ELIC teachers focus their lives around building connections in their host countries—bringing together local students and friends, other expats, and their teammates in a beautiful cross-cultural community. The foundation that makes this sustainable is the community within their teams and the organization as a whole. To help support this community, ELIC uses three main tools throughout each teacher's journey.
Long-Term Orientation
Even before teachers make their way overseas, they build a foundation of community within the ELIC family. In addition to equipping them with the teaching and culture skills they’ll need to get started professionally, Long-Term Orientation is designed to help them understand the org’s DNA and connect with their training cohort and the support staff in the North American offices. In the online portion of this training, new teachers spend time getting to know each other in small groups. This way, when they arrive at the office in Colorado, they are greeting friends rather than meeting strangers. Time spent learning, sharing meals, hiking, and exploring together turns a cohort of new teachers into a network of friends able to support one another as they head into similar challenges in their host countries.
Country Team Structure
Once teachers arrive in their new cities, they integrate into the existing city and country team structures. They connect with their city teammates most frequently, often working together for professional development, team strategy, and administrative tasks. More importantly, though, they invest in friendships, building essential connections with like-minded people who share similar cultural roots. This gives them a place to rest from the beautiful, but exhausting, work of functioning in a second language and culture.
Teams share the work of hosting, especially when it comes to big holiday events and English clubs. Their friends and students see how teachers care for each other and know that they can be trusted to care for them too, breaking down some of the cultural barriers to building solid cross-cultural community.
By staying connected to the country-wide team, teachers are encouraged by the work being done around the country and learn from the strategies of other city teams. Staying connected, having a place to rest, and keeping a view of the bigger picture are all powerful tools for teachers to live overseas sustainably. Their city and country teams make this possible.
Annual Conferences
Teachers also stay connected to the large-scale work of the whole ELIC community through Annual regional conferences. Every year, teachers from all over Asia and the Middle East/North Africa get together for several days of rest, professional development, personal growth, and the joy of spending time with their community working all over the world. Their orientation cohort, country teammates, and the friends they’ve made over years of conferences all get the chance to catch up, reminisce, and encourage one another. They hear country updates from all of the places where we serve, getting a break from the day-to-day grind to remind them that beautiful things are happening all over the world.
The ELIC family comes together to celebrate baby dedications, graduation celebrations, service anniversaries, and other milestone events. And the kids on our teams get to spend time with friends who understand their unique experience as third-culture kids (TCKs). When teachers return to their cities after the conference, it is with a renewed sense of energy, community, and purpose.
We emphasize team and community so heavily because we’ve seen the difference it makes. When our community is strong, our teachers thrive, our teams are more effective, and our work for students and friends in the local communities where we serve is multiplied.
We are always looking for more people to join our ELIC family. If you’ve ever considered going overseas, take a moment to explore the opportunities available! We would love to hear from you if you’re interested.