Job Discussion Forums

[redeyes]

On a previous thread, an HCT teacher wrote the following --

"Everyone at HCT works in fear of losing their job especially if you voice your opinion or have a personality conflict with a supervisor. Contracts are meaningless and workloads, 20-25 hours per week affect both staff morale and students who face teachers overworked and unhappy. "

Just what is going on here?

As someone who is headed to UAE soon and doing the suitable research, I have to say first that I have received overwhelmingly good reports of HCT -- but having said that, amongst the many good,optimistic,favourable reports, I can't ignore the ever repeated bad responses too.

My thread is not meant as a troll -- I am just doing my research before arriving.

[holbrook]

As with any sprawling 16 campus institution there are good campuses and bad campuses. Usually the difference does lie in the management. Often it can be blamed on structural forces. 25 teaching hours is untenable and any supervisors that force teachers into this have no desire to see sound educational practice. That said the contract calls for 20 hours, so if you have 25 it is with overtime, but still probably not worth it. That's why they get too few volunteers and need to force people. It's a shame. I worked there for years and was happy enough. I was never forced to work crazy hours or felt like I would be fired for any reason or at any time. However, I work hard, do my job well and don't try to force my vision of the world on anyone else. I've always found that the bitter ones are usually come in two basic forms. Either they are the lazy ones who just want to kick back and relax without a worry in the world while drawing a good salary. After all that is what the students do. They don't believe in what they are doing and so they get annoyed by those who take their jobs more seriously than their students do. The other type are those who just can't understand or accept that this place is not like their home countries. The students are different, the culture is different and they can't get over it. They believe that their cultural ideas and beliefs about education, honesty, etc. are universal and that their job is to show everyone how it should be done and fight what they see as injustice or hypocrisy.

For me I just did the best I could because I need to do my work with pride. However, I never tried to force the college, the system or the students to go beyond the values or expectations that exist here. It took our countries centuries to build accountable educational systems. There wasn't a single public school (primary or secondary) in the UAE until 1971! The few schools that were here were Kuwaiti and Saudi owned mission schools (i.e. funded by rich neighbors to help the poor neighbor catch up). They did but their is much room to improve. But they will do it at their pace. Ironically, the pace is very quick, but not quick enough for many.

In the end, it all depends on the kind of person you are, how seriously you take your job and your beliefs and how flexible, tolerant and patient you are. One more thing..... It depends on which campus your on too! Read other posts for info on which ones are low-stress.

[boondoggle]

The most successful teachers I met in the UAE are the ones that didn't take themselves or the job too seriously. Some teachers stress themselves out over the students or material but when it comes down to it you are only playing a role in an expensive play. It's your job to "pretend" that real changes are being made and to teach material that boosts test scores. It's the student's job to pretend that they are learning something. It's management's job to pretend they understand what's going on.

One expat I met worked in the UAE for 10 years as a teacher. He was already pretty close to retirement age. His secret? Look stern and professional at all times in front of the management. Be the knowledgeable white man as they don't know anything anyways. Kiss their ass and learn how to play politics because they have fragile egos. Dodge controversy and keep your head low. You have no rights really but you can certainly manipulate their feeble minds.

In the classroom it's all about micromanaging and giving the bored listless students activities to fill in class time. It can be anything as long as it's disguised as something "academic" or fits into the often lame material you're given to adapt with. The only time you should perk up is when you are being evaluated. Make an unspoken agreement with them that they should be on their best behavior when these types of people are around. Students in the UAE have very Pavlovian responses to punishment and reward. Easy to train if you know which buttons to push.

[boundforsaudi]

"Everyone at HCT works in fear of losing their job especially if you voice your opinion..."

This applies even if you are asked for your opinion. It's a set-up. The only correct answer is "I agree with you."

[eha]

Holbrook: what about the third type of embittered teachers in the UAE?--- the ones who worked their *ss*s off; attacked or abused nobody; saw the flaws but gritted their teeth and [somehow] carried on. And STILL got screwed because decent people don't engage in the vicious games-playing that passes for success in the culture of mistrust and manipulativeness that prevails in these institutions. And, of course, from the point of view of 'colleagues', because there's so much compromise involved when you have to blame-the-victim if you don't want to become him/her. Don't shoot the messengers.

[veiledsentiments]

[Stephen Jones]

[D. Merit]

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

[uaeobserver]

[helenl]

As I'm not in the English department, I can speak only from observation. The only students NOT studying English on a regular basis are those who have achieved the required standard in IELTS or PET (soon to change to all IELTS banding). That would include about 90% of the students - so the number of EFL teachers would be substantially higher - however, as I say, I'm not in the English department so I can't speak about "hard numbers".

I only know that no matter which level I teach (Diploma or Higher Diploma) all my students with very rare exceptions are also taking English classes.

As for overtime - yes you get paid in a lump sum. However, it is calculated on your average hours worked over the entire academic year. 20 contact hours is considered a full teaching week. So, if you work OT - say 22 hours, in the first semester, but don't carry a full teaching load (say 18 hours) the second semester - you don't get anything extra. This is not always explained to the teacher until the end of the second semester at some campuses.

[globalnomad2]

What I didn't like about the HCT was wisdom (i.e., edicts and threats) trickling down from Abu Dhabi in some kind of voodoo pedagogy, like Reagan's voodoo economics. It was the British system of centralized control over individual campuses. I always told supervisors (not that they would listen, since they know everything) that the University of Wisconsin system (or any of the better US state university systems, for that matter) would work better. Each campus is a discrete, independent entity and the only academic interference from state authorities should be ensuring that there is not too much duplication or redundancy in certain majors--so, you don't need two Medical Technician programs within five miles of each other (Dubai Women's--Sharjah Women's are what, 10 miles apart?)

The advantage of having independent universities within a college system instead of a system of satellite campuses like the HCT is you have the potential to build a world-class institution such as the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The other campuses are smaller and independent and their missions are different, perhaps tailored more to less competitive students and to localized job markets. The way HCT runs now, all campuses will always be mediocre at best in the misguided effort to make them all the same. Well, what does it matter--the students are essentially the same anyway, just that the Dubai women students are a little more arrogant than those in Fujairah, I would imagine.

Of course, quality of the institution is also a function of the quality of the students and the degree of academic freedom. Yale pondered setting up a satellite campus in Abu Dhabi and, with common sense, very soon decided you could never duplicate the Yale experience in a place like Abu Dhabi. How silly the French are in trying to create a Sorbonne campus there. Give me a break. As soon as a couple of silly " students" complained about a man and woman being in the same room together in a novel, that literature course would be dispensed with.

I hear even the Cornell medical school in Qatar has only about 10 students.

[Afra]

[sally 4th]

FYI, the very moment that one puts in notice, PD funding is immediately cut off, and Merit Pay is no longer a consideration. If one's contract ends on July 31st, you are not eligible for this benefit even though you have completed the entire year.

[Moriarty]