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dduck
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Posts: 422
Location: In the middle
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 Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2003 9:20 pm Post subject: Aint life sweet? |
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My boss asked me today how he might go about training up a couple of local teachers. Basically, he found a couple of likely candidates wondering the streets and he wants to put them in the classroom and teach.
I feel a bit insulted an appalled by his lack of respect for my qualifications - degree plus CELTA certificate - and the hard work I put in to get them. I see a red flag waving - help my boss train a couple of pedestrians, in the process make myself redundant.
Should I help him?
Iain |
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lozwich
Joined: 25 May 2003
Posts: 1536
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| Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2003 10:45 pm Post subject: but on the other hand... |
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Hmmmm.... Interesting conundrum.....
Maybe you would get promoted to a high paying job as the school's new teacher trainer???
What do you think?
Lozwich. |
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dduck
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Posts: 422
Location: In the middle
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| Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2003 5:07 pm Post subject: Re: but on the other hand... |
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The idea, I must admit has a certain appeal, but I believe that my boss would sack me the moment his new teachers were trained up and pronounce fit to teach. I work in a private school and teachers come and go on a regular basis.
The puzzling thing is there isn't a shortage of good skilled local teachers around here. I suspect that he wants to employ sme unqualified, inexperienced teachers (I use the word loosely) so that the school can pay less, thereby making more money. It's not the business strategy I would have chosen, but such is life!
Iain |
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some waygug-in
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
Posts: 339
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| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 1:00 am Post subject: Re: but on the other hand... |
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| dduck wrote: |
The idea, I must admit has a certain appeal, but I believe that my boss would sack me the moment his new teachers were trained up and pronounce fit to teach. I work in a private school and teachers come and go on a regular basis.
The puzzling thing is there isn't a shortage of good skilled local teachers around here. I suspect that he wants to employ sme unqualified, inexperienced teachers (I use the word loosely) so that the school can pay less, thereby making more money. It's not the business strategy I would have chosen, but such is life!
Iain |
Such is the life of many ESL schools in whatever country you find them.  At least ask if you will get paid for teaching the "training classes". Otherwise I would tell him to stuff it.
cheers |
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Guy Courchesne
Joined: 10 Mar 2003
Posts: 9650
Location: Mexico City
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| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 10:00 pm Post subject: Wet ducky |
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| Quote: |
| I work in a private school and teachers come and go on a regular basis |
Perhaps they come and go on a regular basis just for what you're telling us? High turnover is a bad sign. Is your boss a teacher or a 'manager'?
Guy |
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dduck
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Posts: 422
Location: In the middle
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| Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2003 3:09 pm Post subject: Re: Wet ducky |
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| Guy Courchesne wrote: |
Perhaps they come and go on a regular basis just for what you're telling us? High turnover is a bad sign. Is your boss a teacher or a 'manager'?
Guy |
Lots of the schools round here will offer teachers a few hours a week, which isn't enough to live off of, but if you string enough of these jobs together you might end up with a living wage.
My school uses permanent and casual teachers. A couple of the casual teachers had their hours reduced until the figure reached zero. They haven't actually gone, but they don't have any work at this school. I only know of one teacher who disappeared without explanation.
Iain |
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some waygug-in
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
Posts: 339
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| Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2003 7:28 am Post subject: |
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The problem with a lot of the schools is they all want a part timer for the same hours as every other school, early morning and evenings.
If you want to boost your earnings and are not afraid to teach kids, you could try Kennedy School in the centro historico of Queretaro.
Sometimes they are looking for part-time help and because they are a kid's school, they may have some hours that would fit into your schedule.
I have a friend who worked there. It must have been OK, because he stuck around for over a year. When I was there, they offered 50 pesos an hour as a base rate. I don't know if things have changed much in 3 years.
Anyway, I hope this helps.
About your boss wanting to you to train teachers: perhaps he has plans to start his own training program and is hoping to boost his own income. I don't know what his plans are, but until he gets things set up it would probably be offering sub-standard training at over-inflated prices. I would be very wary of how you get involved in this. You may end up with a bunch of angry would be teachers who blame you for the mess.
