Archive for the ‘Job security’ Category

“Our profession is notorious for exploiting its most valuable asset – language teachers – for financial gain. I remember a teacher recalling taking a summer job where he and his fellow teachers struggled to teach competently in a school with sub-standard facilities and scant resources. He had a vivid memory of the owner arriving in a Rolls Royce and announcing that further cost-cutting measures were necessary. I think that says it all.”

Sounds like TEFLtrade is back on the case… (more…)

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…)

I seem to be preaching to the converted here (unless the people who disagree with me are so infuriated that their fingers have tensed up and they temporarily can’t use a keyboard), but I’d already started writing part two before I got the comments below, so here goes anyway…

As the comments I’ve heard from unappreciated and underpaid teaching pros over the years seem to suggest that their schools are idiots for not paying a premium to get decent teachers, let’s see if that’s true shall we?

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It seems International House has found a way out of the severe worldwide competition with Bell, the British Council and Central School of English for the cream of the TEFL teaching crop by signing up children who have shown their precocious grammar explanation and elicitation skills on youtube to be trained until they reach legal TEFL teacher age in their youth academy in Belgium. They are already calling this one “the new Scott Thornbury”. You can read the full story here:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/03/sports/soccer.php

Any regular readers who know my juvenile taste for extended football= TEFL teaching metaphors probably knew not to even bother clicking above. As usual, though, I do have a serious reason for my university-magazine-level jesting (i.e. please keep on reading. Please! Please! Pretty please!)

The point is: why are schools not competing for our signatures? Why instead are they offering worse and worse conditions that would suggest all TEFL teachers are the same? Are the few extra pounds they would need to get a TEFL professional not worth their while? Maybe they have done the maths and realised that 20% of their teachers losing them students costs them less than a 10% pay rise all round. It’s possible, especially seeing as most students leave sooner or later anyway. Anyone who has done the Diploma in EFL management know the magic mathmatical formula that means it makes business sense to treat your teachers like something you need to scrape off your shoe?

According to Garrison Keillor, “92% [of young people] want a ‘flexible work schedule’, 96% want a job that ‘requires creativity’, and 97% want a job that ‘allows me to have an impact on the world’”.

And for my reaction I can do no more than quote Mr Keillor too:

“All I can say is, Wow. Good luck. And now you know why we need illegal immigrants to do the inflexible uncreative stuff that simply needs doing right now”

So, how does TEFL stack up as a job for Generation Y? If flexible schedule equals split shifts and having to work all over the city- check. If creativity includes trying to make a textbook listening with the guy who set up amazon.co.uk (no, not Amazon.com, they couldn’t afford him) interesting or thinking up a new way to keep all 29 teenagers awake for a whole 90 minutes- check. And for those who manage to have their debate on Japanese war crimes- check for “world impact” too.

So, if TEFL is the perfect job why isn’t the world even more swamped with TEFL teachers? And more to the point, why are so many of the teachers so unhappy in their jobs?

To start with, to Generation Y ”flexible schedule” obviously does not mean your boss making you finish 10 pm one night and then start teaching at 8 am the following morning. It means you wake up any time you like and then walk to your computer down the hall in your pajamas to telecommute. Quite what a company has to gain from offering someone a job like that is beside the point, it is of course young people’s birth right to be offered flexibility while not being forced to be flexible themselves…

Saddest of all, this self-indulgent attitude is even reaching Japan. Young people are refusing to take jobs until they are offered jobs for life, then refusing to buckle under to the demands that a Japanese permanent contract has always demanded and quitting after 2 years. Please ignore everything you have ever read about this Japanese generation being more individualistic and creative, that was the last generation- they just gave their dreams up for the sake of their children. This is the molly-coddled generation. God help us all, and sell all your shares in Japanese companies now!