It's important to not burn your bridges in ESL (at least in Thailand)

In the few years that I have spent working in Thailand as an English teacher I have learned a few things about the industry. One of these things is that the first job that you get is almost certainly going to be terrible. Like most jobs in the world there is probably a very good reason why the position was available to you in the first place especially if, like me, you have no educational background in the industry and you have zero experience.

I have met very few people who were noobies that ended up in a job that wasn't really bad upon first arriving. It seems to be a right of passage among the new ESL teachers over here. I also learned that as much as you want to and as much as it may seem like a necessity to do so, you really should do your best to not quit and leave the first school high and dry without a teacher.

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I'm not talking about putting in your 2-week or 1-month notice. This is expected here just like with any job anywhere else in the world. I later found out that in the case of the job that I had accepted, they never took down the teacher wanted advertisement after I was hired and they basically just keep it up there all the time. They expect this job to be something that people leave quickly.

This doesn't say much about the school and their dedication to the students because if I was running a school and there was a position where the worker was constantly quitting after 2 weeks to a month of working there, I would perhaps look at the job and see what I could do in order to improve it, rather than the person who is applying for the job. That simply isn't the case in Thailand at least, though. These "revolving door" jobs are all over the place and the employers expect that the teachers are going to leave after a month or two.

It is really important that you don't do "a runner" though. This means that you collect your first paycheck, cash it if that is even something they do (my school just paid cash) and then you leave at the end of the day and never come back. Also the teacher in question would ghost the school and never return their calls.

This exact scenario happened at the first school that I was employed at. There were 3 foreign teachers there and 2 of us started at the same time. We'll just call the other guy "Andy" and as you know, my name is Jack. Jack and Andy were similarly overwhelmed and surprised at how chaotic and difficult our jobs were and both of us were completely unprepared for this sort of environment. We both had the minimal amount of training to get the job which just meant that we had a college degree and the 40-hour online TEFL course certification - which is another story but that cert is a complete joke.

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I wish I could say that this rather docile picture was from one of my classrooms but just imagine that all of those kids are basically ignoring you and going as wild as possible, then you would have one of my classrooms.

Anyway, the job is tough, especially for those that have never done it before. This is a trial by fire and in hindsight, I feel as though it was actually beneficial to me because once you learn how to imagine the worst case scenario, everything else that you encounter is going to be a delight in comparison. I hated my job just as much as Andy, but I didn't come all this way to the other side of the planet to just give up and run away once I encounter the first bump in the road.

Andy did a runner after the first paycheck. He didn't tell the school he was leaving, he didn't tell me or the other foreign teacher either. So guess who had to cover his classes for no additional pay once he left? We did. This only encourages both of us to leave as well so we actually threatened to do exactly that and demanded that we be paid Andy's salary if we were going to be teaching his classes. The school complied.

I think this was a really dumb idea on their part because by overworking the reliable teachers, they were only encouraging us to do the same as Andy. Myself and the other girl agreed that we wouldn't do one another dirty like that and both of us, as much as we loathed almost every day of our jobs, stuck it out until the end of the year. We had both been job-hunting in our off time, and both of us had found jobs at a new, better school. As it turns out these horrible schools that we were working at are well-known in the educational world and when the other schools see that you have been through "hell" and stuck around, that you are going to be a reliable teacher.

Andy (the guy who ran off after getting his first paycheck) found himself in a situation where no good school would hire him. As it turns out all the headmasters are in touch with one another and they have an informal "blacklist" of teachers that ran away without giving notice. The only jobs that Andy ever had as long as I knew him was more jobs like the first one. He didn't even make it a full year in Thailand before he moved away.

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If you are ever considering teaching in Thailand as an ESL teacher I just want you to know that if you have no experience your first job is almost certainly going to be horrible but you have to get some thick skin and do your best to endure it at least for a full semester. You will actually learn a LOT by being thrown to the wolves like this and your next job is going to seem like a cake-walk in comparison.

Of course it would be better if these schools actually corrected the working situation but according to people that have been here for many years, these "starter schools" have always been this way, and lack of funds basically ensures the fact that they always will be. If you run away in the night you can kiss your chances of getting a good job goodbye because even though they may appear disorganized, the schools actually DO keep a record of employees that ran away on them. They have to. The work-permit process is a complicated one and the information about your previous employer WILL BE DISCOVERED by your potential new school.

So suck it up buttercup! You have to walk on the coals like the rest of us did!