Teaching jobs for Americans in Wroclaw?

Thanks. I'll be there on Wednesday.

Dommie B. wrote:


it always amazes me to see people this old (and accomplished) moving to Poland to teach English for a few shmeckles a day.

I teach English for fun and human contact. I translate scientific papers for a living, and it for a lot more than a few shmeckles a day, as I have no competition to speak of.

Well - if you ever want to do something "real" in Poland - it matters. Take Allegro - they simply won't hire anyone with a degree from anywhere but a public university, and that sort of hiring policy is common among the corporations.

(heck, I'll be recruiting another native for a permanent, long term job here in January/February - someone with a degree from a private university simply won't get a look-in)

Au contraire. Certificates from these private schools are just about worthless on the job market, for "real" jobs, at least. As delphiandomine said, "real" employers won't even look at them, and demand real diplomas from real universities.

Jcarrett, you've received a lot of flak here, and you seem like a nice guy with good intentions. Perhaps it was the way that you said you were completely unprepared etc that made people think you were unbearably naive.

I don't have much advice as I've never lived in Poland: I almost did, but then I convinced my Fiance (now wife) to come back to my home country (New Zealand) instead, so that I could finish my masters. As it turned out, we both ended up getting decent jobs (still to finish my masters!) and we are now probably going to stay here much longer we thought.

Some observations on your plan: no doubt your potential parents-in-law are great people, and will try to do a lot for you, but take what they can offer in addition to your own initiative and nous. If you're getting up early in the morning, out and about drumming up business for your English teaching, making networks and improving on your Polish, then their goodwill for you will no doubt go much further than if you mooch around waiting for your dubious university courses to start. My parents-in-law are great people too, and they have been fantastically supportive of me, and our relationship, but if you give difficulties an opportunity to manifest themselves they surely will.

No doubt you have sound reasons to put what you are doing in the USA on hold for the while: just make sure that you don't burn your bridges back there, because it might be something you want to come back to, (both of you!). I'm assuming you have already made your decision about this, though I also agree with those who backed you to complete the qualification at home before striking out on the Polish adventure.

Do everything you can NOW to have money for a rainy day: it's not undermining or doubting your relationship, and its my experience that the fact that my wife and I (individually and separately) have never felt financially stuck in some place at any time during our time together living and travelling in 3 different continents, has actually made us much more comfortable and unconditional in our commitment to eachother. Commitments to unconditional love, despite poverty, cultural clash, etc made during the bloom of romance don't stand for much when the reality of those bites: get emotionally prepared for the tests, don't think they are a symptom of everything collapsing.

I have given up hiring natives as they are too much hassle. I much prefer poles with high standards of English who are willing to work and always turn up for work when they say they will.

However, if I meet a native who has a track record in turning up when they are supposed to and know English...........then I would employ them.


Depends what you are studying, I would suggest.

I now know several people who have attended WSF and are in 'real' jobs earning 'real' money and all with their degree from a private university.

We must remember that whilst many of us have certain experiences here in Poland, others still have other experiences which will seem to contradict the other persons view. Is it wrong? no just different and also interesting.

Remember that only 25% of a job is based upon intelligence and the academic and the other 75% is based upon your ability to positively adapt to the world ( to paraphrase slightly HBR ). We never know, Jeremy could end up being more successful than we have been. He could be employing us in years to come - who knows?

Dommie B.
yeah, well, i guess im the stupid one. the problem is i already married to her before knowing what poland looks like. to be honest with you, i;ve never heard about poland until i met her and i thought poland its just like other nice western european countries i've been hearing about. yeah stupid me...:)

No all Polish women are bad. I have been married to one for 14 years now and she is great and I have never had the 'polish women' problem with her. She did live in the UK for almost 10 years prior to moving to Poland in 2004. So, that may have helped!

Remember getting on me for coming over to Poland and your certainty that i will fail? Well Poland is much easier than i thought. Most foreigners here, and i assume you are included in this bunch are people that had nothing going for them in their previous live, while i'm on the contrary; i had everything going for me and my confidence got me where I am, working at 2 schools, making 8000zl a month and saving up 40,000 zl since I've been here. So before writing useless discouraging nonsense and look in the mirror.

Only a person of outstanding personality traits could achieve such a success. Have you thought of writing a book: How to be successful in Poland?

8000zl a month? Saved up 40,000zl in a year? 8000zl a month would mean for school work working around 40 hours a week. Quite unlikely. As for saving up 40,000zl also quite unlikely for a guy straight off the plane as this would mean saving nearly 800 hours of work moneywise in a year and a half.

sorry but you'll have to try harder with the ********.


Plenty of English authors have achieved success with books of fiction about their time abroad. I read a dreadful one recently about some guy in the dying days of the Communist regime in Romania.

Glad to hear things went well for you jc. How are the educational plans going?

Any specific areas you want to call BS on? The girl? The parents? Specifics about school work? Paperwork?

It would be useful for others, Americans in particular, to know just what the BS factor is from the naysayers and continually depressing people.

First of all, I would expect that you are not good looking. I have realized that in Poland looks take you places also. Most foreigners here are, bluntly speaking, ugly. With that said, I am not, and this has helped me. Furthermore, I assume that nobody here is American, which means that none of you really know what work ethic is. If I teach 7-8 hours of pure teaching a day, along with 12 hours on the weekend (in total), making 8000zl is not out of reach. I'm not part of the normal breed of uneducated, out of touch English teachers. This is just a job for me, which I only do to get me by at the present time. Please, you people that sit on here writing negative comments about how life here is difficult, leave the country. Every native speaker I have met here has left their country because they are failures, which is something I will never say about myself. I can see why you discouraged me at the beginning now. You are afraid an educated native speaker with a background in many disciplines is gonna take your job. Well, it's true. Soon enough you will be filtered out of a job, and good riddance to you because you all deserve it.

