We originally moved to Hanoi, Vietnam to try our hand at teaching English. It’s had it’s ups and downs, but overall it’s been a rewarding experience. Here are the basic pointers we’ve learned from teaching English in Vietnam. We’re by no means experts, but we learned a few lessons pretty quickly from being over here!

Getting a job

To get a job, we simply made a concise resume with our education, experience, and we emphasized our tutoring/teaching time with ESL students. If you have a degree and a TEFL/TESOL/CELTA, then you’ll have your pick of the jobs. If you lack either, you can definitely still find work, you’ll just have to hunt a little bit harder. Teachers in Vietnam make on average $18-20 an hour. Make sure you include a professional picture on your CV, as ‘looking the part’ is just as important as your qualifications. Jobs are posted daily on Hanoi Massive and Expats in Ho Chi Minh City (Facebook groups), as well as The New Hanoian.

Part-Time vs Full-Time

Don’t assume that you’ll be working a 9-5 schedule as soon as you arrive. This is a large city, and a lot of employers are offering teachers individual classes in the evenings and weekends. Classes are often littered throughout the day or evening andweekends only. Also, be wary of the amount of driving you’ll have to do. At first, we snapped up a bunch of classes but soon realized we were driving an hour to teach for an hour — definitely not worth it. Try to focus on jobs that are close by, or especially on jobs that offer large block chunks of teaching hours.

Contracts

We had some serious frustrations as a result of signing contracts when we shouldn’t have, and most of our friends have experienced this at some point as well. The contracts in this industry often seem to work one way – if you sign the contract and then break it (quitting early, showing up late, etc), they’ll keep your pay. As such, never sign a contract on the spot, and delay signing it for as long as you can until you’ve  gotten a feel for the job. Delaying by a week or two might be the difference between being stuck in a bad job and being free to go with pay. Also, be mindful that jobs try to lure you in with the promise of a work visa. They’ll either never follow through on this promise, continue to put it off, or get you one and you’ll be locked in with them for a year (or at risk of losing the money they put out to get you the visa). If you’re serious about staying here, make sure to get a company that will follow through. If you’re unsure about staying here, put off getting a work permit.

When to arrive

Every year, the entire country slows down for Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. This year Tet falls on Feb 15-23, but you can check it online here. Less money gets spent in anticipation for the celebration, so there are fewer people hiring, and fewer hours being given to teachers. If you arrive in January or February, prepare yourself for a very slow start. That being said, all other times are consistently good. May/June is perfect to get hired for the summer term (students are out of school, and hours are high), or November/December to replace all the teachers leaving for Christmas.

Type of schools/classes

Be picky about where you work and try to find somewhere you enjoy. Teaching at a public school can be very rewarding if you enjoy children, but classes can range from 30-50 students with little to no help from teaching assistants and terrible organization. We often hear that teaching these classes are quite challenging. We’ve always opted for language centres for this very reason. This leaves us working mostly evenings and weekends, but the class sizes are smaller and we were lucky to get mostly adult/teenage classes. Teaching older students is awesome, as they’re more eager to learn and teaching conversational English is more enjoyable. On the other hand, kids classes are a lot of fun if you like playing games. Vietnamese children are always so happy and hilarious to spend time with.

Excellent way to travel

All in all, teaching English has proved to be an incredibly easy way to work while traveling. The low cost of living means that saving up for your next leg of traveling is not hard at all. We definitely made our moneys worth teaching in Hanoi, Vietnam. If you browse Dave’s ESL Cafe, the salaries for Korea, China and the Middle East all seem to leave room for quick savings, as well.