Job Opportunities Teaching Young Learners in Vietnam

Lots of resources to supplement your teaching.
Most colleagues willing to share ideas.

Management is quite demanding.
Work load is quite heavy on the weekends.
Management takes every complaint from students seriously.
They will take away classes after a few complaints.
Customer satisfaction survey is done every course. It has more to do with teacher popularity than teacher quality.
Observations are very rigorous and put a lot of pressure on teacher to perform. It is also a way for the company to avoid giving annual pay raises. This discourages teachers from staying longer than a year.

My husband and I worked for ILA in 2009. We had a very good academic manager and thought the school was run smoothly compared to so many other places we had worked at. There were plenty of materials, internet, and support when we needed it from the coordinator and assistant manager. We consider ourselves lucky to have had such great admin when we worked there. I also thought the volunteer system they have set up is pretty awesome. They help the community, especially children, so much. I admire that in a company. If we ever venture back to the Wild East, we would consider applying there once again based on our first experience. Good luck!

I worked for ILA for a year and a half and it was a good experience all around.

The management are aupportive and there are a lot of supplementary resources. There are lots of opportunities for professional development and career growth.

The teachers are all really helpful and share ideas and resources. There is also a really fun social element to ILA. Everyone hangs out together and ILA holds social events and has a community netowrk which is a great opprtunity to get involved with the local community!

Overall is was a good place to work - better than a lot of other schools!

I worked at ILA Vietnam from March till October 2011. The children were a joy to teach, generally fun and well behaved. The school was also relatively well equipped. However the management were unreliable and dishonest. They gave me a 12 month contract and then revoked it after enrollment dropped down. This was frustrating as I felt like I worked really hard while other teachers were slacking around.

My advice for new teachers in Vietnam is that you're not really hired to teach, just to be a white face. The main factor determining your employment success is who you go drinking with.

The school was very nice and they had tons of resources - yet they were poorly organized. They also had a good review and assessment program. In general - I liked working for them.

They required a long contract that I didn't like, but they did allow me to switch to part time - so they were willing to work with me.

The students were pretty good, but many of them weren't really bought into learning many times as their parents had just sent them there. I preferred teaching the adults since they were a bit more bought in.

I wasn't nuts about my working schedule and how the vacation time worked - so be sure to really understand how that works. I liked my manager, but I didn't like the people above him too much as they didn't seem very involved at all with the teachers. Probably pretty typical stuff when it comes to teaching ESL.