The World is a Class: How and Why to Teach English Around the World

by Caleb Powell, Jacqui Good (Editor)

This handbook helps you figure out which part of the world will offer the best teaching and living experience for your personality. Caleb gives advice on how to find employment abroad and what to ask for in a contract. He compares the school teaching experience to that of teaching privately. He sorts through the issues of teaching abroad illegally. He has words of wisdom about when to quit and when to negotiate. He adds an extensive list of resource material. And he shares the stories of dozens of teachers who've survived and flourished around the world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel

66 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2002

About the author

Caleb Powell's next book, Surfing in Pakistan, a collaboration with Sana Nasim, is forthcoming from Paper Angel Press in 2025. Excerpts have been published by The Seneca Review (2017) and Pleiades (2023).

When Pakistani artist and polio survivor Sana Nasim reaches out to Caleb Powell, blogger for the Karachi based Express Tribune, an extraordinary and transformative friendship begins. She wants to improve her English. Symbiotically, he wants to create a work of art. In the tradition of Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, the opuses of Truman Capote, Harper Lee, W. Somerset Maugham, Toni Morrison, and Barbara Kingsolver, push Sana to write moving portraits of life in Pakistan, and lead to powerful discussions, the personal and universal, on love, life, and death.

This friendship, enabled by Internet, leads to the more pressing philosophical and moral questions and solutions of our times. Underneath simple dialogue, prose juxtaposes Sana and Caleb’s lives with Capote’s nonfiction aesthetic, Lee’s tale of smalltown bigotry, Maugham’s protagonist’s search for meaning, Morrison’s examination of justice and injustice, and Kingsolver’s missionary crusade of irony. These books motivate Sana to realize her potential and make a positive impact on society.
Surfing in Pakistan is a testament to the power of language to unify cultures and people.

Caleb also has work in various literary magazines, including Poets & Writers, Post Road, The Stranger, The Sun Magazine, and Zyzzyva. He co-authored, with David Shields, I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel (Knopf). Currently he lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and three daughters.

Reviews

[C. A. Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great, clear, informative read if you've ever considered hitting the road and teaching English overseas! Highly recommended.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sweet and succinct. A great starting place delivering everything it promises.

[Angelica · Rating 2 out of 5]

This seemed like it was a good idea, good start for a person to write about his experiences. But it didn't fully develop into a book, I felt like I got the rough draft version.

[Jalice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gave lots of great advice. Not too presumptuous or preachy.