Hello Steem Blockchain!

I have been teaching at a public high school in China for 4 years and one thing that people say when getting into teaching ESL abroad is that it is a dead end job.

Are they telling the truth?

Well yes and no.

If you sole source of income is teaching ESL at the job you work, then it may be a dead end job. You can work for many years in the same school and you may not have any promotion to look forward too. For me, I have been teaching the same courses for 4 years and if I continue to stay here for a few more years, it will probably stay that way. I will probably never become a manager or something.

The exception to that rule is if you work for a Training Center. In these jobs, they have different job positions within the school. Basically, a training center is a for-profit business that exclusively teaches English to non-native speakers in foreign countries. Usually, they would teach young children or adolescents. One of the most well-known establishments in China is a branch school called English First (EF). Many foreigners work at these centers because it is quite easy to find a job and the salaries a little higher than other teaching jobs. If you work in a training center, you can get promoted to a DoS or Manager or some other position. However, I am not a huge fan of these places because they are for-profit and you will probably be expected to work a lot longer and have to take jobs that expect you to promote their school. A lot of foreigners might feel degraded teaching at these places because you basically have to entertain a bunch of children with silly antics.
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But there's more to it!

Teaching is a transferable skill! The skills you learn while teaching are usually transferable as well. If you only see your job as a source of income and don't utilize what you have learned, then you will stay in the same job for a long time. However, if you allow yourself to be the one learning instead of teaching all the time, then you will realize that you can use these skills in other areas of life.

Every year that I have taught the same courses at this school, I have taught it in a different way. I am getting better at it and am able to teach more in less time. Because I am in China, I make videos on DTube that earn me extra money. By learning how to teach effectively, you can also teach online which is awesome because you can earn money from the comfort of your own home.

There are instructors that create training courses for IELTS and TOEFL that are quite expensive and people from all over the world can pay for these courses because they need to get a high enough score to attend post secondary education.

Teaching can also help you in making videos and coaching people in other subjects. Just because I teach math, science and business in China, it doesn't mean I can't teach spirituality and cooking. The content is different, but the way you teach will be very similar because you learn techniques on keeping people engaged and receptive to new information. Heck, you could open up your own school once you know the ins and outs of running a school.

Saying that teaching ESL abroad is a dead end job is using a very limited mindset to come to that conclusion. I earn money by making videos in China, but if I was back in Canada, I think less people would be interested in that.

Hope that helps all of you out there!