The demand is a big part of it. Most non-native English speaking countries have hundreds or thousands of job postings available today, so if they’re going to attract the relatively few English teachers out there, the hours, pay and benefits have to be competitive.

SEA/South America are wide open markets, but the pay is generally going to be half of what you’ll get in East Asia. You’ll always make well above the CoL though, wherever you teach, and there are always lots of jobs to pick from, so if you have a preferred country it’ll still be a great time just living abroad in general.

I was just looking at jobs in Panama, and there’s a beachside town an hour away from the city offering $1100 a month for those same hours and benefits, although they do throw in free housing.

more general points.

you really are helping the students. at this moment in history, english is in demand for students, business and socializing in general, and by learning english they are afforded more real opportunities, so it’s a rewarding job in that sense.

every month you teach is a huge boon in terms of experience. if you ever want to go back to teaching and you have any amount of experience, you’ll be offered higher pay and better benefits.

A corollary is that once you teach, you’ll always have that job available. Want money but don’t want to work much? ESL. Need to save up capital or pay off debt back home? ESL. Want to offset all of your globetrotting habits? ESL. Most financial difficulties are fundamentally off the table if you’re an English teacher.

you’ll have so much free time that you can focus on your hobbies and interests, which was a huge part of me enjoying my time abroad, living my actual life.

Sure. Some general recommendations:

1. If you care a lot about where you teach, get a TEFL certificate. this is the one I got. All PDF tests, lifetime certification, internationally accredited, valid for any ESL job globally, plus TEFL certificates automatically give you access to the higher end of the pay scale.

You’ll be able to teach in your country and school of choice with this certificate.

That said, you don’t need a TEFL certificate to start teaching and if you fly to China on a tourist visa tomorrow and are a fluent English speaker, you will get a job in one of the first schools you inquire at. Someone might even stop you on the street to offer you a job if you look like a foreigner.

2. If a job doesn’t feel right, keep looking. There is a large, constant demand for English teachers globally and there is zero reason to take a job you aren’t comfortable with or a job that doesn’t provide the compensation and benefits you’re looking for.

3. DavesESLcafe is one of the original TEFL sites, and will give you an idea of what job postings look like online(that’s the China job board page), although typing “English teaching jobs in _______” whatever country you want is going to net plenty of job postings you can apply for.

I could go on, but I don’t want to overwhelm you.

If there’s anything specific you want addressed or you have followup questions, I’m happy to answer them.

nope.

some countries and schools require a TEFL certificate or prefer candidates with an associate’s degree depending on the position, but if you want to teach English, all you need is to be a fluent English speaker.

some English teachers i know aren’t even native speakers. they are very good at English and have a minimal accent.

for any fluent English speakers out there, it’s a very similar situation if you want to start teaching English abroad.

20-25 teaching hours a week, sign up bonuses, airfare reimbursement, at least a couple months of vacation per year, much lower cost of living in most countries, with maybe the field-specific benefit of thousands of job openings currently available.

Plus you get an adventure the whole time you’re in another country, new experiences and new cultures.

Definitely why I never went back to the work culture in the US.

California is the 4th largest.

Texas is the 8th.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Texas

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California

yeah, looks interesting for sure.

I really enjoy backpacking and walking and I’m interested in seeing the Australian outback through the eyes of a walker.

actually, I think the second to the last podcast I put out was about walking specifically as a wonderful mode of travel.

thanks for the recommendation.

oh wow, thanks, this is my first hearing about it.

I appreciate the heads up, I’m checking out the website now.

Texas is the 8th largest economy in the world.

that blew my mind recently.

that looks crazy good, especially after 5 days of backpacking.

were you backpacking in rural areas around your home or did you go a national park or something?

I used to backpack a lot, but never got around to it while I was in Australia.

you bought it, why shouldn’t you also rent it?

only if the corporate citizen promises really hard we can trust them. like a super promise.

really good article with a couple surprises in there.

"some people speculated that, because of the political pressure against it, its release must have been an act of resistance by someone within the IRS. But the open sourcing of the program was always part of the plan, and was required by a law called the SHARE IT Act. It happened “fully above board, which is honestly more of a feat!,” Given told 404 Media. “This has been in the works since last year.”

Vinton told 404 Media in a phone call that the open sourcing of Direct File “is just good government.”

“All code paid for by taxpayer dollars should be open source, available for comment, for feedback, for people to build on and for people in other agencies to replicate. It saves everyone money and it is our [taxpayers’] IP,” she said. “This is just good government and should absolutely be the standard that government technologists are held to.”"

if you’re talking about the fermented bean curd that I’m familiar with, the flavor is insanely strong.

and despicable, haha.

describing the spiciness of fermented bean curd as superfluous sounds accurate to me.

for sure! I love talking about this stuff.

if you join an online platform with in-place curriculum, then they assign you to classes so the students are already there.

I didn’t want a schedule, so i made myself available to casually chat with ESL learners on an app called palfish.

enough people called me up for me to make a few hundred a month, which is all I needed to travel. dorms are $100 a month in SE Asia, food is 1 to $4 a portion in all of asia, and I was backpacking half the time anyway.

when I landed in a country, I bought the unlimited data-only plan, clicked the “online” button, and then people called me up whenever they wanted to practice their english with me.

that online work was partially to offset using my savings, but i had already taught in person for ~7 years.

with each month of in-person teaching affording me ~3 months of living expenses, i had enough savings to travel for a couple decades by the time i started traveling full-time.

quick note: there’s no competition for ESL students at the teacher level. there are way too many ESL students and not nearly enough English teachers to fulfill the demand. it’s not even close.

both.

I taught in person in China at first, and then after I started traveling full-time I taught online because all you need is a smartphone.

and no, the market is not at all saturated, it is wide open. there are literally thousands of jobs available right now across dozens of countries and online.

if you have any interest in traveling, or you need money, and are a native or fluent English speaker, teaching English is such a great deal.

I’m happy to answer any other questions you have.

it’s a great job.

teach as little or much as you want, save as much money as you want, go pretty much wherever you want, and then chill out the rest of the time.

I taught for several years and am still traveling on the savings a decade later.

if you’re a native English speaker, you can start doing this next week.

every month you teach english generally results in 2 to 3 months of savings.

I just traveled to Guatemala and learned that once you’re in Guatemala, which is visa-free for most countries, you can also travel visa-free to Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua during your stay.

haha, yea these guys look real dapper.

haha, yeah, apparently when they’re skinny fellas they call them crab-eating raccoons… or Wikipedia does anyway haha, all the locals here just say “mapaches” without any qualifiers.

they are also pretty chill.

they have the chunky ones living in the forest here apparently, but these sleek fellas just run all around along the coastline.