How to spot a bad TEFL job Part One

- Job ads that start with descriptions of the place instead of the school.

Here is a particularly extreme example:

“You may have heard of the world-famous Bogor Botanic Garden in Java, Indonesia. This is Indonesia’s first and foremost botanic garden and ranks amongst some of the most well known gardens in the world. The 87 hectares of beautifully kept trees, plants, flowers, lawns and ponds lie smack in the centre of Bogor. The gardens border the Presidential summer palace.

Bogor is about 60 km south of Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia and you will need only one hour to get to Jakarta as you can take a scenic toll road. It was an important hill station during Dutch times, from the 17th century. Today Bogor has almost become a suburb of Jakarta, but is a good base for nearby mountain walks. Its altitude is only 290m, but it is appreciably cooler than Jakarta. The school location is also close to south beach of west Java, Palabuhan Ratu, popular beach for surfer. It is about 2,5 hours away. Some teachers have motor bikes where they can get there almost every weekend and the Puncak tea plantation is about 45 minutes ride.”

Then they actually get round to mentioning the school, in a whole two lines:

“EF Bogor has been operational since 1997.” (possible translations: this country is full of fly by night schools but we have lasted 10 years and can almost certainly hold off bankruptcy for one more/ surviving every one of those years has been a miracle- didn’t we do well!)

“The school is equipped with the latest in teaching aids, materials and educational multi-media technology.” (translation: our students sure ain’t going to be impressed with the teaching, so we’ve put in loads of cool technology)

“The school has a Director of Studies, 9 native teachers and 4 Non-native (Indonesian) English teachers with 600 students.” (we are running out of good things to say about the school, but this’ll fill some space/ our first batch of teachers in 97 were not impressed with 12 students and no other staff, so we’ve learnt that lesson)

Notice the complete lack of info on staff development

And then onto the job, with some lines to add to my TEFL jobs glossary:

“The ideal candidate will be someone who works well in a team” (possible translation: Will take orders and will ask colleagues for advice on lessons rather than hassling the DoS)

“able to accept the differences and see things in a positive way” (will accept all management idiocies as “cultural difference”)

“likes meeting people” (won’t mind the constant churn of unhappy students leaving and ones to replace them stuck in any class where there is room)

“making friends” (will go drinking with the DoS whenever you are asked)

“and has the ability to adapt to living in a developing country” (won’t complain about accommodation that a middle class local wouldn’t even consider)

Of course, I don’t know whether EF Indonesia is the best chain of schools in the world, but this ad and other things I have heard about working there make me doubt it very very much indeed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 9:32 pm and is filed under EF, first TEFL job, Teaching English in Asia, Teaching English in Indonesia, Technology, TEFL, TEFL career planning, TEFL chains, Working conditions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.