What Is in a Name?

As a teacher, I encounter quite a variety of names from year to year.  I have been teaching professionally for 11 years. If you estimate 17 students per year, that totals 187 children.  Basically,  I have learned lots of children’s names.  I find it interesting how the names change from city to city and neighborhood to neighborhood. 

My student teaching took place in a small Michigan school near the Ohio border.  The school had a predominately White American population with student names such as Caiden, Jackson, Nicole and Ashley.

Next, I moved on to more urban schools with predominantly African American populations.  I had typical names such as Eric and Jasmine.  However I also had names such as Mehki, Messiah, Omunique, and Alantiaja.

I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina in 2009. Raleigh has a very diverse population.  The names of my students reflected the diversity of their backgrounds.  I had Y’Benny of Vietnamese heritage.  The Y in his name is silent.  I taught male cousins Rishaab and Paarth of Indian heritage.  I have taught 2 little girls named Zainab. Both girls had families from different North African countries.  In this city, I also usually had a large population of Hispanic children in my class including the names Jesus, Josue, Yamilet, and Hilda. 

It seems that there are at least 20 different names that begin with "Abdul" here.  You just have to listen closely to learn the ending.  

Now I live in Kuwait.  I must admit that I scratched my head in nervousness the first time I saw my class list.  How do you pronounce that?  It turns out that standard grammar rules apply with most of my student’s names here.  There are a few vowel sounds that are just different here.  In the states, it seems that some parents seem to strive for individuality in naming their children.  That does not seem to be the case here.  In our school’s carpool line, you will notice multiple children look up when you hear “Muhammad, Abdulaziz, Sheihka, Abdulrahman.”  These names are quite common in Kuwait.   If I had to take a guess, I think there has been at least one “Sarah” at every school I’ve worked in.  It is pronounced a bit differently here than in the states. 

Learning names is truly an adjustment in different places. Unless it is a name that is familiar to me, I cannot always determine the gender of a person when I see their name in print.  Sometimes I get an email from a parent of my student, and I don’t know if it came from a mom or dad.  One helpful hint is that Kuwaiti women do not take the name of their husbands.  If the parent shares the name of the child, it may be safe the assume that it is a father.  If they sign their email with first name only, I’m a bit confused. 

Dear Mr,  umm Dear Mrs, umm Dear Sheihka's parent :)

I have one student in my class of Indonesian heritage.  His mother recently told me that a majority of Indonesians do not share a family name.  This intrigues me greatly.  This boy comes from a family of 5 and no one in his household shares the same last name.  How do you identify families?  How do you decide which 3 names to pick for your child?  I might have scared the mom away if I truly asked her all the questions that came ot mind that day. 

Names are very interesting reflections of communities.  I can look back on my career and appreciate the diversity of my students.  Although learning the names of my students and their parents is a task I'd rather have a variety than a bunch of the same year end and year out.  

How I Got My Job Teaching Abroad

Within the international school community, this is time for filling open positions for the upcoming school year.  I was actually hired in February of 2015 for my current teaching position at an international school in Kuwait.  This hiring period starts a couple months earlier for schools overseas than those in the United States. This is quite understandable considering the steps required to prepare for moving to a new country.

Why Teach Abroad?

I started to consider teaching abroad around early December of 2014.  I had looked into programs previously hoping to spend my summers teaching abroad.  Many of those programs are for volunteers and cost thousands of dollars in addition to the expensive airfare.  I started to wonder if I could teach in another country for an entire school year.  I had a couple of friends who were teaching in Abu Dhabi, a city in the Middle East and they seemed to enjoy it.  Online research gave an overwhelming number of possibilities all over the world.  I came up with a few criteria for my job search. 

1.  I wanted to teach in an international school with a curriculum taught in English.  There are lots of opportunities for people to teach English as a second language abroad, and I didn't want that. Those individuals may teach children or adults and don't have to have an education degree.  I basically wanted to do the same thing I did in the states but in a different country.  Surprisingly, this was not terribly hard to find. 

2. I didn't want a climate with snow- It's pretty the first day it falls and then its a hassle.  I'm over it. 

3. I wanted a position that paid my rent and paid a greater salary than I was currently making.-These opportunities abound throughout Middle Eastern countries and far Eastern countries such as Japan and Korea.  I have a goal to be debt free, so I didn't want a European country or Caribbean Island with a high cost of living and low salary.  

4.  I needed a place with lots of travel opportunities- Living in the Middle East means travel time is shorter and flights are less expensive in comparison to traveling from the United States.  In addition, my tax free income means that I can actually afford to take trips to different countries on school breaks. 

How Did You Apply for the Job? 

