Update of excitement!

Well now that our FBI background checks have been received (and subsequently shipped out again) we can finally do the very important step of uploading our resumes to an ESL site.  We personally chose http://www.eslcafe.com/ otherwise known as Dave's ESL Cafe.  It took about two days for our resume to be posted, but after it was we were bombarded by letters of interest.  We also received a few phone calls so please if you are going to post your resume specify that you want to be contacted by email.
We of course had to wade through the scams such as "pay us $40 dollars and we will give you tons of schools to teach at!" That of course means pay us $40 dollars and we will never contact you again (if we don't steal more).  It is always good to be aware of the schemes people will try to pull to leech some money out of someone who really wants to teach overseas.  The best advice is to always comb through blacklisting sites and try to see if any opportunities you are presented match up with the horror stories on the blacklist sites.
Currently it seems like the best opportunities we've been offered have been in the Yongin City in the Gyonggido providence.  It is about an 45 minutes from Seoul, and about an hour and a half from our friends who are teaching in Goyang.  We will keep this blog updated on our steady progress towards teaching in Korea.  

The mail is full of surprises!

So yesterday I got my passport back again. This is good news because you need a passport to travel overseas, but it also has my new married name on it! Hurray!  That was something I was a little worried about and still sort of am as some of my documentation will have my new last name and some will have my maiden name. I'm confident that it should sort itself out though. 

What else have I been doing lately? Well, aside from working and volunteering at the Children's Museum with Zach, I have actually been preparing in a different sort of way. Because we will be packing for a year, I've been spending a good amount of time loading up my Kindle Keyboard with books so that I won't have any lack of reading material while on the way to/from and while over in South Korea.  I have been trying to cut back my book collection at home and took a good number of boxes to Half Price Books, but now I definitely need to make up for it. 

Zach is getting a Kindle too for his birthday, so I'm also trying to help him find some reading material for it. Let's just say that the Amazon eBook Store is full of interesting surprises. Think along the lines of "oh dear, did someone actually write THAT?" The answer is yes. Someone, somewhere, has thought up some sort of notion that you most likely find (interesting?) utterly ridiculous, to which you just acknowledge that it's not your cup of tea and continue on your search. Speaking of reading, anyone have any good recommendations for books or stories for me to take along?

TEFL certs: a commentary

One of the little known parts about getting a job overseas, despite only usually needing a 4 year degree is that some places require a TEFL certificate.  TEFL stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and programs generally come in many different hour packages both in classroom and online.  Manda and I decided to do a 120 hour online version from the company i-to-i.

The courses are designed to do a few basic things, teach you the basics of teaching, give you some ideas for lessons you may teach, give you cultural context to your teaching so you don't look like a moron, and finally help you find a job.  Note that it does do a few of these things, it helps you prepare for teaching, and it does give you ideas for lessons, but it does not help you find a job and they are filthy sexy liars of they say otherwise.

When looking into online courses you should know that most programs that require a TEFL cert (such as teaching in public schools in South Korea) require at least 100 hours.  Anything less is largely useless, other than to get yourself into the practice of creating lesson plans for your students.  You should obviously research the programs to find which would be the best fit for you.  At least with the course that Amanda and I took we had 90 days to complete the certification(s) which was more than enough, but if you are busy with full time work, or other large commitments it may be harder for you.

So about the course itself, well other than letting me know that my grammar awareness is absolutely awful it was very useful and broke down the ideas of what it is like to be a teacher step by step with modules.  Broken up by "checkpoints" which are basically open ended essay tests that test your knowledge of the subject matter you were just taught.

There are some issues with the course that I'd like to talk about.  The checkpoints are by in large hard, and some of the questions are tricky for the purpose of screwing you over which kind of sucks.  That I do not have a problem with, when you get a question wrong you should fix, or re-adjust your answer to fit the situation better.  The problem is that you get three chances total to get everything correct on these checkpoints, which is a problem when the questions can be extremely vague.
The tutors aren't any help either, if you get something wrong they will be "This is not correct do it again."  That is not a helpful statement when it comes to open ended essay questions!  It doesn't address what is wrong or what needs to be changed, or well anything helpful.  Funnily enough while doing a certain checkpoint with Amanda (we answered the same since it wasn't an open ended question) the tutor graded my test wrong but hers correctly.

