About Kathy Fritts
Kathy Fritts, International School Educator
My name is Kathy Fritts and I have five international school stints in my career. I began as a teacher who morphed into a school librarian. I’d always had a yen for travel, did the Junior Year Abroad thing in Florence, Italy but then came home to start teaching in Oregon.
First Stop Samoa
After five years, I got married and we took the leap to teach in American Samoa for a year. It didn’t work out as planned, so we came home to have kids and get what we thought of our real careers underway.
But when the kids were in middle school, we tossed this traditional teaching life overboard and got hired in Vienna, Austria at AIS (American International School). We returned home after two years and settled in to finish out our careers in the public, and in my case, private, schools.
The Fritts family in Vienna, Austria
But when we retired, we weren’t quite ready for golf, gardening and grandkids, so we got jobs in Moscow, Russia at AASM (Anglo-American School of Moscow), in Dubai at DAA (Dubai American Academy), and finally in Chiang Mai, Thailand at APIS (American Pacific International School).
Now I’m home for good in Portland, Oregon. But the itch for travel has not gone away nor the memories of my international school life. I am on a mission to encourage as many educators as possible to teach overseas and to provide the information needed to make it happen - the reason for this website.
Go Ahead—Make the Leap
Perhaps even more important than the details of how to make it happen is the desire to make the leap into this world. As a teacher, you can slog along in the 30-years-to-retirement rut, take perfunctory group tours when you’re 60+ and call it travel.
Or you can teach in Russia or Zimbabwe or Beijing, travel widely and in ways tourists simply cannot even imagine, pay off debts and save buckets of money, teach wonderful, eager students, make interesting friends, and accelerate your life into a higher gear.
The days and years you spend teaching overseas are likely to be far more vivid and memorable than your current teaching life. I guarantee it. As one international school parent said, “It’s a great gig!” Yes, indeed.
