Job Discussion Forums

[gaijinalways]

[Gordon]

[moot point]

Good luck. Send your wife our best wishes

[Sherri]

A big congratulations to you and your family Gordon! You should have a wonderful Christmas! Three children--you and your wife have my respect. I think Japan is a great place to have kids. I was very happy with the midwives and care I got there.

Sherri

[Gordon]

Thanks contractions are getting closer. Hospital visit #3 in 4 days is soon, this better be our last trip.-...

[gaijinalways]

Good luck Gordan, one cat is all I can handle at the moment (though I am sometimes a big kid ).

[madison01]

The words "career" and "Tefl Teacher" do not go together in any way shape or form.

I started in Tefl in 1999 and quickly realised I was never going to earn enough money as a teacher no matter how many years experience I had or how many pieces of paper I studied for.

Every school out there is a business, no matter who the owner (Tefl teacher, businessman, rip-off artist) the only thing they are interested in is the bottom line. Paying an experienced teacher more than a newly qualified teacher doesn't make sense to your average school owner and, unfortunately, the way that tefl is heading never will.

The only way is "Up"; if you stay in a teaching role you'll hit a wage ceiling or have to constantly move onto new countries where the market isn't saturated by teachers and schools which may, for a few years, offer a good deal until they too realise they can draft in hundreds of teachers on a daily basis for half the price.

This isn't a regulated business, as such, the British Council or local equivalents may claim to be keeping standards high for the students and the teachers, however, in my experience, that simply isn't true.

The only way to build a decent career out of tefl is to move up the ladder, DoS, or into related fields, publishing, training etc. The classroom is, not to put too fine a point on it, the frontline, teachers are cannon fodder for the officers back at the mess.

I hope no-one gets annoyed at me about my attitude but I really want to post this as a reality check. You may believe that your work should be valued, and that the Tefl trade should be better regualted and better salaried, but the truth is if it was then there would be less money to be made, fewer schools, less jobs and the salaries would still be kept as low as regulation would allow because the competition for jobs would be higher.

Get out of the classroom, get into an office. It is the only way to use your experience to gat a decent paycheck, and even then you'll have to work ridiculously hard.

[Sheikh Inal Ovar]

[zorro (2)]

The point of view of teaching with a masters seems to be under represented here. I agree with most of the comments here about ESL/EFL teaching being a dead end, but I think that this only counts for those who don't choose to take the next step and do a masters or a DELTA. People want to be taught English in a huge array of establishments around the world (language schools, universities etc) and I want to teach it to them. If I am qualified to do this and can provide my students with a good understanding of English and continually try to improve myself as a teacher, then is this not me undertaking a career?
Improving yourself as a teacher by getting more qualifications and understanding your subject with more depth surely justifies ESL/EFL teaching as a career.

[madison01]

[madison01]

[quote="zorro (2)"Improving yourself as a teacher by getting more qualifications and understanding your subject with more depth surely justifies ESL/EFL teaching as a career.[/quote]

I agree with you on this, to a point. Though, as you have read from my previous post, to me taking the DELTA OR MA is about giving yourself opitons outside of the classroom. If money wasn't an issue to me, the taking the DELTA would have been about being a better teacher. However, my marriage, the extortionate prices of houses in the UK, the need for a pension and the increasing discussions concerning children entering our lives meant that staying in the classroom was not an option, for me.

[Sheikh Inal Ovar]

[DainaJ]

[madison01]

[annoyed ? or amused ? ... don't you see the self-aggrandizing aspect of your opinion ... you the officer ... you underlings the expendable waste ...

As a DofS in the UK I still teach about 12 to 15 hours a week. So, seeing the teachers as underlings would give me a strange inferiority complex.

I'm merely trying to point out that the "School Owners" see teachers as an expendable commodity.

As for your comment about taking a pay cut to be a DofS, In the UK DofS salaries aren't brilliant, but they are regular and trying to get a mortgage depends on a regular sum.

[Jizzo T. Clown]