

Luckily culture shock follows a fairly predictable cycle and there are a number of ways you can prepare for it and lessen the impact of it once you’ve made the move overseas.

Unfortunately, when describing culture shock, it comes across as a negative thing to be avoided at all costs, and I’ve just told you it’s inevitable for anyone wanting to teach abroad. It’s important for you to remember that teaching overseas is an opportunity to explore other cultures and enjoy a better teaching environment. Yes, you will experience culture shock, but you can manage this and it’s not all bad!

Factors that can contribute to culture shock are :
* People speaking a different language, dialect or with an unfamiliar accent.

* Dealing with a different currnecy, money that is a different colour, feel and value. Keeping track of exchange rates can become a tiresome chore when living abroad, so once you’ve received your first paycheck, don’t bother. Earn local, spend local!

* People behaving in unfamiliar ways, even local customs can vary from one end of a country to another.

* Spicy and/or unfamiliar food. You may need to substitute ‘like’ ingredients in your favourite recipes too.

* People staring at you, if you are in a country where your skin colour or facial features stand out as being different, this will happen.

On top of this you’ll be the new teacher in school, so the procedures and policies will be different to what you’re used to at home.

Teaching Jobs Abroad - choosing your referees and getting recommendation letters

When you're applying for a teaching job abroad, you have to have a killer application pack to sell yourself to the international school recruiter as being the best possible choice to fill the post they've got.

A big part of your teaching application pack is your referees and recommendation letters.

Some experts on resumes recommend that you do not include referees in your resume. I disagree and have never followed this advice. I always line up my referees prior to sending out my resume and get their permission to include their contact details at the bottom.

Why do I flout the advice of the experts? I don't think a recruiter who has over 100 resumes to read is at all interested in contacting me again in order to get the contact details of my referees.

My intention is that my resume will interest them to the point of wanting to know more about me... and that they should be able to do so easily and with the least amount of effort on their part. And so I provide the contact details of my referees at the bottom of my resume.

You should identify and include three referees. Not all recruiters will require three referees, but I have run across a number of recruitment services and international schools that do, so be prepared with three.

One of your referees must be your current or most recent head teacher/principal. The recruitment services that run the international teaching job fairs require one of your referees to be your current head teacher/principal. The other two could be any person that has a professional relationship with you.

Once you've identified who you wish to be your referees, you will need to approach them and ask their permission.

At this point you can also request that they write a recommendation letter for you too. Recommendation letters are like a window into your life for the recruiters. Through what your colleagues write about you the recruiter can get to know you a little.

The recommendations you get from your colleagues are pivotal. They must be of excellent quality and really show off your good points.

I've got some awesome recommendation letters by giving my referees a writing frame to help them. They appreciated the structure and I got great letters, a win-win situation.

Check out these recommendation letter writing frames...

How can I get a Police Clearance Certificate?

Information for NZ, Australia, the UK and the USA

In NZ you can get a copy of your Criminal Record from the Ministry of Justice by contacting the Privacy Unit of the Ministry of Justice in Wellington.

In the USA you can get a ‘Criminal Record Check’ from the local police. This will only cover the state in which you live, so if you’ve lived in a number of different states in recent time, then you should apply to the local police in those states as well.

In the UK you can apply for a ‘Subject Access – Conviction History,” which is a record of any convictions you have, from your local police station. This is the document that you can obtain yourself under the privacy laws. Your other option, if you are currently employed, is to ask your employer to request a Criminal Records Bureau check, which involves a more rigorous search of your record.

In Australia the Australian Federal Police in Canberra can issue a ‘National Police Clearance Certificate’ which covers all states and territories except Queensland. If you live in Queensland you’ll need to contact the Queensland Police Service directly.

Teaching Jobs Overseas - Police Clearance Certificates

Make sure that your teaching career isn’t brought to an abrupt end because you’re unable to prove you haven’t got any convictions that would make you a danger to children. Here’s why you MUST get a police clearance certificate when you teach abroad…

Police clearance certificates are as important to international teachers as their passports. Why? Without a police clearance certificate many countries will not allow teachers to work with children.

The clearance certificate goes by many different names; what you’re looking for is an official document that records any convictions on your criminal record. Regardless of whether you have any convictions or not, you will be required to produce official evidence that your record is clear.

If you record is not clear you may still be able to teach abroad, but you will need to find out which countries will grant you a work permit with the convictions you have.

More rigorous background checks for foreign teachers applying to work in Thailand have been put in place because of a recent high profile arrest of an American teacher by American immigration officers in August 2006. The teacher was taken back to the States for questioning in a murder investigation.

Once you’ve obtained your police clearance certificate, take it with you when you move overseas. It’s one of those important documents you should always be able to lay your hands on. A clearance certificate is one of my top 10 things to take when moving abroad. You’ll need to have the original with you; it’s not one of the documents you can carry in digital format.

When you are nearing the end of you first overseas teaching contract start making enquiries about what you need to do to obtain a clearance certificate from the police in the country you’ve been teaching in. This is important! When you’re teaching abroad it’s important you maintain an unbroken chain of police clearance certificates or the equivalent.

Should you eventually desire to return home and pick up your teaching career there, you’ll need to supply the clearance certificates you’ve collected whilst working abroad. A consequence of not being able to produce a record of your conviction history could be that you’re unable to continue working in the education industry as a teacher when you return home.

Teaching Overseas and Police Clearance Certificates