Job Discussion Forums

[anne302]

Hi does anybody know anything about the Vancouver Language Center? Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Anne

[MELEE]

Well, no one else has replied....

I know two people who have worked there. Both left to take a more lucrative job, but one later went back--so it must be fairly decent? ?

[Patrocleides]

VLC used to have a very visible location on Vallarta, but it's now got a much smaller place located on Hidalgo below Avenida Americas. I guess it got tired of paying top peso for a vast place with very obviously too few students. Years ago, it tried to advertise itself as a "prestigious" school, now it's only Canada's "most prestigious." They don't give up.

It now advertises teaching Japanese and German, Spanish and English, all by native speakers only. Schools which are small and pretend to be instructors in everything invariably have few resources in anything. Strangely, for Canadians, they have never had French language offerings, but who knows what sort of "Canadians" they are? I heard someone with a British accent running around the place, sounding irked and issuing orders.

They offer test preparation courses--something private tutors can do just as easily, assuming they have some experience. That looks like they're really fighting for the last scraps on the plate. How they can insist on Canadian spelling when the tests are British or American I really can't imagine, but only small minds boggle at such minor inconsistencies.

My impression is that they started off at the top of the ladder and have steadily bungled their way to the bottom. They got raided because they couldn't handle the visa issue properly and I heard hilarious reports of some teacher who set himself up as a "FM3 expert," collected the fees, and absconded, leaving gullible teachers in the lurch. I guess they never hired anybody who knew M�xico on the premise that their own authorities knew everything.

What do you expect anyway of a school that paid lower rates because they'd have to have paid more for more qualified teachers? A few years back I got handed some copies of their president's communications with his director in Guadalajara. The avarice and arrogance were enough to choke on. The Spanish-speaking staff were wounded to the quick at this sneering assessment of their competence. Perhaps the director assumed Mexicans can't read?

Schools that sink this obviously don't make comebacks. The same people who seem to have run it into the ground are, I would guess, the same people who have to manage a recovery. Won't happen. Pity that--at one time they offered quite an acceptable TEFL certificate and reportedly had some good staff. I haven't heard much good of them since.

[Kender]

I�ll break from about a year of lurking to give some advice here.

I worked here quite recently and my advice to you is, if you really want to teach then don't even wander in to ask about vacancies. They'll pretty much give a job to anyone with a degree and English as their native language so it's an easy job to get but at 50 pesos an hour, plus a whole lot of hassle it's really not worth it.

Basically they have their own in-school course for which the books are terrible. Students take grammar lessons or conversation lessons. The grammar books are full of mistakes and tend to present execptions to grammatical rules without actually explaining it. The conversation books just cover tourist English so are only of any use for absolute beginners. After that it's up to you to drag conversation out of a bunch of reluctant students. What's more someone decided that for conversation classes you don't need any photocopying, so the school refuse to do it (unless you pay). So no listening, fill-in the gaps exercises, no reading in order to encourage conversation etc. Oh and there's no access to computers/internet for teachers either so trying to use any resources from the internet will involve you paying to use a ciber and print costs there.

Your other problem is the Director of Studies appears to suffer from Bi-Polar disorder or something. One day he's you're friend, the next he's maching through the school accusing all the teachers of being a waste of space or something.

That said the teaching staff are basically a good bunch, though I can't understand why they've stayed there for so long. The TEFL isn't so great and last I heard the Director had fallen out with the competent, experienced person teaching the TEFL course and put someone with 6 months teaching experience in charge of it!! Personally I'd be pretty annoyed if I paid $1000 to be told how to teach by someone with only a few months more experience than me.

The story about the FM3s is true to, though now they do have a very competent person in charge of it. You do have to pay for your FM3 though, plus $75 as admin so you don't actually have to deal with immigration yourself.

Again, my advice is it's not worth thinking about working there, highly unrecommended.

[kitkat1]

Wow, it sure sounds like VLC has gone very downhill all the way around. I taught there for two years, many years ago. The director was a nightmare and the place was not well run, but the students were great and the classes were quite full. Seems like they took a turn for the worse when they branched out into "TEFL Certification" and then adding a kindergarten. If they are still at 50 pesos per hour, not much has changed. Although they used to offer quite nice furnished housing options, spanish classes, internet, etc. for teachers so at the time, it was a fairly nice deal with a good group of teachers and fairly good resources. What a shame, really, that things have turned so bad.

[Guy Courchesne]

It is a shame...I'd visited VLC once in 2002 and again last April. They had quite a few local students and seemed to have very good resources available in a nice location, though I'd have to defer to Kender on that since I didn't get a detailed look at the class materials.

Their TEFL course trainer posted here on Dave's and was a very dedicated and knowledgeable chap, but I know that he's since gone off to greener pastures in the UK (maybe elsewhere by now). VLC has trouble competing with a much larger ITTO working in the same city and worked to beat them on quality rather than quantity in their course.

[Aabra]

I couldn't resist this thread. I worked at VLC for 2 years and quit not that long ago. Do NOT work at this school. The pay was terrible, but it wasn't that bad for quite a while as the director was a really great guy who at least tried to create a positive work environment. The new director really motivated me to quit in a hurry. The comments above about him being bi-polar couldn't be more accurate. The guy treats people like garbage. I asked him once in a very kind and friendly way why we needed his signature to make photocopies. His response? "If you don't like it, too bad!" He then turned his back to me and walked away! I'd never seen such an unprofessional attitude in all my life. At any rate, the school hasn't gone downhill. It's fallen off a cliff. There are much better jobs you can get just as easily as this one.