Job Discussion Forums

[veiledsentiments]

That said, if you go in with realistic expectations and use the time to learn about the country and culture... it can be an interesting year. The faculty room will be full of colorful characters, half of the management will be buffoons... but many have passed through this program with good memories. If you manage to complete the contract, and most do, your next job should be better because now you have direct experience teaching Academic English to Arabic speakers. And you can decide if you want to make the big move and get that MA to get to the better pay and situations.

It's all about using it for your professional and personal advantage.

VS

[Hadit]

[veiledsentiments]

IMHO... if you have the BA+CELTA and 3+ years of teaching EFL, you can probably get hired by the recruiters even though your experience isn't university level. So spending another couple years there at uni level may not be worth it professionally. (unless for your own personal experience)

I don't think that Chinese university experience would push you up the ladder for that first job as the needs of the Chinese university writing students is so different from the needs in the Gulf.

VS

[Muscatrealitycheck]

To Wellrounded Square- what you say unfortunately has a lot of truth to it.
There is something missing in the "system" but we're not allowed to talk about it or offer suggestions.

Things haven't changed, expectations are not made and things are not improving in the MOM institutions.

Oman has great weather from November to April ONLY. The pay isn't that great and the recruiters seem to be above the law . If you have any issues for instance you're on your own.

Oman is a place to enjoy, not to move up the ladder in terms of your teaching career.

[jdl]

Ah, the negotiation phase moving into the adjustment phase! Wiil the new culture be adopted or rejected or adapted to?

This is better than reality TV......it is real.....scarey!

Individuals rarely, in any large way, change the operation of a nation, education system, political system,way of life, culture etc. One may have influence over one's own small space in the world so it may be best to make the most of that, if, changing the world around one to conform to the familiar and acceptable is the goal wanted.

The individual should assess where s/he is, decide if s/he can or cannot make a go of it.....then do something. It is all on the individual.

And I thought that reality tv was entertainment and not really a way of life for some people. But then again in the sixties we had 'The Man' and anyone who didn't rail against the 'establishment' had 'sold out'. OMG, I guess some things never change. We just grow up in different decades?

[Muscatrealitycheck]

So what are you saying JDL? That if you're an expat you "should be" rallying against the establishment here in an attempt to make positive changes?

You're suggesting that North-American tactics be used to get things moving here? Give me a break.

They don't want change. If they did, the first thing they'd do is throw out the recruiters and do their own hiring.
Why do they want native speakers in their institutions? I'm asking..seriously..cause I don't know the answer. Perhaps those in power thought it would give their schools/colleges etc. some credibility?

It really does seem that they really don't care about English and westerners are perceived as evil and corrupting their value system.
We're reminded of it everyday on the roads, in the staff-rooms and the offices. They will do everything as OPPOSITE as they can..just because they can.

OR are you saying..if you can't beat 'em..join 'em ??? Put up or get out ??

[desultude]

[WellRoundedSquare]

Alright I know somebody asked for the link to my statistics a while ago, so here it is, you have to download the pdf. The article is about Saudi so the Oman details are buried somewhere in the middle:

http://www.boozallen.com/publications/article/39533120

Now where to start, I don't even want to mention names because I'd rather this thread not get locked, but whatever happens happens.

One poster said that individuals rarely move nations and systems and cultures etc...

This is a rather pointless comment because the exact opposite is just as true.

At the genesis of every philosophy, revolution, empire and system there is ALWAYS an individual or small group of people responsible.

Our world, our history, everything we know about human culture says that unique, determined individuals will always propel us into change and the masses will often fight it bitterly or follow it through.

I am living in a country that exists as a modern entity due to the foresight of a single man. The current Sultan, who wields enormous power over this small nation.

Luckily for all of the teachers out there who are suffering through the endemic corruption of the recruiters et al at the Colleges of Technology, revolution isn't necessary.

To dismiss the claims of anyone who is horribly offended by the state of affairs at these colleges as simply "culture shock" or having an axe to grind is equally irrelevant. The Colleges of Technology are not a branch of Omani Culture, they were designed to exist outside of it. The classes do not stop for the call to prayer and we do not teach Islamic Ethics. The students are there to learn English and Engineering and IT, and they make up their prayers whenever they have time. We do not in fact teach anything in their native language even. They do not serve bizarre concoctions in the cafeterias; they serve hamburgers, french fries, and Cokes.

These schools were designed by adapting the complete foundations and fundamentals of the United Nation's Educational Body, UNESCO. Therefore when Westerners come into these institutions and they find that they are not up to par, we are absolutely within our rights to demand and work toward changing them until they fit. I am not suggesting that Omani Culture needs to change, the school and the world outside of it are mutually exclusive.

If an American auto worker in Ohio is working at an efficient and lucrative Toyota Plant and then decided to accept a management position in Mexico making Fords it would certainly not be Mexican Culture that upset him on the factory floor. It would be the fact that this company which should adhere to the same standards and practices as other effective companies in it's field. He doesn't need to change Mexico, he needs to change his factory.

