Job Discussion Forums

[bacasper]

Still ain't got the 25, met.

[Zoot]

incedere - this one amused me!

"and the counselors go through that list throughout the day and deal with them accordingly"

There was a time when 700 posts by desperate teachers hadn't even been looked at by the counsellor who hadn't realized that was a part of his role! Though as soon as students complained about teachers, he showed up in the classroom to reprimand the teacher and then scurried off to complain to the principal about the teacher.

You didn't reply about your own package, which I'm thinking must be very good given the time you take to answer queries on this thread.

An acknowledgement of the realities of IAT would do you more credibility. Explain the continual loss of principals and western native-speaking teachers in the past. How is that going to change in IAT to maintain staff recruitment? They've had loads of western teachers in the past and lost them in in 10s because of the treatment they received.

[Incedere]

@ZOOT

Sorry for the delay in posting a reply. I just got back from a week at the Hilton Resort and Spa in Ras Al Khaimah.

In a word - awesome. If you got family, book a chalet now. We got one next to a large shaded kids pool. Literally feet away. The little ones had a blast.

Back to business!

"You didn't reply about your own package"

Actually, I did.

If what you meant was that I did not PM you, then, well, guilty as charged.

As for those who left IAT in the past...

I hear this contention quite a bit, that the reason IAT staff have left in the past was due to mistreatment. I usually ignored this because, well, I figured that to most people this sort of statement was a bit too pat.

But, since you ask...

In the three years I have been at IAT, of my colleagues in the English department, I have seen maybe twenty or so leave. Some had started before me, some after. Of those twenty, three were fired, two were transferred, one retired, one moved to Canada, two accepted an offer from AUS, two went to work for universities in Abu Dhabi, and the rest accepted offers from HCT.

Was mistreatment the reason why they left?Or did they leave for a better package, and a chance to teach at the tertiary level?

When people aspire to teach at the tertiary level, and actively pursue a position at that level, they often have the experience or qualifications to do so. More than a few of my colleagues had no wish to teach at the high school level for long, and when an opportunity opened up to move on up, they grabbed it.

For some, it was because they preferred teaching at this level. For others, the preferred the pay, workload, and benefits.

Even for those who ended their contracts now, and are moving on to HCT, at the time they would have been interviewed and given offers from HCT, the HCT package was better than what IAT offered at that time. Two years ago, that difference would have been even more pronounced. Part of the reason why the salary structure has been adjusted upwards at IAT, as it has now, is in order to retain talented teachers.

And this strategy is working.

During my first year at IAT, I saw a pretty large exodus of staff, but that has tapered off since then. This year only two teachers are heading off. One to HCT, and the other is emigrating to Canada. That from a pool of over twenty English teachers represents a turnover rate of less than 10%. The rate in other departments is half to even a quarter that.

More than few companies would do anything to have a turnover rate so low.

So then, if we take this mistreatment claim as true, and mistreatment is the reason people leave IAT, why do so many stay? Is it some sort of "battered teacher syndrome?" Or is it something else?

What is sometimes true for people with higher qualifications and experience, is that they have a very well developed sense of their own awesomeness. This sense is so keen, in fact, that it enables them to point out that the people in charge of them, and even many of their colleagues, are not nearly half as awesome as they are. Being forced to work under/with these lesser mortals perturbs them to no end. And when decisions are made that are contrary to what they believe to be the preferred way, a certain feeling of resentment begins to build. It's a attitude tinged with sullenness and a sense of thwarted entitlement. Little things, nothings, really, take on the force and scale of epic conflicts, and perceived wrongs and grievances settle in the mind, hardening, concretizing until these thoughts form the very bedrock of their perception of reality.

This perception of mistreatment comes in two forms. The first, which I just described, is rooted in person's sense of self, their ego, if you will. The other perception of mistreatment comes from being privy to only one facet of a situation.

Say an HR rep contacted you and asked you to submit certain documents. You go through the trouble and expense to do so, and a year later you receive another request.

But why, you might ask, were they asking again? Did you not submit those same documents last year? What happened to those documents? Didn't they know how difficult it was to get everything together last time?

From the perspective of the individual, it seems as if the organization is jerking you around. They don't seem to know you, or even remember your past actions, and you get to feeling like this little cog being ground under a great big wheel.

