Moving to Dubai from the UK. Teaching in Dubai.

Hey guys! Welcome to my channel! I'm now on Blue Waters Island and I'm on my way to meet some tourists. One of my favorite places here. They serve delicious food and from their terrace you have an incredible view of the tallest Ferris wheel in the world in Dubai. As you know on my channel I interview Dubai experts from different countries and with different backgrounds. British community is one of the biggest in Dubai. So today I'm gonna interview a Dubai expert who moved here from the UK and he's working here as a teacher. So let's find out about his experience. Hi Thomas! Nice to meet you. Thank you for coming today. Could you please introduce yourself? Hi! Thank you very much for having me. Yes I'm Thomas and I'm a teacher here in Dubai and I've been here for a couple of years now. What did you do before you came to Dubai and why did you decide to come here? So before I came here to Dubai I was a teacher and I had taught in the UK for a couple of years. Now to completely be honest with you I taught in the UK and I would follow a couple of people including yourself on YouTube and Instagram and the UK is quite grey and gloomy especially during the winter months and during those winter months I would finish work when it was dark, start work when it was dark and I would be a little bit frustrated that people like yourself were having so much fun in the sun. So I sort of thought why can't I do that and I decided to apply and eventually got a job over here to move here. So I got the job and I'm moving to Dubai. Amazing! How did you find a job here? So initially to find a job I was a little bit confused on where to look. There is a website called TES and TES.com has a range of different jobs all around the world but specifically for Dubai. I also looked on other websites such as Guardian in the UK and there's a range of different websites available to just try and search. And what was your first impression when you arrived? Wow if that makes sense. Yeah my first impression of Dubai was just how incredible this place was and I initially came here on holiday just to see whether I enjoyed the place just to see if it was for me and I was absolutely blown away by just how many things there are to do here. I wanted to try and do everything during that holiday but then I decided I couldn't fit everything in I'm just gonna have to come back and live here. So just wow would be the words. And what challenges did you face at the beginning? So when I first moved here I was a little bit challenged by accommodation. Initially my accommodation wasn't fully sorted for me. I didn't have staff accommodation and my emirates id took a little bit of time to come through. It was a bit of a delay and because I didn't have my emirates id I was unable to get a long-term rent and I wasn't quite sure on the process of getting accommodation. So initially I stopped in a hotel for quite a while and that cost quite a lot. So that was some of the first challenges and initially I didn't really know lots of people but eventually the longer I've been here I've started to grow contacts and it's been a lot better to try and know new people. If you compare your life in the EU to the life in the UK what are the main differences? So I'd say the UAE versus the UK my life is quite different. I think one of the biggest differences is the constant sun so I find myself going to the beach to the pool here and of course in the UK other than for a few days per year that doesn't really happen. Now I quite enjoy just being able to go out during the weekend and just enjoy my time and not have to worry about the rain so that's a big difference and of course just being able to go and enjoy myself and have a little bit more free time around my neighbourhood at JLT is fantastic too. In what way are Dubai schools are different from the schools in the UK? So the schools are different here in the UAE in a range of different ways. When I first arrived here I was struck by how vast and immense the facilities are here in the different schools in the UAE. So because there are foundation stages, nursery, primary, secondary and sometimes colleges built within the schools there are so many different facilities available. So things like swimming pools, you've got sports halls, you've got woodwork rooms, science labs, music rooms, there's some fantastic facilities available. In addition the schools here have a slight tweak in curriculum regarding even though you're teaching using a UK curriculum you still have some tweaks so you will teach MEC so moral education and social studies as well which is integrated into the English curriculum. For me as a teacher life is different in schools because they start a little bit earlier so because school finishes earlier it starts earlier I find myself getting up earlier at around 5am which is quite early and it's something I've never really gotten used to but it's one of the other differences with schools here is I find the technology so going back to that facilities they have a range of different technology available within these schools. So within my school there is Chromebooks and the children have Chromebooks available to use and that's really developed me as a teacher understanding how technology works and then allowing children to use that. And I remember when I was in school we were like reading books and writing but now kids use iPads and laptops so is it easy for you to handle this new type of education? Absolutely it was an initial challenge of understanding what devices they were using and not only understanding them myself but also teaching the children you know there's six seven year old children trying to understand those things and it can be a little bit challenging sometimes but the children are sometimes teaching me things and when it comes to reading and writing all those things do still happen