Teaching job advice please

[jaymee]

Well most of my apprehension in making the career leap boils down to the fact that most people think that native speakers have the best english!

It certainly boggles the mind.

Mmmm. You might not have read my posts, but I'm definitely not going to LOS to live with (or fuck a LB):wai:

[post-op lover]

Why would you want to switch from being a financial advisor to an English teacher?

[jaymee]

(post-op lover @ Sep. 08 2008,00:09) Why would you want to switch from being a financial advisor to an English teacher?

Probably said a million times and argued to death but if money were the only reason, any sales job, especially broking or financial advisory would be among the ultimate choices due to the obscene potential in wealth to be made.

The level of stress though and perpetually rising sales targets is I'm not sure if you watched Glengarry Glen Ross or Boiler Room but the culture tends to be a wee bit like that.   There's the "bit" on financial advising, then you have the dominating focus transfixed on bringing in the assets under management.

Maybe as well I'm feeling that the remuneration doesn't equate to the quality of life.

I think its not so much as teaching but its more to having a different whiff and a fresh breath of air. Sorry for bitching  

[post-op lover]

Reasonable enough. From the beginning, I've always considered myself fortunate in that my work has been very interesting to me and people wanted to pay well. It's not really work if it's lots of fun.

POL

[PigDogg]

Stickman quit is teaching job:

I handed in my notice and for the second time in my life I walked away from the classroom and vowed never to return. I broke that vow once. I won't do it again.

Those close to me tried to convince me to stay. They thought I was mad. It was a plum contract, as good as it gets outside of the international school circuit - in fact our package was better than what was offered at many international schools. More than 3 months off fully paid each year. A maximum workload of 16 x 50 minute periods teaching a week and often less (one semester I had 10 periods a week and other teachers sometimes had even less). Classes were frequently cancelled so our workload could be even lighter. A paid return air trip home every other year. The option of working summer camp for extra income over and above our already inflated salary. My length of service put me on close to 100k baht a month with the possibility of earning up to 150k baht a month. Let's make no mistake, we worked hard and I don't doubt most teachers did their level best, but at times it did feel a little like a holiday camp. Given that international schools require specific teaching qualifications and licences from your own country only two or three of us were international school material, yet there was an anomaly in that we earned more than many international school teachers did. Our contracted conditions and salaries were out of sync, completely in our favour - and we knew it.

But the truth is that despite offering a plum contract by teaching standards, the school didn't always get the best teachers. It is my belief that your average Thai just isn't skilled and effective at interviewing and selecting foreigners. It's not over the top to suggest that smiling inanely, wearing a bright shirt and tie, speaking some polite Thai and saying you love Thailand is perfect interview technique in Thailand!

Many of the foreign teachers I taught with were troubled but the kids were great. Not always a pleasure to teach mind you, but almost unfailingly polite and for the most part, clever. As I worked my way into the position of the longest serving English teacher, I was entrusted to teach the M6 students, that is grade 12. Young kids can be fun but I always preferred older students. When they got to grade 12, meaning 17 or 18 years old, they had become young adults. By that point they had known me for a number of years and had become comfortable with me. I'd learn about their lives and the challenges teenagers face in modern Thailand. Not just watching, but playing a part as they developed into the sort of young adults you'd be proud to see as your own is something that is hugely rewarding. That's the joy of teaching and something I'm going to miss.

Unfortunately not all of my memories of teaching are positive. If it had been an ideal job, I'd never have left. While the kids were for the most part great, some of what went on within the foreign teaching ranks made for a work environment that was highly political and at times, tense.

The foreign teachers really did whatever we wanted. We came and went as we pleased and some teachers would simply go off and do their own thing even when they had classes scheduled! It was not unusual to receive a last-minute text message from a colleague that they would not be there to teach their class because they were enjoying a long, leisurely lunch and could some excuse be made to the class teacher as to how they were elsewhere. Not common admittedly, but it did happen from time to time.

There was much envy from certain quarters when timetables were distributed. The lucky teachers were those scheduled with no classes on Friday, and occasionally the jackpot, nothing on Thursday afternoon either. By 4 PM on Thursday they could be sitting on the beach on Samet while the rest would cover for them if asked as about their whereabouts. "Oh, he was here 5 minutes ago" if we were asked. It was pretty bad, really, but such was hardly uncommon amongst foreign teachers in Thailand. They are industry wide.

The management would always impress on us at the weekly hour of utter tedium - staff meetings - that we had to be at school from before 8 AM until after 4 PM and we would all nod our heads with a solemn, straight-faced look. But pretty much everyone disappeared when their classes finished. For some who had no classes in the morning they would drift in as need be, before class commenced. I'd guess few foreign of the teachers did a 40 hour week.

