For many students, the end of the spring semester brings about thoughts of summer plans, and for many upperclassmen, postgraduate plans. One South Florida native skipped out on the endless job search and graduate school by choosing to teach abroad.
After poor experiences with internships, Tyler Wetzler realized that the traditional post graduate route was not for him.
“I’m literally a corporate puppet and agreeing to join the matrix,” Wetzler said jokingly.
During his junior year of college, he began exploring opportunities to take a gap year with a purpose. One option he looked into was the Fulbright Scholars Program.
Fulbright is a government organization that sponsors students, university faculty, administrators and researchers to study, teach or conduct research abroad.
UM political science and international studies professor, Dr. John Twichell, is a Fulbright alumnus. Dr. Twichell applied for the Fulbright Research Grant in 2010 while pursuing his PhD here at the University of Miami.
The scholarship granted him the external funding and student visa needed to conduct fieldwork in Brazil for his dissertation research.
Dr. Twichell is an avid supporter of the program and encourages all his students to apply.
“I would recommend Fulbright to students at Miami because the nature of our University community, complete with its culture of diversity and inclusivity, dovetails well with the Fulbright mission, setting our students up well to be competitive applicants,” Twichell said.
Fulbright was not a perfect match for Wetzler. While the program offers the experience he was seeking, scholarship recipients can only pick a country of their choice, not the city.
Wetzler was set on going to Bangkok and did not want to risk being placed elsewhere.
That is when he came across Xplore Asia, an organization that helps certify participants as teachers and match them with schools in participating countries, including Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Costa Rica and Spain.
After graduating from the University of Central Florida in the spring of 2025, he left for Thailand and began teaching in the fall.
After receiving his teaching certification, Wetzler taught third through sixth grade English literacy at an international school in Bangkok. He uses simple reading comprehension packets that require students to find and circle information to meet students at their English comprehension level.
“Most kids I would say can have a full conversation in English and there are also kids that speak no English at all,” he said. “Navigating that as a teacher is hard.”
But for Wetzler, watching the student’s progress and growth makes the job that much more rewarding.
A semester later, Wetzler has adapted well to life in Bangkok. He shared that adaptability is an important skill, and crucial for success when relocating abroad.
“Challenge yourself to grow, because you have to,” he said. “You can’t come into a situation like this with any expectations because you are always having to adapt. That’s how it works here.”