Jill’s book on working in schools abroad.
Teaching Traveling: Welcome to Jill Dobbe, a mother who is running a school in Honduras.
Jill, tell us about your background and how you got into teaching and school administration overseas with your family.
Jill: When I first began teaching overseas I took along my husband and two children. My husband and I were both teachers at the time and were both excited and interested in teaching overseas.
Our first experience abroad ended up to be Guam, which we had barely ever heard of before. We ended up packing up our things, including our children (a one and two year old), and from there, began a decade worth of teaching overseas in four countries: Guam, Singapore, Ghana, and Mexico.
Our children grew up overseas, completing all of their elementary years in different American and international overseas schools.
We hopped around a lot usually staying 2-3 years in one school. However, we did teach in Accra, Ghana, for five years and it was one of the best times for our family. I guess we wanted to see as much of the world and the different cultures as we could while we were abroad.
We actually never knew how long it would all last and after 10 years of life overseas we did move back to Wisconsin, USA, for seven years. During that time, my husband and I taught in the Wisconsin public schools, while earning our Masters’ in Educational Leadership with the intent of going back overseas again one day, but as administrators.
Jill’s family at the Taj Majal in India in 2009.
TT: Fascinating! I had a wonderful time teaching in Ghana, too. Where in the world are you working now?
J: Since earning our Masters’, we have worked in Egypt, India, and presently Honduras, as school administrators.
Our children have also since completed college and our daughter will be returning to Honduras with us and will begin her overseas teaching career as a high school Biology/Health teacher at the American School of Tegucigalpa.
It will be exciting for us to have her as a colleague after all of her years as a student abroad. Our daughter has actually gone full circle!
In addition, this past year I wrote and published my first memoir on teaching and traveling overseas entitled, HERE WE ARE & THERE WE GO: Teaching and Traveling With Kids in Tow. After living and working in seven different countries I felt that I had a lot of good stories to tell others who were teaching overseas or thinking about it, especially those who wanted to take their kids along. I wanted to let them know that it can be done and it is truly amazing at how much one can learn through children’s eyes!
Jill and a statue in Egypt.
My book details stories of almost losing my children in the Plaka in Athens, Greece, my husband and son having guns pointed directly at them outside the presidential palace in Accra, Ghana, but also the happy times as we went on safari in South Africa, visited the night zoo in Singapore, and went diving in the Red Sea in Egypt.
TT: Wow! What impacted you the most while teaching overseas?
J: For me the most exciting parts of all of our travels was learning about and experiencing the different cultures we lived with.
The Chamorros of Guam was our first real experience living among another culture.
We learned all about the Chinese culture and their beliefs and superstitions in Singapore.
In Ghana we made everlasting friendships with our fellow Ghanaian teachers and travelled all over Ghana immersing ourselves in the Ghanaian way of life.
In Egypt, where we lived in the Middle East for the first time, we learned to respect the ways of the Muslim culture while we worked at a school that was predominately Muslim.
Also, as a result of becoming “citizens of the world,” our children learned to respect diversity and enjoyed friends from all parts of the world.
Today, with Facebook, they still continue to connect with their friends that they knew in elementary school in Ghana!
With an elephant friend in Rajasthan travel.
TT: Love it! How has all your traveling influenced your teaching?
J: During our seven year stint in Wisconsin between teaching abroad and becoming overseas administrators, I made sure that I brought back what I learned from all the cultures that I lived with in order to teach my students, school, and community about what I learned.
As a result, with the encouragement of the school and my colleagues, I developed and organized a school and community-wide multicultural fair that was held in the local community hall. During the day, classes were transformed into various “countries” and students visited the “countries” carrying their handmade passports.
Jill with colleagues in Honduras, where she leads a school.
In the evening the whole town came together and celebrated different cultures with international foods, crafts, regalia, and entertainment. It was an exciting opportunity for me to teach my students, the parents, and the community about the world around them.
TT: What are some of your most memorable moments during all your world travels?
J: In my memoir, I have written about many of our experiences that occurred while we lived abroad.
