Job Discussion Forums

[Rusty77]

I'm not new to this gig, but during my career I've been teaching mostly groups of adults business English or ESP. I've just been offered some work teaching children, via 'private lessons' and the parents have proposed that I provide them with regular "progress reports" and conduct "standardized tests" similar to those given by the British Council or some similar paragon of linguistic authority.
Upside is that the opp presents itself, as far as I can tell after meeting both the children and parents, as regular, scheduled afternoons of teaching work with private students who will not cancel lessons in the morning. The downside seems to be that, in my opinion, these are unrealistic expectations for a trio of 10-11 year olds. My first instinct was to view this as overly ambitious parents transferring these aspirations to their children.But I've already taught a day of lessons to the kids, who seem to be wonderful, pleasant children. Are these too serious-bordering-on-nuts-over-achieving, over-expecting parents, or is these 'normal' parental expectations in Poland whilst teaching kids? Any chance that I could be a calming 'Uncle Buck' here, or should I avoid getting into this?

[delphian-domine]

I can only give you some advice that might make sense.

You need to sit down with the parents and establish exactly what they mean by standardised testing. Do they want the children to pass exams (in which case - the Cambridge YLE exams - http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/exams-and-qualifications/young-learners/ - would be the best thing to work towards. I would steer away from doing your own testing (except on the basis of preparing them for external exams) - because they will always pick holes in what you're doing.

They seem to be somewhat normal expectations - Polish parents will have experienced a regime in which papers are more important than ability, and they are probably passing it on to their children. It's just a feature of Polish life - a certificate in a Cambridge YLE exam is absolutely meaningless, but it means they can boast about it to their friends and so on.

My advice - if you want to ensure the loyalty of the parents - propose that you will teach them towards doing one exam each year. It's realistic that they can do an exam a year - the Cambridge exam cycle is from September to May, so what you can do is insist that in return for such a commitment from you (progress reports, etc) - then you need to set the dates for the classes for the whole year in advance, and also that missed classes will still be charged for (as they'll have to make the work up in their own time).

I'd also make it clear that the classes should be for a minimum of 2 hours a week.