Living in Poland tips 4: First teaching job or jobs?

Ok, so time for some more tips for those of you thinking of moving to Poland. This post is for the wannabe teachers out there.

I'm not going to talk about 'How' to get a job because this post here pretty much gives you all the advice you need:

Finding a TEFL gig

However I would like to talk about your strategy when you find your first teaching job. My advice would be to aim for three income streams. This means that actually when you start looking for a job you're actually looking for three.

Why?

If you have three income streams you're going to be much pretty protected financially against income irregularities from any one school. Maybe one school doesn't want to pay you on time? No probs you have another two sources of income. What if one school randomly closes for one week whilst the owner goes to Spain? Again no probs.

But, I'm also not saying that you need to work in three language schools. I happily earn a third of my income from private students which are easy enough to find on the internet and I've worked out that it's possible to earn more per hour from private students than from schools.

Having different sources of income will also protect you from being abused by one particular school. It's not uncommon to hear about schools which completely abuse their teachers. Generally they do this because you have no alternative. When you have two other incomes streams to fall back on it's a lot easier to say 'No' or more likely 'Fuck you'.

To be honest, demand for native teachers still exceeds supply in Poland at least I think it does in most places so schools should treat you with a certain amount of decency, saying that, if you're new to the country and inexperienced maybe you'll find yourself pushed into split shifts, legal English classes and what not but with those other sources of income behind you. You're backbone gets surprisingly firmer.

It's also more practical to have a few sources of income. It's very difficult in my experience to find one teaching job which can give you 20-25 hours of teaching a week, more likely you will find offers for 10 or 12 hours a week meaning that the multiple income strategy is one you will have to adopt anyway.

And obviously, the three income strategy assumes you'll be working for schools on a similar contract as a freelancer (i.e. no holiday pay or extra benefits) the absolute gold standard of teaching contracts is a full time permnet contract meaning taxes are paid, healthcare is provided and you have pay during the summer... but as of yet I haven't found such a job or though I'm reliably informed they are out there for teachers!