I do not mind a half year. It would get my feet wet so to speak. It would also give me some money to support myself for the summer until the next school year starts.
I do not see to many ads for schools in Poland though. And what few I do see would prefer someone with a university degree which I do not have.
Be warned, the salaries aren't likely to be good enough to sustain you over the summer based on four months work - which makes it difficult as you'd have to find your feet pretty quickly in order to be able to find enough work over the summer months.
What you might have success in doing is applying to some of the small provincial schools - you might very well find a school willing to take you on with some hours over the summer months too. They (if it's in a small town) may also be quite happy to sort out some very cheap accomodation too.
Ignore the requirement for a degree - it's not required. As long as you can speak, read and write English well, there's really no need for one. I'm still studying towards mine, and it hasn't presented any barrier at all. Some schools might demand it - but in my opinion, if they do, they aren't worth bothering with.
And yes, the adverts present a false impression - Poland is full of language schools, Poznan is no different. The problem is that a lot of these schools won't take the risk on an unknown quantity when they can see someone 'in the flesh' here - Poznan is a short trip from many UK cities, and so there just isn't the need to risk it on non-EU citizens.
Incidentally, do you speak Polish? If you do, or if you have a Polish passport, it'll make life considerably easier when trying to find a job.
There are quite a few here without a degree but some insist on it. You just have to know where to look.
A degree education helps but you can get by without it if you are cluey and keep yourself 'in the know'. For me, personally, some of the ideas which I studied have come in handy but they shouldn't be seen as a prerequisite to teaching. It helped my thinking more than anything else.
Like any job, you have to show yourself to be the best candidate, the top dog.
Hi - my name is Kevin and my wife (Aleksandra) is Polish. We are thinking about the possibility of me working in Poznan. I am a physics graduate who is a Head of Department at an English grammar school. I spent about 6 years in the nuclear industry too. What are the chances of getting a well paid job in Poznan teaching Physics/English? My Polish is tolerable but would certainly improve if I came to live in Poland.
What kind of salaries would be open to me and how do I find out about specific jobs?
It's probably too late for the guy in question, but for anyone else...
You'll need a Masters to have any hope of teaching in the universities in Poland, so if you're merely BSc plus PGCE, then it won't be enough for them. The fact that you're registered as a teacher in the UK is good enough for Poland, but the likelihood is that there just won't be the demand unless you're exceptionally lucky.
Teaching in a state school would be easy enough once your Polish is at an adequate level. But the salaries are so terrible that it simply wouldn't be worth it - unless you really wished to continue teaching, it would seem unlikely that you'd want to do it. There's no real such thing as 'heads of departments' in Polish schools, so you'd be looking at taking a demotion.
The best option in my opinion would be to go private - but even then, you'd be looking at needing 3 years or so of English teaching experience before the real money would start flowing.
The other option would be to take a career change of sorts - there's enough international companies in Poznan that would value you for your 'transferable skills' - you might very well find that someone capable of teaching Physics in English could be desirable within some of these larger companies. But again, it could be a crap shoot so to speak
But jeez, why everyone in Poznan? It's not meant to be desirable!
It should be a postgraduate and undergraduate distinction. You can study an MA, i.e a Masters, at undergraduate level in Aberdeen University, Scotland. The requirements for Polish teachers and native speakers are somewhat different.