I can remember in our first year, myself and a colleague used to consider ourselves really naughty slipping out of the school at 2:30 PM on a Friday. The following year we'd be back at our respective condos early afternoon on Friday. Friday afternoon and the school was like a ghost town.

Most of the foreign contingent had something else on the go. Like Thai teachers whose game plan is to get into a big name school or university, not so much for the salary - which is often mediocre - but for the prestige that accompanies such a position and the chance to earn big bucks elsewhere, many in our number did the same. Many of the foreign staff often used the school's name to get high paying work outside, earning as much as 1,500 baht an hour, about the best a teacher can hope for in Thailand. More than half had teaching work outside the school, more often than not at the weekend, lucrative paying positions. Some members of staff earned almost as much from their two day weekend as they did from their full-time position. When, from time to time, management talked of upping the number of contracted classroom hours the foreign staff would moan that they struggled to get through everything as it was. It was hard to keep a straight face.

Personally, I say good on the teachers for doing the extra work. You'll never get rich teaching and if you have a family to look after the extra income makes all the difference. I did however struggle with those who did extra work but then told others that they should not do work of another nature! That caused rather a lot of in-fighting. There were some real sanctimonious devils in our number.

And then there were those of us with entrepreneurial flair doing our own thing. There'd be me in the corner, beavering away on the weekly column and replying to readers' emails once my teaching and other duties were done. I'll be the first to admit that I was no angel. Others would be running off copies on the photocopier, resources to be used for their weekend classes. Others would be doing computer work for customers abroad. Sometimes invoices and receipts would be printed out on the wrong computer (we could print to any computer in the school) and their name and big dollar payment details would appear on a job sheet in the administration office and they would make a mad dash around the school looking for the detailed receipt. Now that was funny! Some guys did well from various online ventures and it often seemed that everyone had something else on the go.

There'd be massive arguments over the internet network slowing down and the students would be blamed while teachers were running torrents 24/7 downloading all of the latest movies and TV series, slowing the network to a crawl, making Internet-based lessons impossible. That pissed some of us, me included, off. "We're professionals", they would say and apportion the blame elsewhere. On the one hand it was hilarious but on the other hand the total lack of professionalism slowly wore me down.

There was a darker side to it and the notion that ajarns, the foreign ajarns (teachers) that is, are models of morality and examples by which the students should try to live their lives is questionable. I could go on but perhaps it would be imprudent to do so. It's not just what they did, but some teachers broadcasted their actions too. Come on, it's a school for God's sake!

It should be said that the Thai teachers on the other hand were conservative for the most part and made for ideal role models. Actually, the Thai staff on the whole were great. Really nice, decent people, always willing to help out in any way they good and most had a ready smile. I miss more than a few of them.

Some foreign teachers hated each other. I don't exaggerate. Hate. Some of what took place was unbecoming of teachers. But I was lucky. The office I was in was great. All male, it was the best bunch of guys I could ever have hoped to work with. If I could have chosen the people to share my office with from the foreign staff it would have been exactly the bunch I was with. We had fantastic camaraderie, enjoyed each other's company and looked out for one another.

It wasn't necessarily the same elsewhere in the school. Onoccasion things came close to blows and with our office being laid back, friendly and the nicest environment, we were like a corridor. Our foreign colleagues would pass through in the morning and regale us with what was going on elsewhere in the school. In the other offices things got so bad for some that some poor teachers had so much crap put on them by others that they had to seek out counseling due to the pressures of office politics. It seemed like there was always some major problem amongst Western staff members. And the backstabbing was extreme, like something out of a horror movie.

I wasn't exempt. One teacher put the fear of God into another teacher about my sideline and the school management was approached. It escalated into an issue with bullshit flying in every direction. Wily Stick managed his way through that although much credit I had built up was whittled away.

Despite all of this it was almost certainly one of the better schools around. What I heard went on at other schools was much worse and some of the stories I have heard are quite unreal. Sadly the industry in this part of the world can attract misfits and some of what goes on would raise the eyebrows of those not familiar with the eccentricities of life in Thailand.

My teaching career was full of ups and downs. I enjoyed the classroom stuff. Really enjoyed it. If you know your stuff, are well prepared and make every effort to be engaging, teaching can be not just fun but hugely rewarding. But I struggled with the moralistic whining of the socialist leaning majority who made up my Western colleagues, some of whom were hypocritical to the extreme, working all the hours that God sent on the side to amass their fortune while maintaining that the school could not operate without so-called professionals like them. That was nauseating.

Long ago I realised that if I wanted to fulfill certain goals I could not do it while working as a teacher. Teaching worked for a while and I'd like to think I was good at it. But that chapter in my life is now over.