These schools are not just corrupt, but corrupted. And if the rumors are indeed true that high ranking members of the Ministry of Manpower have been dipping into the recruitment cookie jar for years, then the cycle of manipulation and perversion of education are essentially perfect. What could we passerby possibly do to fight a government that is deliberately starving their own children of a chance for a better life? Better to just give up and accept our paychecks and go Wadi bashing once and a while right?

I would certainly not suggest that anyone take the same tactic I took, which was to roll your shame and indignation into a barrage of verbal and written missiles to be hurled at your hapless administrators for every time your ideas are dismissed and they tell you that it's simply "the system." But I would vehemently oppose the apathetic method of "just teach your classes well and don't worry about it either."

To work within a college that you know is failing, failing the teachers and the students. To blindly accept paychecks and let the world go it's own way. To assuage your own guilt by watching zeros (and probably not many) fly off of your college debt or mortgage payment and lament about the terrible world you've been flung into. That is the slow death of the human soul. To do so, we would, all of us, become the back office bankers and cubicled corporate sycophants which I know many of us joined this profession to avoid becoming in the first place.

But again, these kids and these schools don't need a revolution. If magically we replaced all of these inept administrators and banished these recruitment companies to the farthest corners of Pusan and Amori Prefecture another system equally as vile would probably assume its place. Though these schools were created to embody the ideals of Western Education the likeness ends at the tiled floors and crown molding. It is a facade, and we westerners hired to teach at this place are part of the facade. Our numbers are often limited to the bear minimum to hold that picture in place. No more, no less, because the recruitment companies, and likely the ministry can not skim as much off the top of our salaries.

There is power in this though. We are needed in one form or another, and we are not as dispensable as it appears at first glance. And what these kids really need we can give them.

They need football teams.
They need debate clubs.
They need movie nights, geography bowls (god knows they need more geography knowledge) drama clubs, poetry clubs, entrepreneur clubs, mathletes, singing competitions, dormitories, fraternities, sororities, they need speakers to come from the western businesses, they need to take trips to see the smelters, and pipe factories, they need to volunteer, pick up trash, give blood, perform scenes from the Koran at elementary schools. They need everything.

Most of us remember our college and university years as good ones, many of us consider them some of the best years of our life; for reasons ranging from noble to debaucherous.

We are dealing with a majority of extremely unmotivated learners with a low level of English in an environment that promotes neither teaching nor learning.

What we CAN do is try to remember something that made those years worthwhile for us and try to apply it to these colleges. That is how we change the system. We do not write letters and reports, we certainly do not clear it through QA. We just do it. We find a teacher or two to help out and we make the small incremental changes to how the school works. We do not do this for a raise, we do not do this because it looks good on our CV, we do it because it needs to be done. And that is the first step toward grace.

We also do this in the hope that someone will take up this small mantel once we are gone. And if we are really lucky in the hope that one of the Egyptians, Indians, or Filipinos who sit quietly in the corner will stand up with us. They have much more to lose from fighting the good fight than we do.

Most of you know that teaching ESL is often much more fun when the students can communicate their thoughts, their culture, their lives to you and learn a little more along the way. The lower the level the students and the higher their age at that level the more difficult it is to have a "fun" class without demeaning them and yourself with childrens games and activities. If these kids have ANY reason to practice their English outside of the classroom, the school will get better. The schools as they stand now don't seem to put any effort toward that goal. So we have to.

And now to bring this back from the vaulted ideals to the practical. To all those posters who are spewing the smarmy attacks all over this place. You need to get over yourselves.

We are ESL teachers. We are not professors, and we are not academics. We are the bottom of the barrel in the educational world. I don't know what your masters is in, whether it's TESOL or "Applied Linguistics" (and I hope that field will forever be coated in parenthesis) but these are not academic degrees. We are not linguists, and we are not researchers. We are not invited to conferences and so as a result we make our own self-congratulatory ones to pretend we're part of the club, but we aren't and never will be.

But that was the point. We are allowed to travel to these obscure and not so obscure parts of the world, we are allowed to instill values upon the most important commodity of any nation in the world. These are things I consider incredibly noble, and I had always assumed that with the noble path comes modesty. So get off your high horse and come back down to the mud with the rest of us.

If you got into this field for money, well you can console yourself with "but it's TAX FREE!" for only so long before you realize that the guy managing at a Mcdonald's for the same time you've been teaching in the gulf has already paid off his mortgage and his kids finished college without loans.

The last thing I will say, for anyone who was willing to go through the drudgery of this rant, and the three mind numbing pages before it is this. Much of the advice offered on these forums is at worst grossly misinformed or based on hearsay and often in the best case so tainted with nostalgia by those that are no longer anywhere near where you are standing or planning to stand that you should realize you should have made a phone call or sent an e-mail to someone who is there.

Everything said on this forum should be taken with an entire shaker of salt.

Especially everything said in this post.

