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34 | Eight Easy Steps To Great Teaching Job In Vietnam Step eight: best shot | 35

STEP EIGHT:

BEST SHOT

utting yourself in a position to teach English in Vietnam involves an
enormous amount of work. By the time you reach the ‘Give it your best
Pshot’ phase of getting a top teaching job in Vietnam, you’ve booked
air tickets, arranged a visa, notarised key documents, taken a long-haul
flight and found your way around a new city.

Then you complete an intensive, government accredited TESOL
programme with a heavy practical dimension, put a quality CV together,
go on a shopping spree for teaching clothes and footwear, research
employment opportunities, attend job interviews and negotiate a job
contract with a ‘hard-nosed’ Vietnamese employer. In addition, for months,
possibly years before attending to all of the tasks above, you held down
a job (or two) in your home country to save money for your teach abroad
journey. Gosh, you’ve achieved a lot. There’s every reason to be proud of
yourself.

All the work involved in pulling together a teach abroad journey is
enough justification to give it your best shot when the time comes to work
as a professional ESL teacher. I’m confident that’s what you intend to do.
So, here are fifteen ‘insider’ tips, not in any particular order, that I hope
you’ll find helpful at the ‘coalface’:

1. Prepare every lesson: ensure it is inclusive, high energy, and be
unpredictable. Think about how people learn, make use of teaching
resources. Every student (and parent) is important.

2. Gossip and cliques: commonplace in a school environment, under
no circumstances be a participant. They’re toxic.

3. Politics: don’t engage in discussions or express opinions. It can land
you in serious trouble.