While I would recommend a course for those who need to learn how to teach English as a second language, be ready for some frustration unless you do your homework well.  I know I wish I had!

Packing preparations, take one

Will South Korea have cool holiday dinos like this fellow? 

Probably not! I'd better remember to pack my own!

Holiday dinosaurs aside, it's become very apparent to me that when we get ready to head overseas we'd better remember to pack some important items or have them sent to us. Now, the importance of some of these items will probably vary from person to person, but I am personally aware of some things I know that absolutely must be packed.

There are several reasons for keeping this in mind and preparing ahead of time, ranging from the obvious cultural preferences and norms in their society vs. our own personal cultural preferences and habits to something such as the size of clothes in that country or price of the item here vs. there. It's these kind of things that make you want to plan ahead and make sure you know what to expect and what your needs are. 

One big thing I have to keep in mind is that clothing for me, as a 5'9" tall woman, is that I will need to get most of my clothes from home and plan to take them with me. Finding clothes (and shoes!) that fit over there for me sounds as though it is a definite challenge. Similarly, through reading and researching I also discovered that deodorant is more expensive in South Korea and probably something we will want to take with us. Who would have thought?

That said, this is a sort of list for me, which will be expanding as the research progresses and we learn more from our friends who are currently living in South Korea. As of right now we've been informed by them that the towels there are small, so we should bring our own. Another thing they mentioned is that fitted sheets that we would normally use here in the US are hard to come by, so if we want them it's another thing that we should bring with us. 

Another big thing I am already gearing up for is pictures. I have seen lots of responders saying that the kids in the classroom love to see what things are like at "home", so I am planning on having multiple albums to bring along. Along with that, we've been making trips to Goodwill for both clothing and educational items such as books (I found a Wiggles CD which I thought could be fun for little ones, I know my daycare kiddos loved the Wiggles), teaching help, and various other things. 

That's all for now, this will be an ever developing list for me. One I will definitely put into list form in a later post. 

What is an apostille and why do I need it?

Today, I wanted to take a look at one of the necessary steps for preparing and/or teaching overseas, which is that whole apostilling (is that even a word?) process. Before we started this whole process I had never even heard of the word apostille, so obviously I had no idea how important it is.

So what is an apostille? Through some research we determined that an apostille basically just verifies our documents for international use. That includes things such as degrees, those spiffy FBI background checks, and apostilles are used for a variety of other things too.

Per the FBI website:  "*An apostille is a certification that a document has been “legalized” or “authenticated” by the issuing agency through a process in which various seals are placed on the document."

In our case, after the FBI background checks are completed and make their return they have to be sent right back out again to be apostilled. For something like the background checks, the apostille has to be done by the US Secretary of State and there is a fee associated with the apostille. This process can take a few weeks, but not as long as the background checks themselves.

Now, in the case of this apostille, there are several options. You can expedite the process by using priority mail or some sort of speedy shipping option (with tracking as desired along with self addressed and stamped envelopes for the return trip) or you can send them normally, if you aren't in any particular hurry. Just be prepared for the price increase as you take advantage of faster shipping options. You also have the option of driving to the Department of State during their brief working hours, convincing a friend or relative to do it for you, or paying an actual agency that does it to take care of the apostille. In our case, as soon as the background checks return, they are going out in the mail for the end of the worst of the paperwork.

There is one more leg to go with the apostille process though. You also need to get a copy of your degree notarized and apostilled too. The notary can be completed by any notary (just make sure it's done right!), but then it must be sent to the Secretary of State of the state that the notary was completed in. It doesn't matter if your degree is from another state, but the notary and apostille must be completed in the same state.

