Job Discussion Forums

[Akula the shark]

You'll find that higher ups in Japan can often have an inflated sense of their own importance (this problem is hardly unique to Japan however), and if you damage their ego, they'll never forgive you for it.
However, if you don't stand up for yourself, they'll take that as a sign of weakness.
Reminds me of a past employer, whose words to me not long after I started working at said person's school were 'I've had so many problems with teachers', oblivious to the fact that said person had caused most of the problems through haughtiness, arrogance, dishonesty and cultural ignorance. Problems continued to occur, and the problem in this person's eyes seemed to lie in the 'unreliability' of foreigners, not the fact that he or she had no idea as to how to deal with westerners.
I'll bet your bottom dollar that in their eyes, fluffy hamster you are the bad guy for your actions, and that problems at that school will persist, and the fault in the school's eyes will continue to be that of 'troublemaking gaijin'. Best to leave them in their ignorance, and to warn other teachers of what kind of place it is.

[guest of Japan]

Sorry I didn't say what you wanted to hear. Maybe next time you could specify what you would like me to type.

[moot point]

Mate, your responses are far too long and sound too much like whining to actually comment upon. Responding to your own posts repeatedly makes you look like a guy who slashes out too often, making the actions taken by your employers as justified.

[fluffyhamster]

Thanks for your kind words, Akula (and Sethness). I have been in leadership positions before and I learnt that the way to inspire people and earn their respect is to muck in, get your hands dirty and work as hard as, if not harder than, they are (and by that, I don't mean you stride in shouting 'This is how it's done', crash bang whallop! Rather, you take a piece of the action, or area being covered, and work on it yourself, in your own way, until you've done at least your fair share). Bosses can't really command much respect without having first earned it, and without respect there is going to be no real team-building as far I can see (the subordinates will resent their superiors and always view them an hypocrites, doubtless incompetent but who will ever know for sure?).

I may be assuming a little too much when I imagine that heads of English departments in the schools I'm at should be working hard and effectively delegating - obviously the teacher has to take a share of the responsibilities - BUT the curriculum should be firmly in place before the teachers come in to implement it (and certainly not to WRITE it all from scratch, "reinvent the wheel" yet again because somebody was too lazy to sift through and collate past materials properly, and too cheap to hire clearly designated writers or, better still, enough teachers to enable them all to be self-sufficient in their informal planning and teaching).

That school really did get off on the wrong foot with the new teachers from day one over the duties that were not disclosed at the contract-writing and signing stage. Before anyone (again) says anything like 'But this is Japan', yes, I know this isn't the UK, and maybe "people here" don't seem to get angry or sue over things like that, but seriously, does anyone "here" really want to continue defending or accepting dishonest practices?

I don't personally object to the "temporary" nature of the work here in Japan specifically because, as somebody pointed out, it is pretty much universal now; the days of free lunches on the gravy train bound for pigtrough central are well and truly over, it seems. I wouldn't want to "bankrupt" an employer, anyway (yeah, as if! ). I really did have to object, however, to doing two jobs for the price of one and often only getting four hours of sleep per early morning. (Talking to myself again here, ignore me, must be the fatigue catching up with me).

Sethness - I've finally managed to find another, much better (nicer) employer: it's been a full year since I started working at that school (and eight months since I was fired), so I can make it appear like I kept the job for a full year with fewer questions asked than when I was interviewing before the year had passed. Certainly, working at that school did my CV no favours!

Hmm, short and sweet postings may be what most on Dave's would ideally prefer to read, but not many people (myself included) can write clearly or succinctly enough within the confines of a short post; short ones often lead to confusion and all sorts of "irrelevant" advice being posted, until the OP sheepishly gets back to the cranky respondents with some much-needed clarifications. I don't seem to have confused anyone here, at least.

That being said, me old mateys, I agree that I have gone on for quite long enough now (moot point), so although "you" seem to have been riveted to this thread, I guess I'd better believe it when you seem to be saying that you resent me personally for taking up twenty minutes or so of your life, in which you could've been doing something much more interesting that being stuck in on Dave's.

