Archive for the ‘Living abroad’ Category

“We wanted to get into the way of life here,” said 24-year-old Natan Doyon, who moved from Britain last year with his girlfriend to teach English to Chinese children. He says his pupils were so upset when he told them he couldn’t renew his visa that they begged, “Don’t go. We’ll help you hide.”

He and his girlfriend now plan to try Vietnam.

So many English teachers are being forced to leave that many of the private language schools, the rage lately for children of the upwardly mobile, are closing down for the summer. With only three native English speakers left on its staff, Shane is cutting its summer camp in half and might curtail its fall program. Shane, which is owned by a British chain, advertises that it provides native English speakers.

“If we can’t fulfill that promise, we have nothing to sell,” Wan said. “We’re losing a lot of money.”

See the full story here.

And if TEFL news is your thing (how could it not be?), may I suggest you check out:

http://www.esldaily.org/

http://www.tesall.com

This interview was conducted by email over the last week or so, with me submitting the main outline and then asking a few back up questions when the main answers came back. My questions are in bold, and the ”back up” questions and answers are in italics.

1. A brief history of your career
This was covered in a recent interview in the BKK Post but here it is again:

I began life in a completely different field—selling industrial equipment and negotiating Joint Ventures in China.  When the company I worked for had a problem with our customer in China, I was sent to Hong Kong to resolve it. 
When the company went under, I was somewhat abandoned in Hong Kong. 

The job market back home was not that good (and my field was very specialized) so I thought I would look for a job in Hong Kong.  A friend suggested I teach English to earn some money to pay the rent.

Before long I was teaching full time and loving it!  I then started opening small schools around Hong Kong.  But after several years I was burned out.  Married by then with a small child, we decided to move to Thailand.  Soon afterwards I decided to pen up a TESOL course.  The main purpose was to find and train qualified teachers for the schools in Hong Kong!  But after some initial success I decided to expand.

2.    A brief history of TEFL International, the secret of its success and the principles behind it

Started out as a Trinity course.  After some differences of opinion with the CE of Trinity at the time, we became independent on 1 Jan 2000.  As a small, newly independent school, I decided that the only way we could credibly tell our students that our course was internationally recognized was to be truly international.  Thus, the rapid expansion.

3.    A list of some of the things that TEFL International does now
 ·         TESOL Courses
·         Volunteer Programs
·         Guaranteed Jobs programs
·         Teacher Training for local teachers (usually through the Thai Ministry of Education)
·         Teach/learn language programs
·         Teach/Intern programs
 
4. Can you give some details of TI’s charity/non-profit status and structure

First of all, we do not need to be a non-profit.  We could avoid all taxes by moving our base to some offshore tax shelter.  And it’s not like I enjoy having all of our accounts (including my salary) available to the public.  But we work with universities and universities feel better working with a non profit than a for profit.  Plus, we do a lot of things that non profits do like real volunteer work and assistance for the less fortunate. 

I do not know a lot about US tax laws (which are extremely complex).  But every year we have to hire a special accountant to do our taxes and submit them to the IRS to ensure we continue to meet US non-profit status. (more…)

From today’s The Independent*

‘“Culturally, China is so different from the UK or any other western country,” says Sarah Wilson, training consultant at Cactus Tefl, which offers tired and pointless comments about TEFL to any newspaper that they publish their adverts in’ (more…)

You can’t do much reading about TEFL on the Net without coming across stories of dodgy geezers and their nasty little business schemes, and then you can’t read much more without coming across the nasty little TEFL teachers with their dodgy feuds- and then all kinds of mental confusion breaks out. Who can you believe in the TEFL world? The answer is simple- me!

Joking aside, I’ve been trawling through hundreds of posts about TEFL ripoffs and DoSs with personality problems over the last 12 months and although I remain sceptical about most of the claims made on such forums, there are three people/ organisations that I get a particularly bad vibe about. As what I’m doing is trying to judge someone’s personality through the internet, it is obviously subjective- and if you don’t trust my opinion on most things, then of course please ignore me here too. Still, here is my opinion for what it is worth. If it was me, I would avoid these three:

Paul Lowe’s Windsor TEFL/ Windsor Schools

Mark Smith’s Smith Schools of English Japan

Bruce Veldhuisen’s TEFL International

My criteria for inclusion is simple and beyond reproach, I think you will find. The evidence I have on their business dealings is limited but they strike me as three examples of the less pleasant kinds of people that TEFL occassionally attracts. I’ve met a few unpleasant characters, and the usual pattern is that if you catch them on a good day and they need something from you, you might be charmed. If you have no dealings with them and a good person who has got trapped in their web is the person you deal with you might have a good experience. Get on the wrong side of them, though, and you will find yourself a victim of every vindicitve and manipulative tactic known to man, with the idea that there is a line they shouldn’t step over in order to get their way not popping into their heads. Paul has shown on this site that he is exactly like that. People who have had direct communications with Mark Smith that I trust have told me that he is even worse. I don’t know how involved Bruce is in the day to day running of TEFL International, but someone’s ambition is making them step over the line of what I would call gentlemanly business practices.

