Teacher (English, Math, or Science)

Abaarso School of Science and Technology

Deadline

July 31, 2013

Location

Abaarso, Somalia

Abaarso School is a boarding school located in Northern Somalia (Somaliland). The school itself has a walled-in campus with Somaliland Government security and an additional security wall around teacher housing.

Classification

Other

Duties

Working in Abaarso you can expect to have myriad responsibilities but first and foremost you are a teacher. Teachers typically carry around 20 classroom hours per week depending on their additional roles and responsibilities. But, as any experienced teacher knows, the majority of ‘teaching work’ occurs outside the classroom in planning, researching, evaluating, grading, printing, and providing extra help.

The most common challenges in most Western classrooms – lack of discipline and motivation in students – are typically not issues for Abaarso teachers. Most of our students are professional self-motivators and maintain high levels of respect for their teachers. In addition, we keep our class-sizes to a minimum to allow the students better access to the teachers and to improve the quality of education.

Our current average class size is 16 students in a classroom for the 2012-2013 school year.
Teachers at Abaarso are given a curriculum outline, learning objectives for their classes, and suggested materials but have large amounts of freedom to shape their classes.

Every teacher at Abaarso has responsibilities outside the classroom. These responsibilities fall under three main categories:

• Leading an extracurricular activity.
• Leading a ‘work time’ service group.
• Operational/administrative roles.

As a teacher at Abaarso, you would lead either a club or a sport in our extracurricular program. Teachers have complete freedom in choosing a group to lead but we highly recommend choosing a passion of yours. Clubs and teams meet three times per week and are encouraged to create a product to be shared with the rest of the school and community. This could be in the form of the Debate Club holding a tournament, the Psychology Club presenting the findings of their experiments, or the Basketball team playing home games in front of the student body.

Our student service program, referred to here as ‘work time’, is a chance for students to give back to the school directly or to the greater Somali community. Every student is required to do four hours per week of work time service and these jobs range from acting as the school librarians to cleaning classrooms to tutoring orphans from Hargeisa in math and English. About 40% of our student body teaches young students either at the Hargeisa Orphanage or in our free Primary School for Abaarso village students. Our teachers are asked to oversee one ‘work time’ group. Depending on the type of service there may be little supervision necessary (e.g. classroom cleaners) or there may be a tremendous amount of leadership and planning required (e.g. Orphanage Tutoring). Teacher classroom hours are often adjusted to account for the more demanding work times.

Teachers also take on operational or administrative roles in various areas. These additional roles and other career growth opportunities are offered to teachers who have performed exceptionally in their current responsibilities.

Qualifications

Abaarso School highly values applicants with experience:

• Teaching.
• Living in developing countries.
• Working with children and students.
• Coaching or tutoring.

A university bachelors degree is mandatory.

Additional Information

Full-time; Mid level; Entry level; Internationally based

Salary

$250/month stipend

Application Instructions

Please apply through our website application form:
http://www.abaarsotech.org/index.php?option=com_ckforms&view=ckforms&id=1&Itemid=34

 

For more information on Abaarso School, please visit our website:
www.abaarsotech.org

 

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