Job Discussion Forums

sprightly · Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 136 Location: England

i' take that job. yup. sign me up for the crap job no one else wants.

anything to avoid returning to south korea... Smile

but the HCT website won't let me log in to complete my profile!!

sprightly · Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 136 Location: England

i take that back... i was entering my user name wrong.

seriously, how very badly could things go wrong?

globalnomad2 · Joined: 23 Jul 2005 Posts: 562

One small comment to add in regard to the apparent difficulty in attracting new teachers: the increase in teaching load from 50 minutes per class to 55. This was instituted two years ago. Based on everyone's required teaching load of 20 contact hours per week, it's a 10 percent increase in classroom time

mci · Joined: 11 Sep 2004 Posts: 56 Location: Oman

55 min classes ! 20 hours a week ! heaven forbid we have to work as much as a 30 hour work week for a bigger salary than we could ever get at home! We have to organize a teacher's union over here to fight for our rights! Unite !

Teaching is hard and can take a lot of energy and sap your strength but what stops the non-teaching world from thinking we can be a bunch of whiny slobs when we cry over a work week like that.

mci having a fed up kind of day.....

veiledsentiments · Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 17644 Location: USA

Yes, TEFLers do seem often to be a whiney lot. Some of the really relaxed positions do tend to make us all sound a bit spoiled.

But, seriously I doubt that that many teachers left over the 5 minutes unless it was just the final straw in their situation. Everyone has a different limit to how much of the daily aggravation one can take - and that is true with every job.

Many were the days that I would have liked to have another 5 minutes for a class to get through what was started... But, HCT does have high expectations of both teaching and those meetings and special projects and... meetings. Laughing

VS

globalnomad2 · Joined: 23 Jul 2005 Posts: 562

Well, at the PI they rightly restrict EFL contact hours to between 15 and 18. They consider 15 optimal, since they have enough sense to know that at a university, even EFL nerds should not be treated as educational contract workers. 30-35 contact hours?? That's strictly language school stuff. Or it should be...although I notice the University of Macau treats you to a teaching load of 35 hours a week. What, are they insane? But...OK, OK, Macau is another thread somewhere.

globalnomad2 · Joined: 23 Jul 2005 Posts: 562

Another thing: HCT started the 55-minute classes in the fall of 2002. But at that time, 9/11 was still fresh in everyone's mind, and many teachers, esp. the Americans, assumed all hell would soon break loose in the Middle East. I left Dubai Women's at that time not because of what I knew Bush would do only because I had had enough of teaching only cloaked women who had now proudly displayed Osama on their screensavers when they could get away with it and accused us of being Jews. Over at PI, subesequently, I and other Dubai Women's College refugees found the young men to be much brighter, friendlier and more worldly. This is counterintuitive, I know, with what we know about the relative performance of male and female college students, but then the PI is much more selective than HCT..and of course, HCT has diploma departments that are essentially open admissions.

veiledsentiments · Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 17644 Location: USA

When I started in the gulf in the late '80s almost everyone did 15 hours (except for language schools). But as the years have gone by the hours have slowly grown and the benefits have slowly shrunk... and as long as they can get teachers that will be the trend. Pretty much a basic rule of economics. The real problems is that at the same time many places have also lowered requirements for teachers, which has also lowered standards... the old slippery slope.

It rather goes along the grade creep and lowered standards in our schools and colleges back home too...

VS