Which leads me onto my philosophy of TEFL life. The system to have a good time in TEFL and not give more influence to the bad guys is simple- find nice people, avoid nasty ones. It’s worked for me- made me choose Spain, Italy, and Japan rather than Austria and Switzerland (though my nicest students ever were from Columbia, where I haven’t been yet), made me get out of DoSing and teacher training and back into the classroom, etc etc. So far, it’s worked- or not worked, depending on whether not being bitter is turning into a TEFL blogger handicap or not…

As I said, take several large salt mines when reading about any TEFL dodgy dealings, especially as many people have been known to place false information (both good and, for some strange reason, bad) about themselves on such sites, but here are some links anyway:

The TEFLtradesman on TEFL International

The TEFL Blacklist on Smith’s School of English

Usingenglish on Smith’s School of English

TEFLtastic on Paul Lowe

“My first two years in Japan were spent teaching English… The students… studied English- or should I say, English was taught in their presence. Nothing ever seemed to sink in. Years of classes and endless tests and still they couldn’t master the intricacies of a simple ‘How are you?’ When I tried to have the most elemental of English conversations with them they looked at me with blank expressions, shrugged their shoulders, and said ‘Wakaranai’ (’Huh?’) They did this, I believe, just to annoy me. Don’t get me wrong, these teenagers were polite and studious and well-mannered, but they were still teenagers, and teenagers are pretty well insufferable anywhere you go on this planet.” (more…)

Maybe a few more actually, as I didn’t have any record for the first few months. It’s not Craiglist, but as my blog stats are the closest thing I get to payment (I like to think of them as monopoly money) I’m going to give myself a pat on the back.

And why should you care? Well, this is your perfect chance to jump on the bandwagon and get yourself heard on TEFLtastic with comments, links and/ or guest articles. To illustrate what I mean, here goes with trying to drive up the traffic on my neglected Japanexplained blog with an unsubtle selling of my post The Big List of My Japanese Faux Pas, which is mainly about messups in the classroom and therefore nice and relevant to anyone who has taught foreigners I reckon… Just as unsubtle selling of your own blogs and sites, as long as also vaguely connected to TEFL and teaching abroad, also allowed! You can start in the comments to this post if you like.

Number one: cosplay

Only joking- I mean of course that the status of English teachers is not so obviously low that when I met the love of my life and asked her to marry me she actually agreed!

You won’t hear a lot about it on the TEFL forums, but there are actually a lot of other advantages to choosing Japan to teach in: (more…)

The worst book I have ever read about Japan, Shutting Out the Sun, has more or less made up for the dental work I need from gnashing my teeth while reading it, by reminding me of another way to deal with living abroad without the irritation that the writer of the book obviously couldn’t keep down. The trick is, to take the criticism that you read, hear or that pops into your head, and see if you can’t replace the world “Italians” (to choose one random example of a nationality you might find infuriating) with any other group of people, such as some or even all other nationalities. Let’s all try this trickwith some opinions about Japan from that book, shall we: (more…)

2007 was yet another year in which the world of TEFL made its way into the consciousness of the general public for all the wrong reasons (a crack down on teachers in Korea, English teaching sex offenders etc. etc), and Japan did its fair share of damage to our industry’s repuation too: (more…)

Christmas being a time of year to look with sympathy at the problems of the less fortunate, I’d like to take a look at human trafficking in Japan.

Tempted by stories of a professional job for good money, once they arrive in Japan they realise they were only recruited for their looks (blue eyes and blond hair being prefered by the Japanese clients) and they are locked up in a small room for up to 8 hours a day, forced to service up to 16 clients, usually older bored housewives. The fact that all this often happens in a glass walled room makes it even more demeaning.

Although most of the people trafficked quickly realised they have been tricked, the fact that their money quickly gets spent on the alcohol they need to get them through this horrible experience means that many of them cannot even afford the airfare home, and the fact that many of them were fleeing problems at home such as still living with their parents or not being able to find a girlfriend means that many of them actually have nowhere else to go.

So, when you are tucking into your turkey in front of a blazing fire, spare a thought for someone for whom Xmas is just a piece of luke warm KFC chicken and please donate a few pennies to the “Save the Eikaiwa Teachers Fund”. (more…)