I do regret that I didn't finish my degree, but when you are determined to succeed, I've realized that nothing will stop you. English teachers, not all, but most, have a severely negative attitude and lack of determination. I guess since i'm not a natural born humanitarian, but rather a logistical minded person, I'm not perfectly suitable for a job as a teacher of English, but with the right character anything is attainable.

Poland is a wonderful country. But Europe is very different from the U.S. Polish people are wonderful but have very low opions of non-poles. If you move there with no education and no language skills you will be like an illegal immagrant in the U.S.

Your in-laws will love you to start with but Polish people have a saying, "Guest is like fish, good the fish or second day then it starts to stink." Because you are foreign they will be watching and waiting for you to mess up, and believe me you will because the culture is so different.

It is not impossible but it will be hard. Polish people always believe they can beat the system and belive their friends can get them around thing or pay but this worked before not so much now.

Work ethic is pretty meaningless in teaching - no-one wants a tired teacher.


It's not out of reach, but any teacher with such a workload is unlikely to be effective or be prepared properly. I've discussed the subject with many people, and the consensus is that anyone doing more than 30 hours a week of teaching is likely to be a poor teacher. Even 8 hours of Callan a day (so no preparation) is still going to result in a tired, unmotivated teacher.




People will pick up on this very quickly, especially in Poland.


I've met many successful native speakers here who left for something new, including one ex policeman who had reached quite high heights in his career. Makes him an excellent teacher, as Poles respect his natural authority.


Not really. For a start, you need a degree with the right to teach to do what I do.

Like "ismellnonsense" said above - the story seems highly unlikely. I wonder if he'll show us his PIT-11?

So you are teaching 52 hours per week? Add in a reasonable amount time for prep and marking (say 15 minutes for each 60 minutes taught, which is pretty limited) and you're working 65 hours per week, 280 hours per month.


What kind of person works for 23zl per hour net, other than a failure?
And frankly, having taught for a decade and a bit myself, unless the profession has changed a hell of a lot since I got out of it, there is no way that you are consistently working 65 hours per week. It might sound like something that is close to possible, but anybody who has tried it will know otherwise.

Well, let's say he's doing Callan classes. He'd be doing 52 clock hours minus 5.2 hours, so 46.8 hours a week. That's 46.8 hours of almost non stop speaking, which seems highly unlikely. Not to mention that he's a kid, which means that people looking for serious classes are unlikely to take him seriously - so it can only really be Callan + conversation classes at most.


Even the worst Callan schools usually offer 30zl net.


I don't believe it's possible at all. It might be at summer camps, but there's no way that he's in the classroom doing 52 hours a week. It's not just possible to do that with any competence whatsoever - even at a Callan school.

If he wants to prove me wrong, I'll be in Wroclaw soon and he can show me his PIT-11 from last year.

For anyone coming to Wroclaw, a reasonable first year estimate would be to take home between 2500-3000zl a month and to work about 25 hours a week. However, this is for someone with qualifications - Poles are quite ageist by nature, and someone coming without qualifications may find it much much harder. The city is saturated with native speakers - and while there may still be opportunities for those with specialist qualifications, it's not a place to come if you don't know what you're doing.

I wouldn't say the 8 teaching hours a day is extremely difficult to do well, maybe for a newbie, probably most difficult to actually get that many hours back-to-back. I don't believe you could do it schlepping all over town. If he has a good situation with a school, say some double blocks ( 2x 90 min) in the morning and some in the afternoon/evening, that leaves decent prep. time. Not sure about the 12 hours on the weekend... 3 x 90 min. on BOTH Saturday and Sunday, not sure that 's a schedule one could keep for long. I'd also like to hear how this is possible from the OP. I teach A LOT of hours in Warsaw, but have been at if for 10 years and don't work weekends, so that gives time to catch up and live a bit.

It does, but what's the likelihood of someone being able to keep up 2x90 minutes in the morning (with a most probably 7am start) and then having to follow it up with classes from 4-9 every single day?


That's the other thing - if you've been at it for years, then you probably have many lesson ideas that you can create in a few minutes in your head.

The only way that I can see this being doable is to teach only Callan classes, but I can't imagine many people's throats would hold up for long at that kind of pace.

It sounds a punishing schedule, and even for an experienced teacher with it all in his/her head it would be very hard to maintain the quality.

Split shifts are a mug's game.


You must be a kind of super teacher. We can't all be geniuses like you.


I do 4x90 mins on alternate Sats and Suns termtime.


A little punishment never hurt anyone.

I used to prefer them. The teachers I worked with who taught 3.30 until 8.30 would go to the pub straight after work and stay there until they hit an out (passed out, got slung out or ran out of money) in the early hours of the morning. I'd need to head home to sleep and then would have six hours free in the middle of the day to do other things (or to go home and get a couple of hours' sleep).


I spent years doing three or four 2x90 minute classes per day. It's fairly brutal to begin with but gets easier after a few years.


That plus the fact that you know you want small groups (or individuals) and you want them all at the same level doing the same thing: that way you can prepare one lesson and use it four or five times in that week (or some that week and some the next). And you know which books to use and which to avoid.

This discussion about how many hours a day it is possible to teach is great but I'm wondering where that original fella went. You guys don't think it's possible that what actually happened is that he came over, got kicked in the keister and hauled it back Stateside, deciding to make up a little fable to make himself feel better? Nah. Never happens.