Yeah, next time you get screwed in a job (in which hardly a word, much less any "slashing" (?), passed between employer and employee, except for the sort of screaming alluded to above, in an employer > employee direction), maybe you can demonstrate in your selfless magnificence how justified your employer was in firing you (I mean, even for somebody as perfect as you obviously believe you are, there must something wrong or bad about you and your teaching/professional conduct, right?) by restraining yourself from posting anything at all on a website. (You could at least give me credit for not disclosing the name of the school, or the dispatch company...it should be obvious that I am not out for revenge here, not a spiteful guy, but just want to hear what anyone has to say - and that includes you still, GOJ, even though, as I say, I think a lot of your advice was not and could not be related to my specific, and past, situation. If you still want to say 'pearls before swine' though, please do. ).

Right, I'm off now to strain out the cancerous growths that have been eating away at my insides for the past eight months. I'll make sure to flush twice.

[fluffyhamster]

Uh oh. That mean alter ego of mine who had words with GOJ now wants to say something else to moot point!

Moot, this may come as a surprise to you, but a contract is a very important document, because it gives the person about to sign it a final pause in which to decide that they are 100% suited to, and up to the demands of the job. It also allows them to query any additions which had not been part of the initial job description, or explicitly discussed at the interview stage.

Probably all of us have exaggerated our abilities to some extent at one time or another (hell, I'll admit, most of the time!) to get an interview, and no employer ever makes every last detail of the job 100% clear prior to the contract stage (and woe betide a potential employee who queries every last bit of the small print before they've even been presented with it), so there may well be some jobs which, in the final (if not the first!) analysis, we are clearly not cut out for, and an incapable teacher would be a fool to sign something if they themselves doubted they could deliver.

I make no claim to being a great teacher - I have gaps in my grammatical knowledge and understanding, and can be quite slow sometimes in coming up with ideas (I am also not a strict disciplinarian). I am, however, a professional in my own, individual planning, and if there is something that I need to teach and teach well, but for which there are few clear or inspiring activities to hand, then I will go home and work at it until I find or have something that is at least halfway decent.

The contract that I signed was no different from the standard one that dispatch companies write up: there certainly was not a clause specifying that I would be 'writing lesson plans and curricula for two whole grades' which other teachers would be dependent upon and therefore expecting without fail every single day. I therefore signed it believing that I was capable, if not more than capable of doing a good job there, and if the conditions had been anything like the contract stated they would be, I believe I would still be working at that school today (and everyone there would've generally been a bit more pleasant, too, but I can live with a little unpleasantness - I mean, there are people like you posting on Dave's, for a start!). On the other hand, if there had been a clause like the one above, I would obviously have started imagining a completely different kind of situation (similar to how it actually was!), and perhaps have decided to save myself: the loss of other job offers, the expense of relocating to be near the school, and the impact such duties would have upon my free time outside of teaching hours.

I'd therefore like to ask you, how would you feel if you were suddenly told you had to think not only of what you were going to teach, but also of how to explain in clear, explicit written instructions the methodology behind that (potentially original) activity or game to half a dozen other foreign teachers.* Then, factor in writing regular vocabulary example lists and tests, bilingual instructions for poster and roleplay projects (admittedly these had to change somewhat from year to year, to prevent students simply "recycling" past efforts from friends in the previous year, so some original input from the AETs would be needed - this would constitute a "miscellaneous" duty in my book), and bilingual instructions for mid-term and end-of-term tests along with the test items themselves (and these tests were all AURAL, meaning it wasn't just a case of printing a test, but also recording a master tape and dubbing multiple copies). Oh, then you'd be marking 500 exams yourself, and doing laborious statistics by hand (but again, I accept that helping write and mark exams is an expected part of an AET's job).

If you think I am a whinger for objecting to most of that (especially the part about writing explicit plans and making multiple sets of materials for other teachers to use), maybe you possess the knowledge and experience of Stephen Jones** (you're able to think of something in 2 seconds flat), coupled with the tirelessness of a younger man in actually getting it all physically completed and out, or you have simply been lucky so far to have not worked for such a bad and dishonest employer?

You may naively think that you possess such a finely-honed sense for bad deals that something like this will never happen to you...I wouldn't be so sure - I mean, a contract is "just" a contract. Maybe you even believe that you could handle any amount of stress without breaking a sweat - you're a pro, right? If that's actually the case, why don't you get your *ss on over to the Teacher Forums and try answering every question, request and plea there in fine-grained linguistic detail, and don't forget to come up with sure-fire activities for every linguistic insight you provide, either (think, Applied Linguistics!). If you can keep that up every evening for at least four months, hopefully a year, after not exactly easy workdays teaching pretty difficult kids ("assisted" by always uninspiring, often demoralizing JTEs), you might actually then have some idea of what I had to put up with, in which case, I'd welcome your comments (doubtless they'd be very different from now).