We experienced so many unique travel adventures that I have a hard time pinpointing which ones were the “best.”
I can say however, that they ran the gamut of feelings and emotions resulting in adventures that were scary, sad, downright crazy, and even quite hilarious at times (my memoir tells it all), especially the time my husband forced himself to eat a fat, white, squiggly grub, in order not to offend the villagers who offered it to him.
Would you like to see the world by teaching as Jill has?
TT: Yikes! That’s dedication to cross-cultural understanding. So, what advice do you have for teachers who dream of travel, or travelers who dream of teaching?
J: Teachers who work overseas today have it so much easier than when my husband and I first went abroad.
I am giving my age away, but when we first went overseas there were no cell phones, no iPods, and no computers with internet access. There was just good old overseas snail mail and landlines with long distance service (that is, if the electricity was on and your phone was working).
Today with Skype and Facebook the world has become so much smaller and new teachers can keep in close contact with their families at home. Being far away isn’t so scary anymore!
Jill’s life has been as colorful as this mosaic!
That is just one of the reasons that I always encourage teachers to try the overseas life and teaching abroad, even if it is for just one contract.
The experiences that you will have, the people you will meet, and the things that you will learn will last a lifetime and you will never regret it.
My advice is to DO IT!
TT: Thanks so much, Jill!
Stay tuned to her publisher, Orange Hat Publishing, about the release of Jill’s book.
Readers, what questions do you have for this world-traveling teacher and school administrator?
Hi everyone…I stumbled across your website and am hoping you can point me in the right direction. I retired from the US Air Force four years ago and went into teaching. I have a degree and certification in Elementary Education with some endorsements for middle school math and English. I am starting my Master’s and will have it finish in May 2014. I have a daughter who is 14 and will be starting her Sophmore year this fall. I would really love to teach overseas and my daughter wants to come. Where do I start looking for organizations/companies which will accept my daughter while I teach? Also, what other certifications do you recommend? I would love any advice on how to get started. Thank you.
Hi! I am just now completing my TESOL certification online but I have ZERO teaching experience. I do have a Bachelor of Arts but it is in Media Studies with a concentration in Media Writing and a minor in dance. I would really like to teach abroad (and my husband would too, but he does not have a college degree), preferably in Europe but wouldn’t mind South America, Asia or a few other places. I’m very open! I have a 10 month old son and that seems to be the hardest part. We would have to be able to afford to put him in daycare or have my husband stay home with him. Could you email me some suggestions of companies to look into? Any information on where to look or how to get the process started would be greatly appreciated! I love to travel and my goal is to go to every continent and TRY to make it to every country at least once. I know teaching abroad would be the perfect life for me and I’d love my son to experience multiple cultures and grow up very open minded. My email is kkarambelas@gmail.com. Thanks in advance!!
Hi Whitney, your advice to Julia is right on. As far as educating our children, we always had them with us and I actually taught both of them when we were in Ghana. As you look around for other overseas teaching positions you will see that most schools allow one child’s tuition per teacher. Our two children were enrolled for free in each school we were at because both my husband and I taught. In Singapore actually, they were both to young for our school so we enrolled them in a local daycare and it was fantastic for them. They even learned to sing songs in Mandarin Chinese. Also, after teaching for 10 years Dan and I went back to the U.S. and got our MA’s in Educational Leadership and experience as principals. We then went back overseas as principals. That worked for us, but many schools also have professional development opportunities and will even pay for your schooling. It is also more acceptable now to earn a Master’s online if your husband wants to go that route. Schools love couples and you both sound like you have enough experience and varied educational interests that will work in a lot of schools.
I hope that I helped a little. There are so many schools out there. Maybe pick an area where you want to go then look at their schools to see what their openings are.
Best of luck! I hope you enjoy the book and it was great hearing from you!
Wonderful, inspiring advice, Jill!