When I was there, my boss wanted to start up a "trinity program" at her school. She even got a guy over from Cambridge University to talk about setting it up. People were very interested until they found out how much it would cost. She tried to force me to take the program as a test case, because nobody else could afford it. I was just getting by on the wage I was earning, I didn't have any extra money. She expected me to cut back to part time, attend classes the rest of the time, move to a new city, find a new apartment, all on less than 3,000 pesos a month.
I was ready to do a midnight run, if I had to. I just kept saying no until finally she left me alone.
With the amount of money they were going to charge, I would have been a slave to her school for 5 years minimum, trying to pay it off.
Be careful.
cheers |
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Ben Round de Bloc
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 1946
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| Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2003 12:51 pm Post subject: |
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Lots of the schools round here will offer teachers a few hours a week, which isn't enough to live off of, but if you string enough of these jobs together you might end up with a living wage.
- dduck |
That's rather common practice for language schools in the city where I live, too. Even at the university where I teach, there are usually one or two very part-time, temporary teachers who are hired only for a semester or sometimes for less time.
| Quote: |
I work in a private school and teachers come and go on a regular basis.
-dduck |
Again, that's pretty standard for language schools in this city. It seems that there's always a small group of teachers who have been at well established language schools for years. Additionally, there's another group of teachers at any given time who are temporary. These may be short-term (a year or less) newbies or teachers mainly working at other schools but teaching a class or two at that school for the immediate term.
| Quote: |
The puzzling thing is there isn't a shortage of good skilled local teachers around here.
- dduck |
Lots of factors could enter in here, such as availability of time, salary, working conditions, the school's reputation, etc. I consider myself a qualified teacher (MA in TESOL and 8 years of teaching EFL in this city.) I get job offers at least every few months. So do other long-term experienced teachers. However, I'm working more hours than I care to work at my current job, and the offers aren't better than what I have now, so I turn them down.
| Quote: |
I suspect that he wants to employ some unqualified, inexperienced teachers (I use the word loosely) so that the school can pay less, thereby making more money. It's not the business strategy I would have chosen, but such is life!
- dduck |
First of all, you have to keep in mind that in general in this country, people are willing to pay for quantity over quality. Two or three Fulanos de Tal off the street can cover a lot more teaching hours and for the same salary as it would cost to hire one qualified, experienced teacher. If that means the school owner can charge just a little bit less for tuition than his competitors, it's to his advantage. He knows that most of his clients are more interested in paying cheaper tuition than having qualified teachers. You probably wouldn't have chosen that business strategy, because you aren't Mexican. 
Also keep in mind that many people in this country get jobs for reasons other than having qualifications, training, and experience. As an example -- and please don't take this as a put-down, Iain, because it's not meant to be one -- do you really feel that your training and experience in EFL qualify you to be an EFL teacher trainer? I know of newbies in this city, people with only a short EFL course and fewer than 6 months of EFL teaching experience under their belt, who were hired by language schools to give teacher training sessions. Back to quality vs. quantity here, as an example, do you think your boss would pay you the same amount of money to give teacher training sessions as what it would cost him to hire a trained, experienced teacher trainer from the British Council?
Last edited by Ben Round de Bloc on Mon Jul 28, 2003 1:11 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Ben Round de Bloc
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 1946
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| Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2003 12:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
Lots of the schools round here will offer teachers a few hours a week, which isn't enough to live off of, but if you string enough of these jobs together you might end up with a living wage.
- dduck |
That's rather common practice for language schools in the city where I live, too. Even at the university where I teach, there are usually one or two very part-time, temporary teachers who are hired only for a semester or sometimes for less time.
| Quote: |
I work in a private school and teachers come and go on a regular basis.
-dduck |
Again, that's pretty standard for language schools in this city. It seems that there's always a small group of teachers who have been at well established language schools for years. Additionally, there's another group of teachers at any given time who are temporary. These may be short-term (a year or less) newbies or teachers mainly working at other schools but teaching a class or two at that school for the immediate term.
| Quote: |
The puzzling thing is there isn't a shortage of good skilled local teachers around here.
