Job Discussion Forums

[direshark]

I have noticed that uni FTs tend to develop a mindset that is extremely defensive about their low workload, sometimes reasonably and sometimes not. Your coworkers are acting unreasonably (your extracurricular is highly unlikely to change their contracts, after all), though the situation is sadly predictable for those of us who have been in the uni teaching game.

If you could go back in time, you might avoid this problem by alerting the other teachers of your plans - their psychology would be way different if they had given you approval beforehand - but, you didn't know it would turn into the extracurricular that it is.

If it were me, I'd try to get them all to some kind of beer summit to talk about it. My guess is that if simply opened up to all suggestions - and maybe even yourself proposing cancelling the whole extracurricular - the teachers would all disagree but would recommend some kind of nominal amendment. Well. Maybe. I don't know.

[Miura Anjin]

Sounds like you've hit upon a brilliant idea and it's working well. Your colleagues' responses are upsetting but they seem like petty children.

It's your loneliness point I wanted to address. For most of my first year in China, I spent a lot of time alone. Although I didn't actually mind not having many people to hang out with as I was able to indulge my hermit side and watch loads of movies and wander off to explore the city on my own, it got a little wearing after a while. It wasn't until midway through the second semester that I really found people to hang out with (and by that I mean that I enjoyed hanging out with, and that I didn't think were just using me for English practice or whatever).

So I suppose what I'm saying is try not to be too downhearted or stressed about not having anyone to spend time with. You might make some cool friends tomorrow.

[Tazz]

So a 'too keen newbie' enters the English language Department of a [public?] University in Guangdong and independently decides to start an extra-curricular programme that involves a lot of extra work/ hours over the course of the week-still being paid, I take it, the standard 7-8 thou a month government contract? The students flock to the newly refurbished office for all this 'free English' and the 'too keen newbie' recieves praise from the Chinese management and academic administration...how do you expect the other teachers to respond? They may have been looking to decrease their workload-for the meager salary, in fact the abandonment of this old room may have been seen, in the not so recent past, as a victory-in the abollishment of some wretched 'English Corner' that was previously enforced.....

[MsHoffman]

Deleted post.

[OhBudPowellWhereArtThou]

[Alien abductee]

[OhBudPowellWhereArtThou]

[Mr. Kalgukshi]

If your posting on this thread has been deleted, you may assume the next step will be your deletion upon any posting even tangentially close to being inappropriate.

[papuadn]

My university workload was 15 hrs per week on average and this was contractual with overtime stipulations. It gave the university the discretion to respond to enrollment numbers, so one semester might be a little more or less than the other.

But I was unlucky in that the institution was changing its charter and many of its departments discontinued, and funding for staff capped...I was asked to teach seven (7) topics in a single semester (though two were 1/2 semester courses) as a staff of 8 FTs became 1. (He had seniority and married to a staff member with a child.)

My examinations (Oral English included) were expressed by percentiles that affect the rankings that determined government grants to individual students. And assigning % marks is a matter of course, not a sketchy conversion of "letter grades" and "rubrics". Ranges are, of course, a component of a useful measure, but I am dismayed how little is known of metrics by many of the regulars on ESL Cafe, many of whom claim the very opposite.

It's not my experience another teacher on this forum can make remotely similar claims, and I want to commend the OP and commend Nomad Soul for her encouragement of the OP by framing their efforts in terms of professional development.

Excellence will always be challenged by those it most threatens and its correlation to compensation is never assured.

[OhBudPowellWhereArtThou]

[Non Sequitur]

Where I come from, rankings and percentiles are most useful to evaluating and comparing entire school districts and schools, but not useful to grading a single student or even a single class.


Agreed.
As I've said elsewhere, Oral English is so fleeting and ephemeral that it's almost impossible to assign Student A 73% and Student B 75% and be sure it's fair and accurate. I sweat bullets over final marks - especially the 80% and over group.
I take the point about State requirements. But then if Oral is so important why isn't it tested in the Gao Kao?
I know, I know it's logistically impossible but they happily leave it to dogsbody FTs.

[ChrisHenry15]

Y'all should have seen my colleagues' reactions when I suggested a synchronized syllabus.


www.reactiongifs.com/r/com.gif

[Non Sequitur]

If you mean Chinese colleagues I agree. I taught English major sophomore and had no idea what they studied in other parts of their course.
That is until I chummed up with one student and she told me what other parts of the course entailed.
It would have been so easy to have speaking exercises in my Oral class that fleshed out other parts of the course - particularly drama and poetry.

[ChrisHenry15]

[Non Sequitur]

Sad Chris.