Job Discussion Forums

[Sirens of Cyprus]

When an American university needs ESL instructors what I think they have in mind is hiring from the pool of local high school teachers or bored houswives.

Anybody esle in this boat?

[spiral78]

Teaching English in Anglophone countries is necessarily a whole different kettle of fish from teaching abroad.

[timothypfox]

After 5 unpleasant years as a public school ESL teacher in NYC, I'm sitting on my job in a private high school in Japan as long as I can.

A quick look at the hiring practices for even online adjunct positions turned me off. Since I'm not at an international school, there is no ageism and I could hold out here until my 70s as long as the school stays open that long and I don't die from boredom.

Actually, on a somewhat related topic... I remember a while back when I erroneously thought law school was my ticket to a good life. I did 4 international law courses taught by a professional lawyer while doing my masters in international relations. When it came time to apply to law school, they didn't care about my 3.9 GPA. They also didn't care that I was in the International Law Society at my school. They also didn't care that I had a 3.9 GPA for my BA in Anthropology.

They only cared about the LSAT test and my first BA in Dance. Even though the standard for the international law courses I took was graded at the same standard as law school, and I had all A's - I couldn't do well on the LSAT. It was claimed that this test was an excellent predictor of how well you would do as a lawyer. If so, why was I getting excellent results in 4 law courses? Something is off here.

Also, when I took a BA in Dance I focused on live stage performance and had little interest in high academic achievement at the time. Why does this matter much when I went back to school not once - but twice and demonstrated academic excellence?

The result in the field of law is more people with traditional or "cookie cutter" backgrounds - are getting into schools and not dynamic and original and creative thinkers.

I think this institutional problem extends - as our previous poster said - to university hiring (in this case in the ESL field), and probably in many institutions across North America.

The best and brightest and not necessarily the ones getting the jobs. The ones who follow a conveyer belt approach to career advancement get going. I would get out of North America for university work if you can...

(Sorry for getting a little off-topic with this post here - but I think there is a connection).

[timothypfox]

After 5 unpleasant years as a public school ESL teacher in NYC, I'm sitting on my job in a private high school in Japan as long as I can.

A quick look at the hiring practices for even online adjunct positions turned me off. Since I'm not at an international school, there is no ageism and I could hold out here until my 70s as long as the school stays open that long and I don't die from boredom.

Actually, on a somewhat related topic... I remember a while back when I erroneously thought law school was my ticket to a good life. I did 4 international law courses taught by a professional lawyer while doing my masters in international relations. When it came time to apply to law school, they didn't care about my 3.9 GPA. They also didn't care that I was in the International Law Society at my school. They also didn't care that I had a 3.9 GPA for my BA in Anthropology.

They only cared about the LSAT test and my first BA in Dance. Even though the standard for the international law courses I took was graded at the same standard as law school, and I had all A's - I couldn't do well on the LSAT. It was claimed that this test was an excellent predictor of how well you would do as a lawyer. If so, why was I getting excellent results in 4 law courses? Something is off here.

Also, when I took a BA in Dance I focused on live stage performance and had little interest in high academic achievement at the time. Why does this matter much when I went back to school not once - but twice and demonstrated academic excellence?

The result in the field of law is more people with traditional or "cookie cutter" backgrounds - are getting into schools and not dynamic and original and creative thinkers.

I think this institutional problem extends - as our previous poster said - to university hiring (in this case in the ESL field), and probably in many institutions across North America.

The best and brightest and not necessarily the ones getting the jobs. The ones who follow a conveyer belt approach to career advancement get going. I would get out of North America for university work if you can...

(Sorry for getting a little off-topic with this post here - but I think there is a connection).