Anyway, I am not the sort of guy who believes he has gotten a bad deal in life (for example, I worked for EF back when they were setting up their very first joint venture in China, and contrary to what some people have to say about them as a company, I really enjoyed my time there and seemed to be regarded as a valuable member of their team of teachers. I certainly don't have anything to say about them that would be very damning...or was I just younger and more carefree back then? One thing's for sure, when you're over 30, you expect to be treated as an adult by an employer, and there are - or should be - consequences for not honouring the word and spirit of a legal agreement).

I'm getting over/am almost over this, and if I can have or make for myself the sort of luck that you've probably had, Moot, then I'll be a happier man (reasonably happy now - especially since I'm no longer at that school - but wouldn't ever say no to more luck! ).

*I want to stress the plans were for other, very busy foreign teachers to use (they were the ones who lead the classes they team-taught), because GOJ seems to think I could have gotten away with writing plans without substance, activities without authenticity, all devoid of quality (despite the fact that I'd made it quite clear who the plans were primarily intended for in prior posts). Can I ask, is it usual then to give JTEs absolute rubbish when they're the main players?

**I mention his name here with the greatest of respect - seriously.

[fluffyhamster]

[fluffyhamster]

OK, for those who've made it this far through the thread, the ultimate question really is this:

Assuming that a school which had seemed to have no idea of how to establish a proper EFL curriculum, or how many teachers would really be needed (to make up for the resulting shortcomings), suddenly somehow realized the error of its ways, and decided to solve all its problems simply by hiring just a few more staff, which of the following two teaching-related jobs would you most like to apply for at this thankfully now somewhat more enlightened, soon-to-be-a-slightly-better-place-to-work-at school?

a) Teach a fairly high number of classes across anything from four to six grades (that is, have a pretty tight and full teaching timetable) whilst having minimal input into the curriculum and lesson plans, and thus almost no responsibilities before of after simply "teaching" said classes according to the fairly rigid plans. Leave the planning to the experts, you're just a teacher drone, and you don't want to get all mushy and personal with the students even if they actually liked any of the teachers!

b) Continually write detailed lesson plans for anything from one to three grades (average would be two grades) to very tight deadlines whilst having no teaching duties whatsoever. You'd probably get h(a)emorrhoids from sitting down so much, but at least you wouldn't have to face those (for the main part) awful JTEs or brattish students practically every period!

Most teachers, if forced to choose between either of these two not exactly desirable options, would, I imagine, go more for a) than for b), but that's not to say they'd enjoy a) (unless they were extremely unimaginative and lazy). An imaginative (but not inexhaustible) teacher would probably want there to be a balance between these two extremes of being provided with strict guidance and help, and being independent in their teaching...

These two options actually complement each other very "well" not just because the school won't get the curriculum into shape itself ('Teachers: in addition to whatever items you yourselves introduce into lessons, you MUST also cover the following items this term, as they seem to be the focus in the book, and will therefore all be potential test items. There follows some standardized vocabulary lists, with examples, which will help you in writing the required ten-item cloze vocabulary tests for each unit of the textbook') or hire many more teachers (see next paragraph), but also because there exists a mania at the school for complete and utter standardization in procedures, at least on paper (which is a "good" thing in a way, because with things set up as they are, even the most creative and individual teacher there is soon reduced to falling back on another's plan, even if it isn't ideal for that teacher or class).

There would, of course, be a third option (teaching and planning for just your own classes, which is what 99.99% of real teaching jobs are like, as opposed to e.g. the JET Programme, where the few AETs available can't ever hope to be able to - and certainly aren't expected to - meet with let alone TEACH the same classes week after week), IF the school could get its curriculum in order by itself, and were willing to hire as many AETs as it had JTEs for each grade.

Unfortunately, however, this school in its infinite wisdom has decided that even though it needs a "proper" full-scale EFL conversation programme, it is not willing to employ enough foreign teachers to get the curriculum into shape without undue pressure, and the notion that there should be e.g. four "first grade only" foreign teachers (to be able to teach e.g. four simultanously-occuring first-grade classes on a given day) i.e. that the foreign teachers shouldn't have to be teaching at least four, five or even six differing grades, is dismissed as "impossible" or "a luxury", which is strange considering there was always the money and expectation to hire a disproportionately large number of Japanese teachers to cover all the other subjects (including the separate "English Grammar" programme, taught exclusively by those larger numbers of JTEs). The very idea that native speakers need as much if not more time to do as good a job given a quite different methodological framework and differing expectations regarding "success", and would probably do a better job if this third option were available, is not given serious consideration at all and likely regarded as 'yet more whining from those lazy and ungrateful foreigners who claim to be the "experts" - HA!'.