[doner]

I have just read the BAH paper and it is laughable. BAH as you no doubt know are primarily a military contractor who do a lot of work with the Saudi miliary. I have worked with more than a dozen BAH teachers and seen BAH management policy and to sum it up-the customer is always right and the teachers are expendable. Have you noticed how BAH are always advertising for teachers in Jubail and are doing so now. It is for two reasons-they lose teachers at an astonishing rate and because to keep the teachers in line they fire a few every year. The climate of fear and brown nosing with BAH teachers is unreal.

[johnslat]

"In the past several years, many developing nations, but especially Arab countries, have come to identify a good education system as a cornerstone of economic progress. The urgency for education reform in the Arab world has been manifested in the various initiatives aimed at improving the quality and quantity of education, especially with a rising young population that represents a majority in many countries of the Arab world. Recent years have witnessed many Arab countries making efforts to develop and implement comprehensive education-reform programs that can result in a skilled, knowledge-based workforce in line with socioeconomic goals.

Recent debates on how best to develop the quality of human capital trace back to Article 26 of the United Nations General Assembly�s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We draw from this article and postulate the following education framework for the Middle East, based on internationally proven best practices. This framework combines three major dimensions central to education reform:

A socioeconomic environment in which social and economic priorities can be translated into a viable education strategy and related goals
An operating model for the education sector, in which operating entities, good governance, and funding allow for the sustainability of education goals
An infrastructure (e.g., quality teachers and curricula, reliable assessment and performance measures, and a good learning environment) ready to make such goals attainable
In addition to this framework, an effective implementation represents the other side of the reform coin and requires careful consideration. Effective implementation requires dividing the project into manageable pieces, prioritizing its various processes, ensuring ownership consensus among the stakeholders, and systematically measuring results.

Although there is no single recipe for education-sector reform, the above framework represents an approach that, if followed holistically, should increase the likelihood of success. Thus, any strategy implementation that narrowly focuses on a few elements of the framework�at the expense of others�will likely fall short of providing an optimal reform outcome. This is because each dimensional element is inextricably linked with the others. Countries that adequately connect these dimensions in the implementation phase of their reform program tend to do well in terms of student achievement and human development indicators, whereas those that exclude them tend to fall short."

I will leave any comments on the above to those who have lived/worked in the Middle East for a number of years (and who actually enjoy "shooting fish in a barrel") and may, therefore, feel impelled to share their opinions.

I'd like to comment of this, however:

"We are allowed to travel to these obscure and not so obscure parts of the world, we are allowed to instill values upon the most important commodity of any nation in the world. These are things I consider incredibly noble, and I had always assumed that with the noble path comes modesty. So get off your high horse and come back down to the mud with the rest of us."

We are allowed to "instill (presumably our) values"??? This is "noble"???? Offhand, I'd say that any EFL teacher who thinks that he's fulfilling a "noble" - but with modesty - mission is on a much higher horse than most.

Regards,
John

[WellRoundedSquare]

[johnslat]

Dear WellRoundedSquare,

Just what values do you instill, may I ask?

Regards,
John

[WellRoundedSquare]

Are you honestly saying that none of your beliefs about how to be the best JohnSlat you can be leak into your classroom? Year after year?

But I won't avoid the question. I have been fabulously lucky to have had the life I've had. My parents worked multiple jobs, they took turns going to college at night over the course of six or seven years a piece, and by the time I was getting ready for college, they had me covered. I was able to use that freedom from undergrad debt to bounce around the planet, which I am still doing.

The most important thing I try to impress on my students is that with one language they can do the same. Not that learning English will instantly fill a bank account, but that when traveling seems easier, you are more likely to do it. As far as individual values go:

That there is a balance between the money you make and the life you have (extremely important point in China) that experience even for children is still the greater teacher than extra school at night and on weekends (for parents in Japan). In Oman I am teaching 19 year old kids but I can't get much past the ABC's and monosyllabic grunts, so philosophy is a little lacking at this point. The only thing I have very truly tried to impress upon them is that in the struggle for limited jobs they have an extremely graded slope to climb before they can get in ahead of kids at SQU. Essentially that value would be that of education. But again even if I was telling them to worship satan, abandon their parents, and burn Korans, it's not the message that matters as much as the fact that when you put students in a classroom, especially in Asia, not so much in Oman they wield power and authority over minds. If the students leave a classroom thinking the world is a slightly more interesting and varied place then when they came in, I consider that instilling value. You can call it whatever you want I suppose.

[johnslat]

Dear WellRoundedSquare,

I don't "instill" values. We learn, I think, values only by experience and by example.

I always tried to be the best example I could be. I always felt that, perhaps, some students were getting some of their impressions about "the West: and "Westerners" based on my behavior. Whether or not my example had an effect, I honestly don't know. But the, we really don't learn the truly important lessons about life in any classroom.

[johnslat]

Dear WellRoundedSquare,

I don't "instill" values. We learn, I think, values (and all the other meaningful stuff) only by experience and by example.

I always tried to be the best example I could be. I always felt that, perhaps, some students were getting some of their impressions about "the West: and "Westerners" based on my behavior. Whether or not my example had an effect, I honestly don't know. But the, we really don't learn the truly important lessons about life in any classroom.
Regards,
John