- dduck |
Lots of factors could enter in here, such as availability of time, salary, working conditions, the school's reputation, etc. I consider myself a qualified teacher (MA in TESOL and 8 years of teaching EFL in this city.) I get job offers at least every few months. So do other long-term experienced teachers. However, I'm working more hours than I care to work at my current job, and the offers aren't better than what I have now, so I turn them down.
| Quote: |
I suspect that he wants to employ some unqualified, inexperienced teachers (I use the word loosely) so that the school can pay less, thereby making more money. It's not the business strategy I would have chosen, but such is life!
- dduck |
First of all, you have to keep in mind that in general in this country, people are willing to pay for quantity over quality. Two or three Fulanos de Tal off the street can cover a lot more teaching hours and for the same salary as it would cost to hire one qualified, experienced teacher. If that means the school owner can charge just a little bit less for tuition than his competitors, it's to his advantage. He knows that most of his clients are more interested in paying cheaper tuition than having qualified teachers. You probably wouldn't have chosen that business strategy, because you aren't Mexican.
Also keep in mind that many people in this country get jobs for reasons other than having qualifications, training, and experience. As an example -- and please don't take this as a put-down, Iain, because it's not meant to be one -- do you really feel that your training and experience in EFL qualify you to be an EFL teacher trainer? I know of newbies in this city, people with only a short EFL course and fewer than 6 months of EFL teaching experience under their belt, who were hired by language schools to give teacher training sessions. Back to quality vs. quantity here, as an example, do you think your boss would pay you the same amount of money to give teacher training sessions as what it would cost him to hire a trained, experienced teacher trainer from the British Council? |
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dduck
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Posts: 422
Location: In the middle
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| Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2003 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Ben Round de Bloc wrote: |
| First of all, you have to keep in mind that in general in this country, people are willing to pay for quantity over quality. Two or three Fulanos de Tal off the street can cover a lot more teaching hours and for the same salary as it would cost to hire one qualified, experienced teacher. If that means the school owner can charge just a little bit less for tuition than his competitors, it's to his advantage. He knows that most of his clients are more interested in paying cheaper tuition than having qualified teachers. You probably wouldn't have chosen that business strategy, because you aren't Mexican. |
Certainly, from a individual business perspective it's the best thing to do. Reduce margins, whilst increasing throughput. Most of the students wont notice much difference. However, what happens to the quality teachers in this country. I know of one teacher, very inteligent guy, who's leaving the country to work in Eastern Europe. If market conditions force a dumbing down of teaching, isn't this country going to be faced with a brain-drain?
| Ben Round de Bloc wrote: |
| As an example -- and please don't take this as a put-down, Iain, because it's not meant to be one -- do you really feel that your training and experience in EFL qualify you to be an EFL teacher trainer? I know of newbies in this city, people with only a short EFL course and fewer than 6 months of EFL teaching experience under their belt, who were hired by language schools to give teacher training sessions. Back to quality vs. quantity here, as an example, do you think your boss would pay you the same amount of money to give teacher training sessions as what it would cost him to hire a trained, experienced teacher trainer from the British Council? |
I have no ambition to train teachers. When my boss brought the subject up I'd never imagined I'd ever be asked to do something like that. Certainly, not so soon. During my training course I watched the trainers very carefully; I admired how they taught us, but I also noticed the amount of stress that they were subjected to. I could well do without that! I normally like to accommodate people - especially my bosses, occasionally I very reluctantly say no. This may be one of those occasions.
I'd be interested, just out of curiousity, to see how the training programme goes, but this risks involved are large, so I'd don't want to get involved directly.
Questions about my boss and money in the same sentence are answered by one word: GREED! We've discussed some of the business strategies that some of the school's clients use. Interestingly, he seems to believe in "Investment in People". But apparently, only when it's someone else's business. �Que curioso!
Iain |
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