Teaching in Porto Alegre

Hi Olin,

Finding a teaching job in any major Brazilian city (for a native speaker) is about the easiest thing in the world to do. Generally speaking you can walk away from the very first school you enter to enquire about work with a job and start date in hand. (Lots of time you may even start the very same day!)

Schools here rarely seek applicants from abroad since there are many native speakers here to choose from. Schools here also offer no assistance whatsoever in the immigration process as many other private sector jobs do.

Much easier to get teaching positions here, come, enjoy, find a job. Good luck!

Cheers,
William James Woodward - Brazil Animator, Expat-blog

Hi William,

Thank you for your reply! At present I am in London, but hoping to secure employment before I leave for Brazil! I'm pretty flexible as to where I work, but looking at the south and possibly Porto Alegre or Campo Grande! It pleases me that you say it's pretty easy to get work once I'm there...but this really isn't a possibility as I have to find work before I leave!

Could you offer any advice as to reputable job sites or schools which might offer me work?

Many thanks again for your post and any further insight you may be able to offer.

Cheers

Oli

Hi again Olin,

As I said before schools here rarely recruit abroad, they have an ample supply of applications coming from people already here in the country.

You can check the classifieds section here at Expat-blog and at other sites like www.gringoes.com if you wish. I think that you might find that any of the ads for teachers are either not recent or predominantly for São Paulo.

If you simply will not come to Brazil without first having arranged employment here then I would suggest examining any job qualifications you have in an area other than teaching, seek out a large multinational company at home that is in that particular sector and enquire if they have any operations in Brazil and if they might be taking on new staff.

Good luck,
William James Woodward - Brazil Animator, Expat-blog

Thanks again for your advice! If i had the money to take the chance I would just come and find work, hopefully i will be lucky and secure at least some work before i leave, what with Skype around these days maybe i will be lucky!

Hello Olin,

How did you get on with this?

I'm in a similar position, looking at going from London to Porto Alegre.  It would be great if you could let me know.

Cheers
Ben

Possibly easy to find a teaching job however did you calculate how much you need to live in Brazil? University teacher with Brazilian PHD are paid R$2000/month. Certainly experienced teachers in top quality private schools can make much more but I doubt it could happen to an expat. Be very carefull to the cost of living in Brazil; can you live with this salary in a big city like Porto Alegre?

Thanks for the feedback Bardamu.      Are you teaching in Brazil?

No I don´t but I am a quite a lot of contact with this area. I had some portuguese lessons with a few professors from universities.  And with my three children I learnt how much can make teachers in private school and colleges.
I mean Brazilian live well with that but as an expat, I presume you would like to keep same standing of life than in your origin country but you won't.
The only people who did well in teaching is actually the one who created a proper business: language school (generally english, french and spanish). Language business is really booming in Brazil but competition is strong.
Actually there are a few english school franchises all over Brazil; possibly a good business.

Teachers in the established language schools earn anywhere from R$25 - 35 per hour (depending on the location) for traditional classroom teaching and slightly more for "in-company" or residential classes. The schools only pay for actual teaching time, not for class prep or correcting homework. Ususally they do pay the normal hourly rate for administering tests, since these are generally done in the classroom. Most will give an allowance for bus fare if you're giving "in-company" or residential classes, but generally speaking they don't cover the entire cost of transportation and certainly nothing for travel time.

Teaching private students is much more lucrative, but this takes a great deal of time and effort to set up. Certainly until one builds up a decent student base it would be difficult to get by on just private students. Most start out by applying at a couple of schools who can fill their available hours and begin recruiting students by setting up a website, printing pamphlets, newpaper ads, etc., and once they've begun building a student base the start reducing their availability with the schools.

Brazilians generally have the attitude if a teacher charges less than the other teachers in any given area that's because they mustn't be really good teachers. They won't pay more than the others charge either, so you've really got to research the going rate for private classes in any area to price yourself within the acceptable range. Strangely, while Brazilians love to haggle over prices (it's part of their culture) and they like to get the lowest prices possible, this doesn't seem to carry over to the price of language classes. They can't seem to get their heads around the idea that maybe your fees are lower than the other guy's simply because you're undercutting their prices in order to get more students! Somehow the logic just eludes them.

Cheers,
William James Woodward, EB Experts Team