Job Discussion Forums

[flutterbayou]

This post should be responding to someone's inquiry about working at the school in Ankara.

The OP asked whether Ankara is an option, and I would tell a friend that it is not. The management there is far away from the Head Office and has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar on more than one occasion, and the branch experiences too much internal conflict to run smoothly.

Lots of the issues are characteristic with working in Turkey, in general. Working in Turkey means that any employer will work you as much as 6 or even 7 days a week if they deem it necessary, and won't even spare you an hour to go to church (actual example) if you make the request. Now, you might think that in this day and age, this issue might not arise, but it does for some. And in a country where the men are permitted to take a break for mosque on Friday, it would seem that a foreign teacher would be given similar time off on a Sunday morning.

But let's move on to other things. If you do a good job and stay the 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, someone will only ask you to do a little more for them. They realize at these schools that people burn out and leave, so they expect a regular turnover. This management style allows supervisors to think less of their people as being human, and more as expendable commodities.

The head teachers earn less than their subordinates, believe it or not, and have very little time off, so you will read at this site that more than one or two branches have gone without a head teacher for a spell. Qualified people don't want the job.

People at the main office definitely spend a lot of time in the general manager's office, behind closed glass doors, trying to raise brownie points with gossip. Commonly referred to as the Informant, the Informant listens and reports, listens and reports. And checks this board.

The textbooks have long been discussed on this forum, but each time they are edited, no one makes the sort of changes that are necessary to get them up to snuff. Editors of books will be told, please make changes on this book and have it ready fast. Oh well.

Changes can be offered, but the secretary with a high school education censors material she objects to - viable, respected methodology and models, that is.

There is absolutely no reason why grammar, reading, writing, speaking, and listening are not taught comprehensively. To teach each one as a separate course is a sign of not knowing anything about education.

And to have teachers participate in teacher training without paying them for the time they spend on it - do you get the picture?

It was a challenging task to work in a business that calls itself an educational venture when it exercises interest only in making money. And for this reason, i would recommend no language school in Turkey.

More viable is getting a good job in a country within a few hours' flight from Istanbul, and plan a holiday there, instead.

[Barnicles]

flutterbayou - Are you talking about ET, or all Ankara language schools ("i would recommend no language school in Turkey"). If the latter, surely they cannot all be that bad?

[misterkodak]

I wouldn't recommend working for the 'crime in Ankara, Istanbul, Canada, London, or Las Vegas. All the branches are the same. There are far better jobs out there. After the yellow misery there have to be more decent language schools out there. I can think of at least 2 which don't demand teachers to work 6 or 7 days a week.
Rumor has it that the crime is losing alot of students (the books they published) and teachers ( from being refused reentry into Turkey on their border runs).
I'm sorry but "we pay on time" isn't exactly a job perk.

[bulgogiboy]

By the way to Big3bc:

If you are the person I think you are, I want to say I also worked at ET Ankara, when that disgusting obese blob of a 21-yr old American girl was headteacher. Let's call her 'Big Becky' hehe. I want you to know she was REALLY cruel about you. She must have called you crazy about 1000 times, and not in a fun way, in a thoroughly demeaning way. She was really unkind about you.

I realized her hypocrisy when she showed me an email she had written to head office about the d**khead who calls himself the manager, complaining about him, and saying that you were known as crazy by 'some people' and that she thought that was a shame because she really 'valued' your working relationship. In reality all she ever said about your working relationship was how much she hated you.

By the way, telling you this isnt to get at you at all, i dont know you personally, but just to let you know how much of a b*tch the fatty really is and what she really thinks of you , should u ever meet her again. That girl sucks!