Kazakhstan Week and the Overlooked Neighbour

In England, a 71 year old grandmother earned a black belt in karate after being attacked by a neighbour after a row about cat poo. That's certainly an action-orientated approach to getting along with your neighbours. 

We had a bit of action this week ourselves- it was Kazakhstan Week here at Edvectus so we all had quite a bit of fun. No, we didn't all fly to Kazakhstan, though I'm sure that many of the staff would have loved it (I did when I was there).  But instead we had theme days that were Kazakhstan-ish -Horse Day, Camel Day, Russian Language Day, etc- and we shared a bit of banter. You can see some of the funny photos on our Twitter page.  

The idea behind Kazakhstan Week was created to bring attention to lesser known opportunities. One thing I have found out in my 15+ years of placing teachers internationally is that teachers tend to first flock towards well known holiday destinations and overlook nearby equally great neighbouring locations where it's less competitive to get a job. 

For example, everyone seems to want to go to Hong Kong and Singapore. It's really hard to get a job there because there are a very limited number of schools and lots of teachers applying for them. Yet 30 minutes from Hong Kong is Guangzhou, China. It's cheaper to live and there are far more opportunities there.  And literally right next to Singapore (almost touching) is Johor, Malaysia. It's like a suburb of Singapore with lots of new schools being built and it's cheaper to live. 

And for those of you who love the 'off the beaten path' locations, do take a look at Kazakhstan (more info about the country here). We have some great jobs there in both international schools as well as government programmes.