I would like to pack all the senior teachers and managers with that kind of thinking off to a western country to work for a similarly exploitative programme (and if you know of one that exists, please tell me so that I can consider placing a fraudulent advert somewhere, and try attracting some of my old bosses into applying; of course, I'll need to put in a few really tempting benefits to get them to even consider leaving the relatively cushy jobs they're already in).

It should be obvious enough by now that at the actual school where I was, teachers were expected to do the duties of BOTH a) AND b) above, with all the dissatisfaction and stresses that this combination of extremes would produce for your "average" teacher, and the school was just not willing to reach any sort of compromize for the good of its foreign teachers. I therefore maintain that the attitudes of the management there, and the system they came up with, left a lot to be desired. I'm not saying it was an absolutely impossible situation, but it put the foreign teachers under unreasonable pressure and constant stress, especially those new to the school (all but the single remaining foreign senior teacher, who'd stayed there for some reason despite having to work harder than any of the JTEs, even if he did finally have "tenure", higher pay or whatever), who had thus come into it without any real awareness of what the job(s) would actually involve (due to the lack of disclosure of vital information to their dispatch companies beforehand).

[shuize]

I didn't think you were a whinger at first. But you've convinced me.

[Brooks]

what I have learned is that if you are a push over, you are going to get pushed around at work and taken advantage of. Sometimes you have to say no. I can`t get by on less than 6 hours of sleep a night.

[fluffyhamster]

Ho ho ho, shuize, what a wag you are! If the career in teaching doesn't quite work out, you can always try your hand at comedy - I'm sure you'd have the audience (blind man and his dog, ball of tumbleweed) snoring, howling and rolling (respectively) in the aisle!

Well, I've about got it all out now, folks, so for me this thread is kind of closed. Despite the few sneers and jibes, I am sure some people at least found it somewhat interesting reading.

Hey, PAULH, I should be on Oprah, huh? I've noticed you also like to have nice long rants, though never about anything as specific (usually you're going on about Japan in general). Maybe after I've been here as long as you have, we could both go on Oprah and back up each other's war stories.

By the way Paul, if I do happen to mention the name of the school at some future point, will the thread get partly censored or entirely deleted or what? Some people get very specific, and sooner, with past employer's details, often over what seems to be a lot less grievance-wise, so I'm just wondering what the "policy" is on Dave's.

[PAULH]

[fluffyhamster]

[PAULH]

[PAULH]

Hamster has been sent a PM.

[fluffyhamster]

Actually Paul, I don't have my nose out of joint about anything - I was simply intrigued by your 'Oprah' comment (which I see you've removed), what with you being a moderator and all. I appreciate that moderators can have a sense of humour, but I do wonder if you have one - you don't seem to have allowed for the fact that I might have been being a little ironic with the "moaning on and on"). Anyway, when you don't get hold of the wrong end of the stick, you generally do a pretty good job of moderating, and help a lot of people with the advice you have to offer in your swift replies.

I haven't mentioned the name of my past employer yet, so I haven't defamed anybody. It should be obvious from the cautious approach that I've taken so far (asking about "the policy", expressing genuine curiosity) that I realize I am a guest, and that I am here only by Dave's generosity. I don't want to upset the man (or you), and certainly wouldn't expect him to wage a legal battle (fantasizing here ) on my behalf.

The reason I haven't taken this up is because I suspect that I would probably not win, or if I did, I wouldn't win much by the way of compensation and it would all go on legal fees; plus, I am not as torn up about it as you might think ("pouring my soul out"?!). It was a bad experience, but I've learnt from it and will recognize the danger signs next time (private school, no contact with foreign staff at interview, vaguely-worded contracts etc). My purpose in writing about it at length was to see what kind of workload other teachers in private schools have...I guess from the lack of response that most people have it better than I had, which perhaps ultimately justifies the thread, and my considering naming the school here.

I never said that people working in universities don't deserve to be where they are, and I'm sure you yourself have worked very hard. My point was merely that those still working at the (private) high school level don't deserve the kind of cr*p that they sometimes have to put up with - it's enough to make one seriously consider doing an MA to break out of high schools or eikaiwa and into the university system!