Amy & Darragh – Ireland
Our Experience with Teachers In UAE during a pandemic…
We started looking for primary teaching positions in January 2020. We came across Ruth who works with Teachers In UAE and got in touch with her. Ruth started helping us straight away. She was always on hand to answer any question we had no matter how small or trivial, we always received a reply within minutes of contacting Ruth. Ruth organised interviews for us in a highly sought after school in Abu Dhabi and with her help we had secured positions for the coming school year by the end of the month.
Shortly after, Covid hit leading to a lot of uncertainty about whether travelling over to the UAE would be possible or whether our jobs would still be available there. Ruth was in direct communication with the school every week and provided us with regular updates in relation to our travel later in the summer. She always did her best to reassure us and put our minds at ease through a worrying and uncertain time.
Thankfully we were able to come out to Abu Dhabi in August. We love our school, we have made fantastic new friends and we are really enjoying the lifestyle, sunshine and change of scenery. We are extremely grateful to Ruth for helping us along the way and we would highly recommend anyone thinking about coming to the UAE to teach to get in touch with Ruth, she won’t let you down.
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Our experience teaching in The UAE so far….
We have been teaching full time online since August due to low numbers of children choosing to come to school. The school is accommodating both blended and distance learners. We have found the online teaching to be very well structured. We use Microsoft Teams for our live lessons and Seesaw for follow up activities as well as a variety of other websites and resources. Teaching in Abu Dhabi is very different to teaching at home. Our school is very large with up to 15 teachers in a grade which makes planning much easier as you are always supported and always working in a team. We receive professional development on a regular basis making it easy to adapt to and learn about a new curriculum.
Abu Dhabi has handled the Covid pandemic well so far. There are restrictions in place however, we are able to live quite a normal life. We are able to go to malls, restaurants, the beach and most importantly brunches. They are very strict on only four people sitting at a table, masks must be worn at all times and teachers get covid tests every two weeks. We feel very safe here. There’s lots to do here. We have been to different beaches, pools, kayaking in the mangroves etc. We joined the local GAA club, although training wasn’t allowed, they organised group fitness classes which was great for meeting new people. Overall we are having a great time in Abu Dhabi and are so glad we made the move.
