Job Discussion Forums

[ardiles81]

Well it mostly is, isn't it? Generally (note hedging) low pay, terms and conditions which favour rapacious employers and not a good place to be if you are over 30.

[tttompatz]

[Justin Trullinger]

The thing is, almost all jobs are undesirable on the bottom rung of the ladder.

As ttompatz says, though: If you put in your time, get some preparation, and like the work...there are some good things to be said about it.

Here are some of the "ups" I've experienced:

Good pay

Being in demand, which favors employees

Good benefits

No recent recessions have impacted my options

Able to find work most places

Therefore able to see a lot of places

Work I really enjoy.




So- is it a McJob? Well, mine isn't. ttompatz either, I expect. I'm over thirty, not feeling like I'm in the wrong place. Looking forward to continuing.


Best,
Justin

[johntpartee]

[artemisia]

Education and health are two sectors that almost always get the chop in terms of funding during a recession when most (conservative) governments are determined to demonstrate their cost-costing 'abilities'. Conditions such as short term contracts in education are endemic. ESL does tend to remain buoyant, at least in some countries, as it's often privately funded or the government recognises it has to keep investing in this. It's also a sector that doesn't discriminate about age to the same extent that you find in other areas.

Where is a good place to be when you're over 30? ESL, I note, often seems to be discussed in terms of what it is not as though it is automatically understood to exist as a sort of negative or lack.

[naturegirl321]

YOu move up the ladder and get cushy jobs, if this job (20 weeks paid vacay, 15 hours a week, and $40K plus bonuses ranging from 10 to 15K) is a McJob, then I'll take it !

Edit: oh, wait, not over 30, sorry. BUt of the 16 teachers I work with, only two of us are under 30. Average age is probably 40.

[Sadebugo]

[Hod]

I'm with ardiles81 and not just for his football talents.

Going into teaching with a degree, CELTA and then DELTA offers one of the flattest career paths on the planet. I ended up as a fully-contracted teacher at the supposedly prestigious British Council. I looked at colleagues twenty years older, doing exactly the same job although they weren�t any better at it that I was. But I could have stuck it out and become a Senior Teacher or even a Teaching Centre Manager. Sorry, but these are boring admin jobs.

I will disagree with ardiles81 about the age thing. Get out at 35.

[PC Parrot]

[artemisia]

Well, teaching isn't for everyone, no matter what qualifications he or she has.

[fluffyhamster]

ELT could do IMHO with somehow better recognising (than it currently does) that further qualifications aren't the be-all and end-all, and that teachers (a minority of them perhaps, but still!) can and indeed do actually improve without them. As things are however it often just seems to be another one of those boom-fuelled "industries" in which there are now a few too many chiefs and not enough real indians, which will make it all the more painful when the supposedly "top" jobs start to dry up.

[artemisia]

I think ESL jobs come under the wide umbrella of ELT but that doesn't mean we all have identical situations and can be lumped together as one homogeneous mass. There's a considerable difference between working as a state school teacher who incorporates ESL as part of a teaching job and an ESL teacher working in a private language school.

I understand people's dissatisfaction with teaching ESL/EFL but think it's a personal experience and therefore a personal response. One or more person's discontent doesn't have to condemn ELT in general.

[naturegirl321]

[fluffyhamster]

Most people probably teach EFL more than ESL (or ESOL or whatever). Personally I've never been dissatisfied with teaching English (though the training/qualification "options" do get me a bit), despite the UK never having paid enough (at least, not in my lifetime), and nowadays even going overseas one will probably no longer recoup (at least not reasonably swiftly and easily) any money spent on those "further" qualifications.

I think the bottom line in ELT no matter how "high" one goes is that quite often one will have to settle for being employed by people who apparently can't tell good teaching from bad and therefore resent paying anybody and everybody their undeservedly "generous" wages. (Have you ever heard anybody in ELT say 'It's because I'm worth it'? LOL http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/nov/20/what-people-earn ). Nobody seems to be considered good enough for anything but piles of debt nowadays, all simply so some banker wherever can add another Rolls to the fleet or another wing to the mansion!

[artemisia]

Great article!! No teachers profiled though. I especially liked this quote from the milkman: