‘Tis the season for deck-the-halls, family reunions, holiday-making and recruitment fairs for international teachers.

Unlike other professions, in which you find a new job before resigning from your present one, international teachers often have to announce their plans for the following school year before they head off for Christmas vacation. In our case, the deadline was Dec. 15. At that point, we either had to sign a contract to stay another year at Vientiane International School in Laos … or not sign it. An unsigned contract meant the school director could start advertising to fill our teaching positions, which meant we would be unemployed for the 2011-12 school year with no real prospects.

After NOT signing the contracts on Dec. 15, Tony and I promptly had a mental breakdown that segued into weeks of unpredictable fireworks of stress, second-guessing and desperation. With two mortgages and a 20-foot container worth of household goods to move from Laos, we needed to land not just any old job, but jobs with a substantial compensation package. The pressure was on.

We registered with two recruitment organizations: International Schools Services and Search Associates, which provide online databases to match schools and teachers. Many schools contact teachers via email or Skype, conduct interviews and hire for the following school year before Christmas. Most schools also attend job fairs, which take place all over the world starting in January and give teachers and recruiters the opportunity to meet face-to-face.

I checked the job postings every day, emailed schools with openings in ESL and English, cried every time I got no response (which was most of the time), and rejoiced with every automated “Thanks for your application. We’ll be in touch.” email that came back. My complete confidence that we would get hired before the job fairs slowly waned, and I reluctantly registered for both the ISS and Search fairs, scheduled to take place in Bangkok Jan. 4-12.

As we were packing for Bangkok on Jan. 3, Tony and I felt glum. Our goal was to find positions at a big, high-caliber international school with an excellent reputation. According to the databases, there were exactly TWO with jobs in our teaching fields: one in Saudi Arabia and one in Shanghai. Knowing competition for those positions would be fierce, and knowing that schools often look for hard-to-fill subject area teachers first (chemistry, math, middle school specialists, and for some reason this year – P.E.), we feared some other couple would sashay into the fair with their Chemistry-ESL or Math-English credentials and steal our jobs.

Tuesday morning, we checked in to the ISS job fair at the Shangri-La Hotel in Bangkok. On Wednesday, teachers lined up nervously in the hall outside the ballroom, where recruiters from around 175 schools sat in alphabetical order by country at tables lining the perimeter of the room. At 8 a.m. sharp, the doors opened, and we all filed in like cattle, quickly dashing to find the schools that had advertised jobs in our subject areas. Right off the bat, we discovered the Saudi school had already filled its ESL position. We sprinted to the Shanghai school, which signed us up for an interview later that day.

As we stood in line for a school in Indonesia, I wistfully glanced at the table for the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India, one of my dream schools. They had positions posted for ESL and English weeks ago but filled their English job early. The day they pulled the English job off the database was a day of many tears and hopeless resignation on my part. Imagine my surprise when I saw their job list at the sign-up session included a position for high school English! I quickly hopped out of the Indonesia line and knocked a few people out of the way to cut to the front of the AES line. Shrieking with excitement, I greeted Elementary School Principal Susan Young. She and her husband, High School Principal Tim Boyer, have stellar reputations in the international community as mindful, fair, progressive administrators. Susan took a quick peek at our CV and then summoned Tim to schedule an interview with us.

Finally, we sauntered over to chat with the folks from Shanghai American School, where we had worked for four fantastic years. “We’re here to grovel for our old jobs back,” I said to Jeff Rosen, a friend and now middle school principal. He laughed and said he didn’t have positions for us at the Pudong campus but referred us to the administrators from the Puxi campus. Alan Knoblach, the assistant superintendent for Puxi, sighed, showed us his schedule (which was packed with back-to-back interviews from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.) and said he could meet with us right after the sign-up session.

By the end of the interview sign-up session, we had registered to meet with recruiters from five schools: Shanghai AS, AES in New Delhi, Shanghai Community International School, Xiamen International School (a small school in southern China), and Saudi Aramco Schools (a huge school district created for children of the Aramco oil company in Saudi Arabia). Things were looking up, but we were certainly not ready to celebrate.

Interviews take place in the recruiters’ hotel rooms, which feels a little weird at first. Fortunately, Shangri-La rooms have a nice little lounge space with a sofa and a couple chairs.