in schools too but there are a lot more things that happen behind a screen though. And you said that your school didn't provide accommodation for you but in general do you know schools provide accommodation for teachers? They do, they do. Now to be completely honest with you my school did offer accommodation allowance which allowed me to then eventually choose my own place. Many different schools though offer staff accommodation in a location which might be closer to the school or slightly further away which requires a drive. It was just in my case I had that allowance which now is fantastic but at the starting point was a little bit challenging. How much is the salary teachers get in Dubai? So that one's always a slightly challenging question to answer and the reason I say that is because you might have no experience in teaching and be a newly qualified teacher and you're talking around eight to nine thousand dirham per month all the way up to more experienced teachers looking at your sort of twelve to fourteen thousand dirham a month. That's excluding accommodation allowance so that's also something you need to consider. I would also advise making sure that you think about your medical insurance because that's also quite varying to a range of different schools too. What do you like best about living in Dubai? I really enjoy just the vast quantities of things to do. I really enjoy just getting up in the morning on the weekends and in the evenings and just going for a bike ride around Dubai Marina. As I said before I live in JLT and I'm really fortunate to live there and I just enjoy going on bike rides and also just being able to go and explore some of the sunny areas. It's all sunny. Places like JBR and going along Kite Beach I find really relaxing and it's something that I definitely wouldn't have been able to do in the UK. What are your favourite places in Dubai? So I would say Dubai Marina, Mall of the Emirates for some reason. I always end up there for some reason and I would also enjoy going and walking around Burj Park down by Dubai Mall too. Kite Beach is fantastic in the morning as well and it's somewhere I regularly go to. And what do you dislike about living in Dubai? So I always find this one challenging to answer because there are so many amazing things here in Dubai. I think one of the biggest differences for me is the lack of the colour green. Now you'll see green behind it but what I mean by that is obviously in the UK there's lots of nature available. I'm able to walk around whether it's a park or woods, forests and I kind of miss that at times especially the sense that you get from walking around those areas. And of course living here in Dubai I also miss my family as well and that's one of the challenges that you have when you move here initially. I know like as you said you moved to Dubai you didn't know anyone. Is it easy to connect with people from the UK here? It's quite straightforward yes I have met a range of people. Obviously being a teacher I work in a British school so I'm able to meet and talk to a range of different British teachers and that was great to start initially meeting people and also meeting people from other schools too. What advice would you give to those who are planning to come to Dubai from the UK? I would say just do it would be my first bit of advice but I would also say to make sure that you do your research. When you're looking at different schools make sure you find a school that is suitable for you because schools really vary over here. So to research you can go onto portals such as KHDA and that allows you to find a range of different schools. I would also say when you're looking for jobs start earlier so around October time right the way through to April time to start to look for those jobs and that's generally the window that schools start to employ people. When you're applying for jobs also think about what you can bring to other schools rather than what the schools can bring to you because there's lots of different people applying to jobs so it's quite easy for them to become overwhelmed with their applications. So just look for basically what it is that you can bring to the school to try and develop their maybe extracurricular activities and things like that. And if you compare the cost of living in the UK and the cost of living in Dubai just approximately? In my head I've got this calculation of one and a half to two times the cost of living in the UK so I would say the UAE is sort of one and a half to two times the amount of living so if you think about the cost of a milk in the UK would be around a pound or so whereas here it would be two pound so it's that kind of double. But the salary is also higher here. Exactly yes so that's the benefit and of course it's tax-free as well which helps. Oh yeah if you were to describe your experience as an expert in Dubai in three words what would that be? I would say amazing, varied and rewarding. And the last question for today if you had to start over again what would you do differently? So I've thought about this question lots in my head. You often reflect on your time here in Dubai and one of the things that I thought I needed to do differently was that initial experience of accommodation. I was unaware that you could do monthly rentals at hotels and I would just go back and tell myself you can rent somewhere for a month rather than spend lots of money on a per night basis stopping in hotels because that is expensive. Okay thank you very much Thomas for this useful information. Thank you guys for watching. Thomas has an amazing YouTube channel. There is a lot of useful information about life in Dubai, about teaching in Dubai. I will leave the link in the description below so check it out. And if you like this video don't forget to support me with your likes, leave the comments below and I will see you in the next video. Bye-bye!