I asked a friend who lived overseas and did some online research to find the best way to apply for jobs.  I joined to websites designed to help teachers find positions teaching abroad.  The first is a free website called www.teachaway.com.  The second website cost an annual fee of $40 www.tieonline.com.  My current position was actually listed on both websites.   These sites allow you to upload your resume, references, location preferences, etc.  I found that tie online was a bit more thorough in providing information about the schools, the ethnic diversity of schools, the salaries, and the school's locations. 

There are additional sites that can be quite expensive such as www.iss.edu but their services and pricey job fairs were not in my budget.   I considered attending one of their job fairs in Boston and realized that the cost of joining the website, registering for the job fair, purchasing airfare and hotels would cost me over $700. The appeal of this type of experience would have been the opportunity to interview face to face and learn about the schools directly from administrators who were already living there.  

What was the Interview Process Like? 

I interviewed for a few teaching positions.  Teachaway.com does pre-interviews over the phone. If you can pass their very basic phone interview which last about 15 minutes, you will be invited to a face to face interview.  One should note that while teachaway.com is free to join, you are responsible for your travel and hotel expenses to attend face to face interviews in various states. I can recall being invited to a follow up interview in both Atlanta and New York.  I decided against those for my own personal reasons.  I also had Skype interviews with Kuwait and China.  With the exception of our distance, I felt that both interviews via Skype were similar to what I have experienced when seeking a teaching position in the states.  Typically, international school do want you to have 2 or more years  experience teaching in your home state and experience with travel abroad.  Because of the time difference, I do recall my interviews being late at night around 10 and 11pm. I felt very relaxed interviewing in my professional blazer and pajama bottoms! 

How do you make sure that you don't pick a terrible school? 

I don't know.  This may seem like a bad answer, but there is no way to guarantee that you will like your new school and new country.  I did join a website that gave reviews from teachers who worked at international schools called www.internationalschoolsreview.com.  I remember that I would look at schools reviews before I even sent resumes.  Honestly, I'm not sure whether this site made me more reassured or paranoid.   My current school was not listed on that website at all.  Ultimately I prayed about it.  I considered what the interviewers were telling me during my interviews.

When I was close to making my final decision about accepting my job offer in Kuwait, I asked the school's principal to put me in contact with a teacher who was currently working at the school on the same grade level.  I sent that teacher an email with several questions about the school and the country.  I felt better asking a teacher who had no obligation to recruit teachers like administrators.  Her responses helped me to sense that I was making the right decision in accepting the position.  I also looked online for information about the cities where the schools were located.

Where do you get information about different countries? 

 I turned to bloggers for information about different countries.  Official travel websites and sites sponsored by the national government will paint the best portrait of the countries they represent.  Those sites are great for highlights about countries.  Bloggers are people who live in these places and are willing to share the good, the bad, and the ugly.  It was important for me to read these.  The novelty of a new location wears off within a month or two.  I needed to know what to expect when the novelty wore off and I was dealing with day to day life.  Because of blogs, I was reassured that I would not have to cover my head as a woman in a Kuwait.  Blogs prepared me so that I was not shocked at the amount of littering and debris around the area. They also helped me to see that despite the stigma that countries in this part of the world have in the media, Kuwait is relatively safe.   Here are some of my favorite blogs:

http://www.expatsblog.com

http://www.expatarrivals.com

https://teachingwanderlust.com/2014/02/28/why-teach-overseas/

packing, packing, and more packing

What happens after you get the job? 

So much!  Preparing to move abroad is quite an experience.  My job has wonderful human resources employees who assisted us with gathering documents for our visas and job permits.  I had a few doctor visits because Kuwait requires documentation that you and dependents traveling with you are in good health and don't have malaria, STDS, TB, and some other things.  You have to make lots of decisions as well.  If you are a homeowner, will you rent out your home?  If you are a renter, will you sell your furniture or pays thousands to store it?  What about your car, cell phone plan, insurance?  How can you find time to say farewell to the people you love, visit your favorite hang outs one last time, and get everything packed before departure?   Gratefully, everything that needed to get done in my life got done, and my move was successful. 

I haven't really fallen in love yet, but it's growing on me!

Do you have any regrets about moving to Kuwait? 

No.  I plan to stay an complete my second year teaching here as well. This has been a learning experience for me and I am enjoying it.   My school and my students are lovely.  Life in Kuwait has it's ups and downs.  Searching for things to do takes more effort than I've had to exert in a while.  Finding the items i want in malls and grocery stores is an adjustment.  Getting used to the various accents of people from all different parts of the world takes a lot of patience.   I still find that the positives outweigh the negatives.


Are you interested in teaching abroad?  Do you have experience teaching abroad?  Share with us in the comments section.