What starts as a one-year teaching contract in Asia often turns into a decade… or more.
In this video, I break down the real reasons teachers stay in Asia long term, based on 24 years of lived experience — not internet theory.
If you’re considering teaching abroad, international schools, or an expat teacher lifestyle, this video explains why so many educators never go back home.
From serious savings potential and low cost of living, to quality of life, career growth, travel, and community, these are the five factors that quietly turn short-term plans into permanent lives overseas.
Whether you’re new to international teaching or already abroad and wondering what comes next, this will help you see the bigger picture.
Time Stamps
0:00 – The one-year plan that never ended
0:52 – Reason #1: Massive savings potential for teachers in Asia
2:53 – Reason #2: Unbeatable quality of life overseas
4:19 – Reason #3: Career growth and respect for teachers
5:31 – Reason #4: Asia as the ultimate travel hub
6:32 – Reason #5: Finding community and belonging abroad
7:38 – How one year becomes a long-term expat life
8:23 – Free guide to getting your first teaching job abroad
That’s what the Southeast Asians who lived here said when the Chinese started coming here in the 1600s. Times change, countries change, people change. Adapt or die. It’s evolution.
I personally will just home school my kids. Tutors for more advanced subjects as they get older. Socialize them through sports other similar group activities for them.
I reckon it probably takes 2-3 hours tops to cover an entire day of school and the rest of the time could be used to learn other life skills. Recently I’ve been growing my own foods and herbal plants for example.
I’d like to also bring them to work and show them how business works.
Or just let them play and explore the world.
I hated school and never did well until I did my masters where having adhd didn’t mattered because I didn’t need to sit there and listen to a 1 hour plus long lecture which is impossible for me. The just told me the contents I needed to learn and the materials to learn them from which. My entire academic life teachers thought I was dumb but I finished with the highest possible grade in my masters just by not having to really listen to anyone “teach” me.
Everyone is mocking you. But I can tell you when I was a kid in Taiwan I was probably told the same thing as your kids. Taiwan would be half submerged by 2025 kind of stuff.
I wouldn’t call it a woke problem which is probably why you’re getting push back. School just wastes a lot of time teaching useless things.
Which is why my above comment will be how I plan to educate my kids.
They’re all the same, private, public. They’re all pushing a woke agenda. Pushing things like the fake ‘climate change’ narrative, putting aboriginal cultures on a pedestal, multiculturalism is good, LGBTQ … etc.
It would be good if they could stick with basic education and leave out all the obvious political BS.
I took my family out of Florida (Florida!) to get my children away from woke culture. My eldest’s school tried to poach her to put her into this group called Girls who Code. Sounded innocent enough but it turned out it was a front for woke ideology
If you want to look at a social issue that is being debated here, and some are trying to make it a political issue, look at the legalization of surrogacy debate going on in the Legislature right now. People would usually paint the DPP as progressive and liberal, but on this case they seem to be strongly anti-surrogacy.
If you want to look at a social issue that is being debated here, and some are trying to make it a political issue, look at the legalization of surrogacy debate going on in the Legislature right now. People would usually paint the DPP as progressive and liberal, but on this case they seem to be strongly anti-surrogacy.
Case and point why people need to learn more about the aboriginals.
This topic has been brought up over and over again on this very forum, and people have presented evidence that more cannibalism has been practiced by the Han Taiwanese than the indigenous peoples.
I’m not going to say that no cannibalism was ever practiced by the indigenous peoples, but the accounts of it happening that I’ve seen came from one Paiwan tribal alliance taking in a group of 50 people who lost their land, called the Cimu, and were disgusted by their cannibalism, and kicked them out. So it’s not like cannibalism was an acceptable thing.
As opposed to the Han Taiwanese and the Qing officials systematically turning cannibalism of indigenous peoples into a trade and practiced it well into the 1920s.
teaching your own kids somewhat formally is a lot different than teaching other kids, and I wouldn’t want it to be something I had to do day in and day out.
YMMV - it always does with kids, and everybody has different experiences - but we put a child into preschool earlier than we anticipated putting them into “school,” primarily for socialization, despite “sports”, mommy and me classes, art classes, music classes, etc, as we saw how quickly their little peers were developing closer relationships through the luxury of larger blocks of time spent with friends.
I feel my child gets way more than a couple hours value out of school. I suppose you could try and make it intensely focused, but is that something you really want to do [s]with[/s] to a small child?
An alternative to consider would be a school that focuses on play based learning. We went Waldorf early as it does this, and I love them fo early childhood education. We moved on from them though, because I do find them limiting for kids who strive a bit more academically early.
The topic has always been circling around since the 2000s, but right now some legislators and mass media are trying to turn it into a political issue.
I know what you mean. If the legislature is working as it is intended, a place where legislators debate how to regulate something so it won’t get abused, then I have faith that the legislators will make amendments to the draft and patch most of the loopholes.
Sadly, the Blue coalition right now just jams everything through, unwilling to discuss anything. So the current draft only has 9 articles, failing to provide protection to the surrogate mother, the parents seeking a child of their own, social safety net, and national security.
Common sense and common courtesy…can you eat that? Will it protect you from an invasion?
All jokes aside yes you are right but then we need to look at what is common sense and common courtesy.
Is it common sense to focus on greenhouse gas emissions for a country that, should it get blockaded, can’t feed itself? If trade stopped today Taiwan would starve.
Common courtesy - usually thats a lesson foreigners (guests) are given when they come to the host country…not the other way around.
How about teaching farming and the importance of farming in Taiwan instead of caring about the CO2 it emits?
How about teaching how to get those foreigners to assimilate and know their place in the social hierarchy? I’m not saying be mean or evil but…to force a home country population to adjust to a guests is…well…non-sensical.
And dont worry - for how bad Taiwan treats these 4th world country immigrants it’s still better than how they are treated at home. I wouldn’t say that Losers Back Home applies in this case because to be fair…their countries suck when it comes to providing economic opportunities.
And again yes it doesnt mean that immigrants should be treated like slaves or beaten into closets but at the same time…why the heck should people from Taiwan have to adjust to anything? Should these classes replace English and teach children Indonesian or Vietnamese next? ><
His complaints are the same whitewashing “gotcha” point that has been made against teaching native history just about everywhere it’s something worth teaching.
The only reason to make this point is to indirectly assert that it somehow invalidates the value of teaching about these groups and the things they went through. Definitely so in the case of the US.
Regardless of who did what more, the idea is: schooling spends more time telling about how the (primarily white) settlers destroyed the natives than about how the natives fought each other (and, at least in my case, both were touched upon, and the former far too little). Thus, not real capital H History because it’s somewhat tempered for little kids?
If they want it taught right, well. That’s gonna look REAL woke to them. One chapter talking about all the natives fighting each other, one about settler massacres by natives, a few about wars involving natives and God oh so many about massacres and wars against natives, Indian Removal, trail of tears + others, re-education, and the current management of indian lands, etc.
So yeah. If I were them, I’d take current woke over the much more painful history and present of native mistreatment in the US.
As long as the OP wants to pretend that these are things he is totally for but ‘just wants more practical value’ out of education or something to the effect, maybe he could tell us what. Because…
It seems that he pulled his daughter from a highly practical class just because the org having a stated goal of more women in tech is too “woke”.
Time Stamps
teaching your own kids somewhat formally is a lot different than teaching other kids, and I wouldn’t want it to be something I had to do day in and day out.