tl;dr it seems that my career in international teaching (mainly mathematics) is ending after nearly a decade, and I am struggling to understand how to find jobs/what to change careers to I’ll...
tl;dr it seems that my career in international teaching (mainly mathematics) is ending after nearly a decade, and I am struggling to understand how to find jobs/what to change careers to
I’ll apologize up front if the below is hard to follow. I get fairly emotional in private while talking about this situation as a whole, but I have tried to edit it as well as I can for clarity while not being too verbose (though would be happy to clarify questions in the comments).
I have been teaching internationally at Canadian international schools in Shanghai, South Korea, and the Hong Kong region for nearly a decade. This past September, I was brought into a meeting being told that I was being non-renewed (my teaching contract would not be renewed for the 2025/2026 academic school year). The reasons were…not at all related to performance. The main factor was that I took an interview in February 2024, after I signalled intent that I would like to stay at my current position, but before I had a signed contract from the school. I told someone I felt I could trust in leadership because the interview went well, and the way references work for safeguarding in this field I was under the impression they may get a call, and I did want to give the school a heads-up so that if I were to get an offer and leave they would have a good amount of time to get a replacement (visas and stuff can take a while, but they would have had plenty of time). The person in leadership said that me leaving would be a large loss for the school, but promised me they would keep the conversation confidential.
Which was a lie, I guess. They then told their superiors the next day. It almost got me fired on the spot, but since I had a mountain of evidence of being their top performing teacher over piles of data from 2016, at the time I was able to avoid that, and I was told that this would be put behind us and we could move forward.
Which was…also a lie. I knew that this may be an outcome but then the school was signalling to me that there was going to be room for me to move up the ladder. Naive of me to believe it probably, and has honestly taught me a lot about trusting leadership at any organizations (which may sound bitter, but I literally debated telling anyone in case this was going to be the outcome only to be proven right when I went against my gut).
The second main reason was the amount of sick days I used…when I got pneumonia and almost got hospitalized last academic year. Honestly, I work at a place with incredibly toxic leadership. Last year, a friend of mine was non-renewed when she was struggling at work because her mom passed away. Instead of supporting her, they took her grief and showed her the door. I could go on for a while, but this post is already getting lengthy. Many of us stayed in our positions simply due to economic imperative.
I had multiple colleagues try to save my job over the past few months (buddies at best, but mostly not even people I hang out with) to no avail. For those unfamiliar with the teaching field, to have teachers speak out instead of being agreeable with whatever is going on is incredibly rare. If there has been one silver lining it has been the outpour of support from basically my entire collegiate base that is showing evidence that I am a good teacher, or at least likable. I am also at least leaving with a stack of glowing references from everyone else over a decade-long career.
But the international teaching job market has changed significantly. I have always been hired on a new contract before Christmas, and this year I have been hearing next to nothing. I did hear from some “Tier 1 / Elite” level schools, with one interview process still ongoing, so I am confident that the problem was not necessarily my resume getting noticed. However, every time I have been passed over it was the same reasons of not having experience with a certain curriculum (country, IB, AP, whatever) or that I lost to some with a Bachelor’s or Masters that was specific to the subject area. I was originally humanities trained, with a Bachelor of Education, but got to teach Math in my first job and loved it so much I kept doing it. I was also able to teach Computer Science and Physical Education over my career, but I was really recently just leaning in to being a good Math teacher. Sometimes being passed over is due to visa requirements in certain countries (though this is rare), but schools also just seem to be unwilling to train in their curriculum/framework now. Now that the market is seemingly flooded, many pathways have been lost to me. As we enter February, job postings will likely dry up based on what I observed from the market last year. The decline in postings has already been occurring comparing January to the few months before.
While I am not fully giving up, it has left me seriously thinking about how worth it is to stay in this field? If good performance never really seems rewarded, and your fate can be left up to a person that can be vindictive, perhaps moving to a different field and learning the politics and ways to succeed may be the better move. After a decade of experience in teaching, I can’t seemingly maintain my current compensation package without getting specific experience, so it seems it may be foolish to remain on this path. To do so, would mean going to a smaller school, in an undesirable location, away from the relationships and life I have built. If it means heading back to entry level, is it worth investing more into this career? I could get a Masters in Mathematics Education, but then does it matter? I take a year off, try to apply again (in which there may not even be openings), but perhaps now I still lose to someone with specific curricular experience. It seems like a treadmill and race I would not be able to keep up with. Due to the way international teaching works there is very limited movement, and it’s not like other careers where hiring and resignations are more fluid throughout the year (and that you can look and take interviews privately without fear of reprisal, unlike this career apparently).
The problem with a career change, as I see it, is I am a single, mid-30’s dude, with all the social expectations of providing for myself and others that come with that. If this career is ending, I need to make a switch with some combination of being able to learn fast and leveraging my past experience and skill set and try to make $100,000 USD per year after a few years of just grinding or whatever. Before I entered teaching I took a year or two off after high school and worked with the Canadian Department of National Defence as a civilian, and then a shipping company while I was in University (and at the shipping company I overhauled the branch’s financial reporting and tracking system which then got rolled out nationwide - I am pretty proud of doing that at 21 with literally no experience). Not against working hard or doing whatever I need to do. I currently make $95,000 net which is kind of how I come up with this number. It’s the number I have come up with considering retirement, probably having to take care of my parents, and not just surviving. I would really like to work remote or from home, though understand I may have to work towards earning that privilege.
Over the past two years, I finished the two courses from Google/Coursera on Project Management and Data Analytics out of sheer curiosity. Honestly, I think I lean more towards the former rather than the latter, and have experience over my career that I could repurpose into work artifacts (I have been in charge of learning management system rollouts, training, curriculum overhauls, etc. that I could probably move into a Project Management context). I could also get my CAPM, though Pearson/PMI won’t let me write the exam online from my current location.
One hard part is that my life is in Hong Kong. My friends, relationships, all of that. I am trying to figure out a way to stay here as well, so that I am not socially isolated. Alternatively, placing myself in a position/career/company that could allow me to get back in short order. There is really nothing left for me back in Canada. I think that has been the most difficult thing about this, that I have cried about in the times I can get to myself.
The other hard part is that I have not looked for a job outside of international teaching in nearly a decade, and I have absolutely no idea how it works for other careers and fields. I know LinkedIn exists, and have tried to update mine. But I really do just need…guidance on what could be a best potential route if there is anyone that could provide something. I found when searching stuff online that most advice was just…vague.
If you made it through reading this far, thank you for taking the time. I hope my writing is coming across reasonably well. Writing this all at five in the morning after I was unable to sleep again. I understand that I will likely have to work hard to get to the level I am currently at again, and do feel confident in my ability to learn (my entire career has been taking something I don’t know, learning it, teaching it to others/training, and getting results).