Unfortunately the individual, seeing from only their own perspective, is unaware that the entire HR staff was changed over, that the old pros from Dover were pushed out to make room from a staff that is relatively new to the HR game. What is lost in translation is that systems of records keeping, personnel file management, and so on, were upended, reorganized, changed, ended, restarted and more.

Now why, you'd surely ask, would they go and do something like that? it all makes no sense!

And it doesn't, until you see it from the right perspective.

Let's say you have this exciting new startup. You got this great new idea, you secured a ton of venture capital, built up an infrastructure, and the founding member all got the thing in gear. They made something that, while not perfect, was showing definite promise. And then, as always happens, a bigger company comes along and buys you out. The management staff changed, procedures shifted, and there was a whole great big confusion of a mess until thing settled down in another year or two.

Think of IAT as being like that startup company. A host of HCT folks were brought in to get the project off the ground. They did, and did a pretty decent job of it. But the thing is, the institute was formed to promote Emiratization, and part in parcel is walking the walk. The administrative staff that helped get the IAT in gear moved on, or were let go, and Emirati staff was moved in.

As a new operation, still very much in flux, there was very little institutional memory to draw upon. HCT, which has been around for ages, has built up a massive amount of institutional memory, enough so that any new teacher who walks in faces what is essentially a turn-key operation. Activities, exercises, curriculum, all there, set and ready to go.

IAT wasn't like that. IAT was brand spanking new, and the teachers, from day one, were relied upon to get things going in the right direction. They had a great deal of input, created wonderful materials, collaborated, brainstormed, and really did go above and beyond to make things happen.

But then, the next year, some new people get hired to manage the curriculum, and they have a lot of great ideas, only that a lot of those ideas are different than the great ideas the teachers have. They tank the teachers for all their hard work, and then ask them to do it all over, but in this new and better direction. The next year things change again, as some more new people move in, and add their voices to the mix. The teachers are once again thanked for all their hard work, and asked to do it all yet again, in yet another new direction.

From the teachers perspective, what's the point? I mean, they work so hard, and what does that get them? A chance to do it again. It's like being Sisyphus at a whiteboard!

But does all this add up to mistreatment? From the individual perspective, perhaps it does. But it wasn't anything conscious or calculated. It was just a large, new organization trying to find it's bearings.

At the end of the day, the truth is relative. There are those who left because they felt they money was not good enough, and/or they felt mistreated. Then there are those who stayed because they felt the money was good enough, and/or they feel that they are getting paid to do job, and when the boss asks them to do something, they do it. I fall into that latter category. As long as I am paid, I'll teach English, do photocopies, dance a jig, whatever. I could really care less. My key concern is making sure the rent is taken care of, the bills are paid on time, and my family is safe and secure. Everything else is really tangential.

[Incedere]

@ZOOT

"[H]e showed up in the classroom to reprimand the teacher and then scurried off to complain to the principal about the teacher. "

Wow. If that ever happened to me, I'd have been upset. Fortunately I've always been backed up by the counselors, who have even gone to bat for me more than a few times when one troublesome student or another starts to get clever and tries to pull out the wasta card.

But in every instance, I've come out on top. Not because I can argue louder, but because I use the system as it is supposed to be used. I document everything, on the system, and I encourage teachers in other subjects to do the same. When two or three teachers are submitting the same sorts of reports about particular students, it really undercuts whatever arguments they may try to make.

[Zoot]

incedere - you are wasted in the classroom. You should have been a lawyer. Your arguments are brilliant. Now, back to the issue of your package. Doesn't worry me that you didn't pm - I suggested that only if you didn't want to answer openly on the thread. Given I can't find where you posted the info, will you do so once again please?

And you're right - when the Counsellor was pointed in the right direction about the complaints filed by desperate teachers, he saw fit to tell the students which they found enormously amusing and so began harassing the teachers who had as you pointed out "used the system" in the correct manner. What did the teachers do in response - those who could get out did so.

Now how do you explain the absolute frustration of western principals who also left almost as quickly as they were hired?

[Zoot]

My apologies incedere. I have found what you say your salary will be in September. No need to respond to that repeated request.

[bacasper]

1 more 2 go.

[bacasper]

[Green Acres]

I asked a while back and didn't receive a reply.