In late July, we updated our profiles on the international teaching search sites that we use to find jobs. September saw a few job posts trickle in and at the end of the month, we officially told Graded that this school year will be our last. In international teaching, you often have to give your current job up before you have your next job. It’s a leap of faith and an exercise in patience and anxiety management.

October 1 is the beginning of the search season for international teachers, but even that is really early and just the beginning. October 15 is another wave of postings. November 1 brings more, November 15 is another big listing day. Many European schools post in December or January, with a few not until March.

The job search is quite complex in our situation. First, we need to find a school with jobs that match both David’s and my teaching skills. Luckily we both have experience in middle and high school in at least 2 different content areas. Second, the jobs need to be in a school we are interested in working in, which means that it has a healthy sized international population. Many international schools are private schools for locals who want an English language education. That wouldn’t be a good fit for our little crew.

Another factor to consider is location. We had a few places on a list that was roughly titled, “Places we don’t want to live.” This is personal for each teacher and family. I’m not going to tell you to much about that list here, but it wasn’t very long and our reasoning makes sense to us.

Then comes the challenge of finding a school that will hire a family with 3 kids.

Like many teachers in our situation, we cast a wide net. We applied for almost everything that met our criteria. Sometimes we applied to a school that matched only one of us, with the hope that a job that matched the other one might be forthcoming.

You wait, then, for a response. The majority of “no” responses are silence. Some schools send a form letter rejection, some send a more personal rejection. Some explain why, and some do not. On a school’s end, it is also a puzzle. Matching up couples can be quite the challenge and requires different principals at different divisions to do some horse trading.

Some schools reply that they are interested in having a round 1 conversation. Most places schedule a 30-45 minute online call. This is often with the principal of the division we are applying to. Some of these were done with David and I together, but most were separate. Some have you do an online “self” interview, where you record yourself answering questions.

Round 1 could perhaps proceed to a round 2 interview. Round 2 could include other teachers or an assistant principal, sometimes a director of teaching and learning.

Usually round 3 is an offer call with a head of school, but an offer could be extended by email.

Here’s our stats:

We applied to 33 schools, but not all of them had jobs that matched both of us.

We had interviews (at least round 1) with 9 different schools across Africa, Asia, and Europe.

As often happens with this process, you start to feel like one of the schools that is interviewing you feels right. The particular classes we would teach there feel like a good fit. The school’s philosophy matches ours. The location is a place we are interested in. You don’t always know this before you start interviewing. You get a lot of info and impressions from the schools as you interview–even from the emails they send. I tried to take a lot of notes and pay attention to what I was asked and how they answered my questions.

One school started to stand out for us. I never know if David is going to feel the same way I do, so after we each had our interviews, we would meet and swap notes and impressions. David and I both agreed about this school: it felt right. We had a round two interview, and again, it felt like we were jiving with this school and community.

When we got the email from the superintendent asking to meet that day with both of us together, we started to get excited. Graded offered us the jobs by email, so this was my first time being offered the job on a video call. When the superintendent offered us the jobs officially in that call, I had to work real hard to keep my face calm. We took tons of notes in this conversation where we broke down all the details and nitty gritty of the contract. We were given the weekend to think about it.

David had a terrible sinus infection, so he took the next 24 hours to try to get better so he could think straight. We had both had agreed we were going to take it, but it’s always good to sleep on a big decision. By the next night, it was settled.

And so it is with great excitement that we announce that we are going to the American Community School of Amman, Jordan in July 2025!

From our first email interaction through every single conversation that followed, there was a good feeling of fit. Our excitement only grew through the process. It offers the diverse international community we were looking for, in a place rich in history, and it offers us a new culture to explore and learn from.

I will be teaching high school English, and David will be teaching 8-12 computer science. The school is smaller, so we will have more preps, but they are classes we both have experience teaching. ACS is an AP school, so I will be stepping back into AP territory after teaching IB courses here at Graded. I’m really excited for this! I have a blog post in my drafts about IB vs. AP. I don’t think I could say that one is better than the other in my opinion. That said, I have missed some of the elements of the AP curriculum, and I’m excited to dive back in to them.

To put it simply, I’m thrilled! I really wanted to stay in high school, but as a flexible person, I was willing to return to middle school for the right school. I just kept hoping that the right school would have a high school position.

There’s so much to say and so much to share. I’m sure if you’re reading this and you know us, you have a million other questions. Email me! Let’s talk!

For now, I feel a great sense of relief that the search process is over for us. It was very stressful to ride the international teaching job emotional roller coaster. Finding time to have a video call with schools in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East is very tricky. We had many 6 am calls and 9 pm calls. I wrote so many versions of my cover letter. I obsessively refreshed the job posting sites. I was sad when a school that I thought was a good fit decided to move forward with other candidates. I was sad when immediate rejections came back from places I thought would want to talk to us.

We had a moment in November where we decided to set a date to decide we were just going to head back to the US. That isn’t our first choice, but it’s a viable choice. I didn’t want it to be Christmas, because that felt like a way to ruin the holiday, so we said January 1 was our shift focus to the US. We did some serious thinking about what that life would be like. We ran through a few scenarios. At first, this plan was scary. It’s honestly a whole new country for us. It may be hard to imagine if you live in the US, but it felt like moving to a foreign country. We’d have to transfer our licenses to a new state, find jobs in a market we didn’t know, change our day to day life to match the realities of that place.

Looking back, we were offered the jobs at ACS on November 14, so we were safely before our January 1 deadline. At the time, it didn’t feel like we had a lot of breathing room–it was stressful and emotional. I did all the things to manage the stress: good eating, good sleeping, running nearly every day, restorative yoga each night, deep breathing exercises. I won’t say I scored an A for managing the stress, but I didn’t fail.

Two things I really struggle with are not having certainty and not having any thing to do. I had to practice sitting with uncertainty and not doing anything more than I already had. I channeled those feelings into organizing and cleaning our apartment. I sold or gave away a lot of things we aren’t taking with us. I pruned the kids’ wardrobes of clothes that don’t fit any more. I cleaned out the refrigerator.

The weekend after we got our job offer I felt like I was thawing from a giant block of ice. Last week, I was able to focus on my classes and my family. What a relief! Remember my job? I love my job. Remember hanging out with my kids? That’s fun. Remember running because it’s fun and not as an alternative to crying?

What now? We look forward and we stay present. I am trying to enjoy and appreciate every moment we have in Brazil before we leave. I’m trying to leave it all on the dance floor. Beyond that, I’m thinking about what art we love and will ship, and what we can let go. I’m wearing my closet so I can decide what I don’t love anymore, so it too can get donated or swapped. I’m reading Our Last Best Chance by King Abdullah II of Jordan. I’m learning the depth of all I don’t know about Jordan, the region, and global history. I’m making lists and wishes.

Now we just keep living our vida boa here in Brazil, watching our next adventure approach on the horizon.