So we had the notary done locally here in Indiana and it was shipped out to the Secretary of State in Indianapolis, Indiana shortly after. We did run into a hitch though, and that was due to the notary public screwing things up so that they were sent back to us incomplete. Thankfully we were able to go to the shipping store where the corrections were made and shipped out without costing us even more money. We're hoping to get them back soon.

As a side note, we ran into another hitch with the degrees and that was due to the UPS losing them in the process of sending them from Indianapolis to about an hour North. Not cool UPS. Claims have been filed, however, and we are expecting them soon.

FBI background checks and you

So this is very step is the literal bottleneck of everything having to do with teaching language overseas.  The FBI check ensure that your potential employer overseas knows you are not dangerous or have legal baggage attached to you.  It isn't a judgmental thing, it is just business.  So here is what you need to get things done.

At one time all you needed were state background checks to work overseas.  However, much like everything else pedophiles ruined it by jumping one state over and getting their checks done in a state where there name wasn't plastered all over familywatchdog.us.

First you need to fill out the FBI check form which you can find here.  
You also need to write out on the application form that you are planning to get your check apostilled and that you need the seal and signature of a division official of the FBI so that it can be apostilled.  Make sure to write on your background check form
By the way the way you pronounce apostilled is ah - poss - steal - ed, the more you know!

Next you need to get your finger prints done.  This step actually caused Manda and I a lot of grief when we attempted to get our finger prints done at a local police station.  The woman seemed suspicious of why we wanted to get them done, and wouldn't cooperate when we asked to get more information about where we could actually do them.  Luckily there was a prison near by so all we had to do was commit a felony and we were on our way to getting our prints done!
In actuality we visited the Sheriffs office which was connect to the prison which let us do our finger prints for free (where as you can get charged by some places).  We also printed out our cards using card stock, however I think it would be best to call ahead and see if your local Sheriff's office or perhaps state police office has any cards on hand.

Now for each background check you have to get they will each cost you $18.00 which and this is important you cannot pay using cash or personal checks  the FBI will simply call you up, and force you to send in a money order or travelers check.  This will delay you even more so don't do it, because if you're anything like us waiting on the FBI check is torturous enough as it is.  Oh and about the waiting...


Send those documents out as soon as you can, the documents take two to three months to come back, and that is if you did everything correctly.  If you don't want to wait quite as long you can send your documents out via the UPS store (or any other mail sending agency).  If you send it express it will get there with the quickness, and you must pay for the return trip or it will take even longer.  Expect to shell out some pretty penny for to get all of this sent out.


Now it is simply the waiting game of getting your checks back.  Let me tell you though it drags like you wouldn't believe.

Of Degrees and Certifications

Sometimes you never know what will show up at a Goodwill store!

So, as of right now, it's probably pretty evident that you need at least a passport to teach English overseas, but what about all that other stuff? You also need to be proficient with the English language or bilingual and do some testing. In our case, we just speak English (he knows some German and I know bits and pieces of a few languages) and are from the US, so we're good there.  We will get more into the certification piece and language a bit later, but for now we'll just discuss the important thing: having a bachelor's degree from a college or university.

You don't need a degree in English or education, but you do need a degree from a college or university. While the previous degrees (and probably minors) would probably be very helpful to you when it comes to teaching, it's not necessary. They can give you a bit of an increase as far as pay rates go, but experience with children (I have no room to talk about adult and university teaching, so I won't go there now) is also a plus and can do the same.

I come into teaching with some experience volunteering at a few festivals doing activities with kids, working at a daycare center for about two years with a variety of age groups, and working with kids and families from my casework experiences. As far as the degree goes, I have a bachelors degree in psychology with minors in anthropology and sociology. Zach has less experience than I do, but he has some; he also has a bachelors degree in anthropology.

In short, we're set in the degree department, once the paperwork hoops are taken care of on that front. Now, I did mention certifications such as a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and various other similarly coined certifications that can help with securing a position (particularly with programs like EPIK and GEPIK which are public school related).