Job Discussion Forums

[sharpe88]

I'd say about 10% know what they're doing (hopefully higher on this board)...

This observation comes from my frustration as a supervisor and recruiter of foreign teachers.. Most teachers are unskilled and at best can do the "entertainment" thing. They also tend to be stubborn and dislike constructive criticism. Kind of a pointless rant, i know..

[Miajiayou]

Probably not the majority. I'd say that goes for all teachers though, not just foreign teachers in China. It isn't an easy job.

While we're at it, I wouldn't mind discussing the percentage of supervisors that are "good"

[Johnny_Utah]

Let's not forget the % of chinese students that are "good" oh boy, that could be a thread of it's own.

[sharpe88]

Good point miajiayou. The number of good training centers and schools is probably the same proportion. Probably the crappy schools and low expectations creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I've never really had a problem with students that some seem to have though. On the contrary, the great majority have been good, eager learners. I guess I've been picky with the places I work.

[7969]

[flyingscotsman]

Well for $600 month most schools get what they pay for.

[sharpe88]

For fulltime I don't know any that pay "$600". Even higher paying schools like EF and WS hire pretty randomly

[TexasHighway]

I am wondering what percentage of Chinese teachers are good. Many times, I have walked passed classrooms where the teacher is sitting down reading from a textbook into a microphone while smoking a cigarette. Usually half of the students are sound asleep. By comparison, it seems foreign teachers aren't so bad.

[dog backwards]

Without any sort of empirical data accompanied by a study, any comments are purely anecdotal and speculative. I think it would be better for the respondents to address their own experiences as teachers rather than to discuss their observations of others. If one speaks truthfully of his own experiences, he may speak with authority.

To speak poorly of the work of others in a public forum amounts to nothing good.

I'd like to read how a "recruiter and a supervisor of foreign teachers" can help the supposed remaining ninety percent become better teachers.

[catinthehatter]

[MisterButtkins]

I think it's more than 10%, maybe 20%, which is still not that many. This is going to sound weird, but to some extent I believe someone's personality greatly affects their teaching in a way that you might not expect a computer programmer's personality to affect their programs. I've known people who have postgraduate degrees in education and all the teaching experience in the world and are still awful. At the same time I feel that, despite the fact I do not have a teaching certification and only have two years experience, I do a better job than most of my colleagues (not saying I'm perfect).

The most common problems I notice over here, even in people who are licensed and experienced, are:

1)Inability to adapt to a different teaching environment. I've known several people who taught English in high schools in the US and they arrive here and attempt to teach their classes the exact same material they taught in the US, which of course doesn't work. Or, they find that the setup doesn't meet their expectations and completely stop caring about what they are teaching.

2)For lack of a better term, being completely clueless about what they are supposed to teach. The biggest example that comes to mind to me is one of my coworkers who taught an IELTS Writing class who, at the end of the semester, still had no idea what "Task 1" and "Task 2" were. Another example is someone who gave an essay test to his Oral English class.

3)They are too lazy to lesson plan properly, and so fill their class with boring time-killers which the students hate. IMO, the students can generally tell if you are giving them a BS activity to kill time, and they don't like it. Some examples of this are people who play hangman in their oral English class and people who make their kids write lots of papers so they can sit there and not do anything during class time. Also, people who show movies too often.

4)They want their classes to be fun, and prioritize this over actual learning. This type is probably less harmful in some cases than the above, but I still feel like it's a problem. These are the people who just play games or chat with the students every day and make no attempt to fix problems that repeatedly crop up. Here's a newsflash: just getting kids to talk a lot does not automatically fix their verb tense problems or their pronunciation problems. In fact, it might make their bad habits more inveterate. An offender in this category I remember was a girl who taught Business English and simply had her class play games and do fun business scenarios all the time. At the end of the semester her kids didn't know any of the vocabulary or concepts our boss had asked us to cover.

5)Teachers who are generally bitter and take it out on the students. These are the teachers who get off to yelling at their students or giving extremely difficult but pedagogically useless assignments. A red flag for this category is if a teacher refers to his students as 'stupid'.

6)General lack of communication skills. Some teachers here seem woefully oblivious to the fact that their students do not understand everything they say. Another problem is teachers who are bad at explaining things, with some teachers giving overly complex and drawn-out examples and others simply not making the effort to elucidate a difficult word or concept, instead telling their students to look it up.

So yeah, there are a lot of bad teachers out there. In my opinion, the most important factors for someone to be a good teacher are a clear idea of the purpose of each course, a sense of professionalism even if the administration doesn't expect it, and the belief that learning and education are valuable. If a teacher lacks these, it doesn't matter how much education or experience he has, he's probably still going to be bad.

[milkweedma]

[SahanRiddhi]

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

[brsmith15]

Try my 10-80-10 rule (a bit of a variation of the normal distribution) which seems to work in most instances, thiis one included:

10% are outstanding, dedicated souls who might even consider working for little or no money.

10% are the dregs of the universe and should be taken out and burned.

80% are between the two extremes.

Having done the whole bit here, from managing an MBA program to teaching a class of sleeping dolts who couldn't have gotten into a uni on a train, I've seen them all. Characteristics such as age, education, background, country of origin seem to matter little. The best ESL teacher I ever saw came from the Ukraine and the worst "professor" was a middle-aged guy from Yorkshire UK with a PhD who was a drunkard, a womanizer, a bigot, and just plain distasteful.