ITP - 31: First Year Teaching in Turkey

Greg: Okay, this is so this is Greg.
Greg, the single guy.
I met met the family guys, out golfing somewhere.
We'll talk to him a little later, but on the line now, I have an interview that you were going to totally love.
This is Rose.
She's originally from Florida and it's her first year International teaching, or teaching, for that matter.

Greg: And she's coming to us from Turkey.
I don't even know where in Turkey yet.
Hi Rose, how are you?

Rose: Hi Greg, how are you?

Greg: Fantastic.
Where are you in Turkey?

Rose: I'll give you three guesses.

Greg: Istanbul, is my first guess.

Greg: You gotta do, you know the song from the Canadian group?
What is it?
Theme song, right?
And you're teaching Elementary.
You're teaching first grade now.
Right?

Rose: I am I'm teaching the best group of first graders you've ever seen.
That's it's a real privilege to be with those students, for sure.

Greg: And you all your only teaching English, right?

Rose: Yes.
Only English or any other subject like I'm just the foreign English teacher at the school, right?

Greg: Okay.
And all schools are different, but I know that that turkey has a has some really Strange.
I mean like I heard that in high school.
They can't teach social studies.
They don't hire social studies teachers because they teach Turkish history.
Is that true?
Do you know?

Rose: That's what I heard but I don't know personally.

Greg: Yeah, we don't really care.
Do we?
Because we're Elementary so Rose.
I always like to ask people on our show, share with our listeners, a little bit of your journey and how you got into International teaching.

Rose: Yeah, so like actually I didn't know that I wanted to be an international teacher at, all right, so when I graduated I did two and a half years at Flagler College and St. Augustine.
And then I left just for like some personal family reasons and I actually took a pretty extended Gap period.

Rose: And then when it came time for me to go back to school, I was thinking and researching what university I wanted to go to.
And actually that was my first taste of living abroad because I thought why do I need to go to school in the states, I could finish my degree elsewhere.

Rose: So I actually went abroad to the UK.
I went to the University of Buckingham where I completed my bachelor's degree just in time for covid because I went over there right before it all started.
So that was fantastic timing.

Rose: That was my first taste of abroad but obviously we share a common language so it felt comfortable.
I got the travel bug.
I really loved being abroad and away from Florida and the states.
But I really wanted something a little bit crazier, something less familiar.

Rose: So I thought if I can study abroad surely I can work abroad.
There has to be a way for me to do this.
And since my degree was in English literature I thought I love teaching, I love kids, let me try.

Rose: So I got my TEFL, Teach English as a Foreign Language certificate.
It was about three months of study.

Rose: When I saw there was a position open in Turkey, I had already been teaching online to students in Turkey and they were so kind and warm.
I thought I have to go to Turkey.
I have to go to Istanbul.
It looks so cool.

Rose: I didn't go through any recruiters.
I didn't know anyone who had been to Turkey.
I didn't know anything about it except the language sounded cool and the food was supposed to be amazing.
That was it.

Rose: I ended up getting placed in a private school that I had heard online was really fantastic.
But what happened wasn't maybe the best experience.
That kind of happens sometimes.

Greg: I have a thousand questions already.
A lot of people think I'm going to go on the internet, do a little research and connect with a school and boom I'm going there.

Greg: When you talked to them online what was it like?
Was it an online interview, face-to-face or phone?

Rose: It was a Skype interview.
I met with the head of the English Department and I met with HR.
And I also met with another administrator.
I want to say maybe vice principal but I haven't seen her since the interview.

Greg: So there's three interviewers all on Skype.
Wow.
And you're still at that school.

Rose: Yeah we're wrapping up the year.

Greg: What happened when you got hired?
Did they send you a ticket?
Did you go right from Britain there on your own dime?

Rose: Yeah I actually graduated from England and I came back to the states to be with my mom and my grandpa.
And while I was figuring things out I was sending application after application.
And because of the pandemic there was a lot of red tape.
I got a job in Japan but that didn't work because they closed their borders.
Same with Korea.

Rose: When I started teaching Turkish students online I thought let me look at Turkey.
Surprisingly it was really easy to get into Turkey even during covid.
You needed your HES code and proof of vaccination.
But that was pretty much it.

Rose: They reimbursed me for my ticket.
But from interview, job offer and start working the whole process was two weeks.

Greg: Two weeks?
You picked up everything and went in two weeks?

Rose: I did.

Greg: Wow.
When you landed did they meet you at the airport?

Rose: Technically yes but the airport was chaos.
It's a new construction and the signs are completely misleading.
They say one direction and it's actually the opposite.
You ask staff and they shrug.

Rose: Eventually the driver was three hours late but he did show up.
I didn't have a phone or SIM card so I was completely lost.

Rose: A man named Kevin let me use his phone so I could email HR and helped me find the driver.
Kevin really saved me that day.

Greg: That happens.
People step in when you need it.

Rose: Yeah.

Rose: The offer seemed like a great deal.
Accommodation, utilities, food for the first week.
It felt like a great first job.
I was excited but I had no experience.

Rose: It was co-teaching with a Turkish English teacher and myself.
And I was told I would be working with one of their most experienced teachers.
Someone phenomenal.

Rose: But on the first day we walked into a classroom of six-year-olds.
Pandemic kids who hadn't been in school for two years.
They were energetic and normal.
But my co-teacher disagreed.

Rose: She pulled a chair out from under a student, sat in it and started kicking his desk while yelling.
The entire class froze.
That was the moment I realized something was very wrong.

Rose: That behavior never stopped.
Not just with students but toward me.

Greg: And you're in your first year relying on her.
Did you talk to anyone else at the school?

Rose: I was told to always go to admin.
But I realized there was an ecosystem protecting certain teachers.
They could do no wrong.
They could miss work, turn in late materials and still be praised.
Admin never corrected them.

Rose: As a new teacher you assume the problem is you.
But over time I realized it wasn't me.

Greg: Did you talk to anyone already there before you arrived?

Rose: No.

Greg: That's the thing.
You never really know until you get there.

Rose: Exactly.

Rose: At first you think there must be something great you're missing.
But it starts to feel like an abusive relationship.
You start questioning yourself.

Greg: And you're still there.
So something shifted.

Rose: She was gone a lot so I got space to build relationships with students.

Rose: Around February I enrolled in a US teaching certification program.
I started learning real pedagogy.
Game-based learning, RTI, assistive technology.

Rose: When I mentioned it she got angry.
She didn't like that I was learning and growing.

Rose: She also didn't like me building relationships with students.
If I emailed parents something positive she would shut it down.

Rose: She would say don't send that it's nonsense.

Greg: Have you thought about leaving?

Rose: More times than I can count.
I lost so much sleep.

Rose: We also weren't being paid our full salary.
Exchange rate caps meant we never received the full amount in the contract.

Rose: And we were working 12-hour days.

Greg: That's brutal.

Rose: I knew if I left it would hurt my resume.
But I love teaching.
So I decided to stay.

Rose: When she was gone I got to teach my way.
And my class had the best spelling scores.

Greg: Did you get a sticker for that?

Rose: The kids did.
And I got yelled at.

Greg: Of course.

Rose: But focusing on the kids is what got me through.

Greg: That's teaching.

Rose: Exactly.

Greg: Are you secretly job hunting?

Rose: Yes.
I landed a position at a top IB school for next year.

Greg: That's amazing.

Rose: I'm excited for a fresh start.

Greg: We'll have you back next year.

Greg: You can find us at [internationalteacherpodcast@gmail.com](mailto:internationalteacherpodcast@gmail.com).
Instagram ITPexpats.

Greg: I was in Cairo Egypt...
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