We met with Alan from Shanghai AS first, and he asked some good questions. At the end, it was clear he really wanted a middle school ESL teacher. I know I could do it, but the fact is I really prefer to teach the little guys in elementary. We appreciated that he threw us a bone and sacrificed his short break to meet with us, and it was good practice for the rest of the day.

All of our interviews went well, and we were genuinely impressed with all the recruiters and their schools. There was nothing to rival the weird experience we had two years ago when we interviewed with a recruiter from Kuwait while his wife slept in the bed! Halfway through our interview, he woke her up so she could sleepily show us her gold jewelry (which he must have thought was a selling point for his host country).

The AES (New Delhi) recruiters interviewed Tony and me separately, and I had probably the best interview of my life with Susan Young. She started by spelling out the school’s philosophy on classroom management and conflict resolution, based on the work of William Glasser. She described a learning environment where children are encouraged to make good choices and take responsibility for their actions, and all teachers are trained how to promote this behavior. She shared anecdotes that demonstrated the school’s commitment to collaboration and caring (including an initiative by a group of fourth-graders, who researched the health benefits of having recess before lunch and succeeded in getting the school’s schedule changed to do just that!). We discussed current research on language acquisition, homework and the value of play. She described professional learning communities, in which teachers explore issues they care about and make recommendations to administration. It became clear that this was a school that didn’t just talk the talk.

Later we received a note from AES Superintendent Bob Hetzel, who said he wanted to schedule a follow-up interview. We tried to call him, but got no answer. As I stood in the Shangri-La lobby with the house phone in my hand, he stepped out of the elevator.

“I was just calling you to set up a meeting!” I said and then joked, “How about now?”
“OK, now is good,” he said. We sat at a table in the lobby and had a nice chat about AES and our professional experiences. He asked what we loved best about teaching and seemed pleased with our answers. Before parting ways, he mentioned that he was checking our references, and we set up another meeting for the next morning. Fingers crossed!

By the end of the day, we were exhausted. We barely had time to come back to our hotel, shower, rest a bit and return to Shangri-La for the cocktail party. Despite the anxiety imposed by unemployment and uncertainty, we had a great time catching up with friends and colleagues from our years in Turkey and China, and we enjoyed getting to know other teachers and hearing about their lives in various parts of the world. It’s a great opportunity to meet administrators who may not have jobs for us this year but could be good connections in the future. As we left the party, the Shanghai Community International School recruiter said, “Check your mailbox downstairs. I left something for you.”

A contract! We were so thrilled and relieved to know we had jobs at a great school for next year. However, my heart was set on AES, and we decided to wait until after our follow-up meeting with them in the morning before committing to anything.

So, this morning we put on our dress-up clothes and trekked back to Shangri-La, where we ran into the AES administrators in the hallway an hour before our scheduled meeting.
“We’ll just wait for you in the lobby,” I said.
“Or we could just meet now,” said Superintendent Bob Hetzel. So once again, we had an impromptu meeting at some nearby sofas.
“We want you to come to AES,” said Bob, handing us a letter of intent and some other paperwork.
Tony and I both clapped and said, “Yay!” which led Bob, Susan and Tim to respond with claps and cheers of their own. Such an affirming moment! Asked if we had any questions, Tony and I were both a little too giddy to think straight. We said we would read over the paperwork and come back to attend their promotional presentation in the afternoon. We took the elevator to the rooms of the Shanghai AS and Shanghai ICS recruiters to thank them and tell them we had accepted the AES offer. We had already said thanks-but-no-thanks to XIS and received a thanks-but-no-thanks note from Saudi Aramco.

And now Tony’s at the pool and I’m writing and reliving this crazy experience.

For more about the American Embassy School in New Delhi, check out the website: http://aes.ac.in/splash.php

Here we are with our new employers. From left, High School Principal Tim Boyer, Elementary School Principal Susan Young, me, Director Robert Hetzel, Tony, Middle School Principal Barbara Sirotin.

The only bad news they gave us was the starting date for new teachers: July 26. Ugh, it’s going to be a short summer.

Of course, I’m ecstatic about the travel opportunities in India, too, and can hardly wait to get started. I can’t stop watching the Incredible India commercials, such as this one:

Time to go join Tony at the pool and relax for the first time in months!