Job Discussion Forums

[Serious_Fun]

Just out of morbid curiosity...

[johnslat]

Dear Serious fun,
What happened to that old stand-by "All of the above?"

Regards,
John

[sidjameson]

A conversation partner would more closely apply to many.
Child care for some more.
Linguistic gigolo to a few.

I have certainly done all of the above.

[Madame J]

[iain]

Maybe a bit pedantic but are 'trainer' and 'coach' the same thing?
Would people who don't feel an affinity with being a 'trainer' feel more comfortable with 'coach' or am I going up a gum-tree without a paddle?

[Manaus]

I first consider myself to be a teacher since that's my profession.
But we're all educators as well..


And since I teach middle school (and adult ESL only part time) then I am an underpaid babysitter .

[Serious_Fun]

[LongShiKong]

[basiltherat]

this post reminds me of i guy i used to work with who called himself 'a facilitator'. When he was described or mentioned as 'a teacher', he used to flip completely.
A nutcase !
best
basil

[johnslat]

Dear LongShiKong,
I'm not so sure about the "income level." As a example, here are the salaries for a teacher with 10 years experience and a starting salary for a trainer in Raleigh, North Carolina:

Teacher: According to the NC pay scale with 10 years experience you would start at $38,710.

Trainer: The cost of having a full-time athletic trainer at each school was estimated to be about $18 million per year, if trainers were paid $40,000 per year.
(from The News&Observer - Raleigh NC)

Regards,
John

[arioch36]

At Kanas State University, the assistant basketball coach makes over $500,000 a year.

Exeprience less then 10 years

[LongShiKong]

So, what are we--instructors, trainers, coaches or fascistilators?

I think it's partly the environment that conditions anyone who steps into an ESL classroom for the first time to presume the task is to impart knowledge, to lecture, to explain the language, despite any training to the contrary. I'll never forget watching a young, American-born Chinese teacher delivering the same grammar lesson (in English) to a group of kids here in China that she'd probably received in her TEFL course.

I looked up the etymology of 'teach' thinking it may have derived from the Greek 'teknae' but not so. Here's what I found:

Teach [from Old English] To teach someone is etymologically to �show� them something. The word goes back ultimately to the prehistoric Indo-European base deik- �show�, which also produced Greek deikn�nai �show� (source of English paradigm [15th C]) and Latin dīcere �say� (source of English diction, dictionary, etc). Its Germanic descendant was taik-, which produced English token and German zeigen �show�. From it was derived the verb taikjan, ancestor of English teach.
Dictionary of Word Origins by John Ayto

So, this puts me partly back into the teacher camp since I prefer simply 'showing' a language point than explaining it. I made a bilingual grammar tense poster for my classroom so I can simply point to the question and corresponding answer form I'm eliciting from a weaker student. Color-coding parts of speech on the board enables me to indicate grammatical structures (verb, adverb and prepositional placement) with colored lines or indicate a verb that's also a noun for example by underlining it with the appropriate color.

[BS.Dos.]

Language instructor.

[BS.Dos.]

Wow. My avatar has suddenly appeared again.

[ESL Hobo]

English Language Instructor, would cover most jobs.
Tutor, if you are helping people with their school work.

But as a general term, English Teacher, is used in most countries.

Dancing Monkey, gets my vote for Favorite!