Jill, thank you so much for your story and your life. This is awesome. I, too, am living abroad with a young child; my son was born in Taiwan in 2010. My husband and I are both English teachers, and somehow we make it work. We’re getting to the point where we will have to start thinking about schooling for our son in the next couple of years, as well as what comes next for us career-wise. How did you manage to keep your children educated while you moved to several different countries? Was it difficult to get them registered? Aren’t American and international schools abroad expensive? I’m sure your book will be full of advice and stories on that subject, but I’d be grateful for some input. I would also be grateful for input regarding what direction to go in after such experiences. My husband is probably more interested in leadership and education law, politics, etc., while I am still interested in teaching, librarianship, writing and development.
To Julia in Brazil, you are not alone with your concerns. I will echo what Jill said and check out international job fairs. I would also suggest talking to your school about possible opportunities, and maybe doing a “test-run” with your son and volunteering abroad for the summer, to see if this is something you both want to do together. Keep in mind, some countries are more open to hiring teachers with dependents than others. We found in our experience that Taiwan was such a place. Just get out there, ask questions, don’t be afraid to continue looking at this as a great opportunity for you and your son. Good luck to you, and we’re all here for you!
HI , Whitney!!
Thank you very much as well for your warm words!! I would like so much to live in another country teaching and in peace with my son. I have a very good career in Brazil. I have my own place, job and a good wage as a private teacher. It´s not cause of money …since I ´m without my parents and now with just my son, I try to find in life reasons to go on. It was very hard to me to learn how to live without them, now, I´m fine about it, but sometimes or to be true, almost everyday I pray to God wishing something very good could happen to me. As they were alived I could not live abroad because i was the onle one who had taken care of them. Now, I can go, I can move, but i´m not so young anymore. I´m 36. Life is not an adventure anymore and I ´m responsible for my son. I can´t move without a certain wage to get montly…it´s much more difficult to live abroad than before, but it´s somehow possible now. I´ll keeping searching about. If it´s to be mine, mine it will be.
kisses from Brazil
JU
Hi!!!
I´m an English teacher in Brazil. I graduated in Languages by Itaúna University in the state of Minas Gerais in my country in 1998. Since then I have taught English to children, teenagers and adults. I have divorced for 4 years and I have a son. he´s 8. As my parents have died for over 6 years, my son is all I have. We live alone in our own apartament in a small city in Minas Gerais state in Brazil. For many years I have thought about living abroad. But as a single mother now with no one to support me I don´t know if it´s possible and secure for us to move abroad to work.
Please, maybe this site could be the answer why I turned on my computer today. It´s almost midnight here, and i could not sleep cause i was trying to figure out a different and exciting experience for my son and me!!!
Please, help me!!
love
Ju
Julia,
Thanks for your passionate and inspiring comment! Keep looking and asking, because if you dream of working abroad, you can make it happen! I’d love to hear the advice and thoughts of other teacher-travelers in this community, too. Have hope!
Hi Julia~As long as you are open and willing to try a new kind of life you will make it happen. Go online and look for international fairs. They are the best way to find a teaching job abroad. Keep looking and don’t give up!
Thank you Jill for your warm words!!!
Kisses
Ju
thank you so much for giving me hope on finding a teaching experience for our family! we want to teach abroad but feel lost when trying to find teaching situations that accept families. we have 2 young boys and i dream of living the life you have lived! my husband has a masters in adaptive special ed and and undergrad in history & education. he has been teaching for 7 years in the us public school system. here in the us he is in high demand as a teacher but we would need to be supported as a family overseas. i too have a bachelors degree in business administration but would be find staying home caring for the kids and/or homeschooling. do you have any suggestions as to where to start, how to find resources, etc? please feel free to email me info lkmorford@embarqmail.com
Hi Kendra, I’m glad this article gives you hope! There ARE jobs and resources out there for you, so keep searching and asking. Let us know what you find, and best of luck!
Hi Kendra~I hope that you received the info I sent and it was helpful for your family. Best of luck!
Thanks for reaching out, Jill! So inspired by this community of Teacher-Travelers!
Wow! Congrats!
Thanks Holly!