When Dominican schools actually hire English teachers

Most of the hiring happens between May and June. After that a second round, which is normally smaller, happens in July and August, by those schools that are now desperate because their posts did not get filled earlier or within the time frame they wanted. The rest of the year is mostly quiet, and whenever something does open up between September and April it is usually due to an exception, like a teacher resigning suddenly, which does not happen often.

That is the whole calendar. The rest of this is why it works that way, and what to do about it.

The reason this is so is not because every school is necessarily happy with their staff. The truth is most coordinators know by the end of October if they need someone replaced for any reason, but the decision usually waits until the end of the school year since finding a good English teacher in November is harder than living with the problem until June.

That cuts both ways. If you are employed and things are not going well, the shortage is probably protecting you without you knowing it, and you may not find out until May. And if you are the one looking, that same shortage is the reason there is nothing posted in November, even at the schools that privately already want somebody new.

I used to think the regalía explained the timing, that people held on until the Christmas salary was paid in December and then moved in January, but it turns out that is not really the case. In a colegio most people stay regardless, and in a lot of institutes the regalía is not part of the arrangement at all, so there is nothing to wait for. What actually keeps people where they are in January is that January is expensive, and after all the spending in December nobody wants to take a risk.

So what you end up with is eight months where the schools that want to make a change cannot, and the teachers who could make one will not.

• •August to October. The year starts and almost everything is already filled, so what comes up is normally a teacher who resigned suddenly because they got a better offer somewhere else, and that is pretty much the only thing that forces a school to hire out of season.
• •November and December. Effectively nothing, and this is the stretch where most teachers end up wasting their applications.
• •January and February. Much the same, which surprises people who are expecting some kind of new year wave. There is no wave. Of course there are always exceptions, but a month spent looking in January is mostly a month spent waiting.
• •March and April. Still quiet on the surface, but underneath this is usually when the decisions get made, since the coordinators who have been putting up with a problem since October are working out whether to renew, and the teachers who are unhappy are starting to think about the year ahead. Nothing is announced yet.
• •May and June. This is the season. Offers go out, teachers accept them, resignations land, and the posts those resignations create end up getting filled in the same few weeks. If you are going to do one serious push a year, this is it.
• •July and August. The scramble. What is left is whatever nobody managed to fill in May, which means the school is now the one under pressure and not you.

• •Start in April, not May. By the time the offers are actually moving you want to already be a name that somebody recognizes, since sending a first message in the middle of the season puts you behind the people who made contact a month earlier.
• •Expect to resign at the end of the year. That is normally how it works here, and a school offering you something in May is expecting you to start in August and not in three weeks.
• •Stop applying in November. Not because there is anything wrong with it, but because the odds are poor and that same effort is worth a lot more in April. If you are going to spend the winter on something, spend it on a certification, or on getting known by a coordinator before everybody else writes to them in May.
• •July is not a bad place to be, if you are still looking. It feels like the worst month, since everybody else seems settled by then, but in practice the posts that are still open in July are the ones a school badly needs filled, and that changes who is negotiating from strength.

The calendar is not any kinder from this side, since every school in the country is looking during the same eight weeks, for the same small pool of people, and the ones worth hiring are usually gone by the middle of June.

Waiting until the year ends to deal with a post you already knew about in October is a real decision with a real cost, even if it does not normally get counted as one. It buys you a quiet winter, and it puts you in the queue with everybody else in May.

None of this really describes them. My own institute runs from the first of September to the end of May, which does not line up with the colegios and does not line up with the public calendar either. Universities keep their own rhythm and call centers keep theirs, and hiring at a call center in particular can happen in any month of the year.

The public school year, the way the Ministry sets it, runs from August to late June. It is worth knowing since it anchors everything else, but private and bilingual schools mostly do not follow it, so if a specific school's dates matter to you it is better to ask that school than to assume.

They do exist and they are worth watching for, but they normally come from a short and fairly predictable list, like maternity leave, a visa, or somebody moving abroad. Almost never somebody leaving for a better job, which is what most people assume.

There are two consequences to that. If you want to catch one you have to already be visible, since these get filled through whoever the coordinator can reach that same week. And several of them are temporary by nature, so it is worth asking early whether the post is a replacement or just a cover.

Two jobs with the same monthly figure can end up being worth very different amounts, and the difference is usually the contract. A colegio normally hires you as an employee. A good many language academies and institutes hire on independent contractor terms instead, which in practice means no regalía, no health insurance through the job, and nothing accruing toward a pension.

That can still be the right job for you, and plenty of people take it knowingly because of the hours or the flexibility. The point is to take it knowingly. Ask which kind of contract it is before you agree to a number, and if what you are being offered does not match what the work actually looks like, that is worth getting proper advice on rather than guessing.

What the law owes you sets out the difference, with the articles cited.

This is one teacher's account of one market, put together from nine years of working in it and from running a department, so it is not a survey. The shape of the year is something I would stand behind, but the edges are looser, and a school in Santiago or in the tourist provinces may well run on a different clock than the ones I know here in Santo Domingo.

If your experience of it is different, tell me and I will correct this page, since that is more useful to everybody than me being right.