You might have noticed that I didn’t post yesterday. I have a really neat tax post lined up but I’m just not feeling it enough to hit publish. Maybe it’ll get out by April.
Anyways. While sitting there, reading and re-reading the post, listening to my 45 newest iPod songs, I got a message from a friend about teaching abroad. My mind, as it is prone to do, began to wonder. While teaching abroad is something that was always a dream of mine when I was younger, I don’t feel that I would like teaching English. Math and social science are more my thing — two areas which are incompatible and almost impossible to join together.
However. There is one place where teachers of all disciplines are in demand: Africa.
Feeling as clever as can be, I started researching how to become a teacher in Africa. Well. Aside from “Volunteer Teacher” positions, there isn’t much out there. And here’s why “Volunteer Teaching” is never, ever, going to be my thing:
1. It’s expensive! We’re talking thousands of dollars to volunteer your time, plus airfare. A week-long Volunteer Tourism trip would likely cost double what I spent on my trip to Europe for half as long. Plus I’d have to work. Not, exactly what I’d like to do on my vacation. Even if it is to “help” the locals.
2. I’m generally against the whole “volunteer tourism” thing. Maybe it’s because I went to a school full of people who “want to help the Africans” but visiting for a week and taking a job from someone who’s there is not my idea of helping. This logic applies to the “building a house” area of Volunteer Tourism more so than the teaching area because there are actual handymen looking for work and some 20 year old who weighs 80lbs and spray-tans gets the “job” because she’s paying the house-building company!? *mind explosion*
3. If I’m going to go all the way to Africa to try and teach these kids who desperately want to learn, I will never want to come back to Canada. Have you been to a high school recently? Those kids don’t want to learn math or English or French. How can I be with people who respect and listen and then go to a Canadian school? Even if I decide that I don’t want to be a Canadian teacher, how can I leave those kids after a week? What can I possibly teach in a week? I doubt that I would even learn everyone’s name in that time.
So. Here’s a fun idea that I want to run by everyone: Once I have a large cushion to fall back on (which would make this a long-term goal/dream), can I just go to Africa and volunteer for free without an agency? Can I get a work visa and become a real teacher?
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Does Canada have an equivalent to the Peace Corps? I have a friend who spent several years in Africa with the peace corps and it was one of the defining experiences of her life. She actually met her future husband there, and he’s since come to the US and his life is so much different from the village in Africa where he was raised.
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No, we don’t. Canada loves to sit back and complain about the US and brag about how amazing we are in comparison. Meanwhile the US feeds the third world and sends hundreds of brigades of volunteers to make countries better.
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ESL teaching abroad. Try googling that. They pay for you to live in another country to teach English.
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Yeah, those are mainly in Asia and east Europe though, I’ve never seen ESL programmes for Africa.
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There is always a need for volunteers, anywhere, and those “volunteering agencies” are more than questionable imo. I would never pay to volunteer somewhere, if anything, I would agree not to have any impact on the community i.e. pay for my food. Last time I volunteers in Africa, the community hosted us in the school for free and we paid for food. Agencies just help you get a contact to meet a need but you can go by yourself, it simply takes a bit more research to find people who already did it or someone who lives there. In my case it was through a person who had emigrated in France and sent us to his native village.
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I’m not sold on the volunteer teaching thing either. Actually, the whole teaching thing in general. I would much rather have someone teach me. I would like to go to say, Norway and have some Norwegian volunteer to teach me about fjords. Volunteer student sounds much more appealing than volunteering teaching.
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I believe there’s a time and a place for volunteer tourism, but completely agree that it often displaces paid work in local economies. The flip side is that it usually permanently changes the perspective and behaviours of westerners, for the better.
There are a lot of different choices in Africa. I’m not 100% sure about teaching. A friend spent a lot of time volunteering in an orphanage in South Africa. The first time she went, it was via contacts from here, not a “paid volunteer experience.” She loved it over there, came home and then went back to do her master’s, with funding from Rotary. Of course, now she’s married and living in Joberg, but it’s been years now.
You can teach English, Korea is the most popular. Japan is popular as well, but not paid nearly as well. For Africa, I’ve had friends who’ve gone to Sierra Leone, Mali, Benin, Morocco and Kenya, all in various capacities. Most were pay your way there type situations, such as med students and engineers w/o borders.
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I don’t think this is quite what you’re looking for, but a friend of mine taught for 2 years in Africa at a school for children of missionaries and other expats. She taught math and Spanish at a Christian based school. Like I said, I don’t think this is quite what you’re looking for, but if you want more information I’d be happy to get the name of it – they might have connections to non-religious or other local schools, but honestly I have no idea.
Otherwise, the only people I know who have taught overseas have been teaching ESL…
I hope you can find something if you decide this is what you want to do down the road
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You could always go in as a paid professional with an international organization. They won’t pay a lot, but you cover some costs and it offers you a much different way of experiencing everything.
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