Job Discussion Forums

[nickpellatt]

Following comments in another thread, I thought I would open this to the board for further discussion.

I 100% accept that volunteers can be damaging, and to make real change and a positive difference I think you need to be committed, skilled, and prepared to spend more time at work than a short volunteer visit...but can they also be a good thing in the world of ESL?

I have read about many bad teachers, who arrive ill prepared, possibly in-experienced, and uncommitted. (sure you have all met teachers like this?)

This type of teacher may not do a great job for his students, do little to promote the reputation of foreign teachers, and may than dissapear overnight or quit the position, leaving both the students and the school inconvenienced.

A volunteer however, will have paid for the privilege of being 'in-country' so IN THEORY, is likely to be prepared to stay the distance and give it their all in providing a service, be it teacher or any other role.

Many volunteer programs also include an element of training in their programs, and many volunteers move on to take up paid positions, and some become good teachers.

A controversial thought, but it could therefore be said, that volunteer organisations provide a perfect 'training ground' or half way house for new teachers, and help to churn out committed teachers who MAY elevate the role of EFL/TEFL, by ensuring new teachers have had some classroom experience and have enjoyed a supervised orientation before taking paid positions?

Thoughts?

And please hold off from flaming me too much, some of these may be my view points but not all, I feel this could be an interesting thread if debated and discuss objectively, and may be of use to many people considering the volunteer route.

If you wish to make it personal, make it personal to you, and share with us your experiences?

Maybe someone who has suffered because of a volunteer teacher, or a volunteer teachers who has gone on to make TEFL/ESL a career, or maybe someone who works for a company placing volunteers.

[spiral78]

I think the conditions you describe roughly correspond to a good introductory training course.

The trainees have paid to be there (indicating some level of commitment to the process), get actual hands-on classroom experience which is supervised by (hopefully professional) trainers, and feedback is provided before they are turned loose on their own.


Perhaps one advantage would be that a volunteer position is longer-term, and might attract more people with a 'helping attitude' overall. As versus more people who are anticipating Having A Blast For A Year In (fill in the blank).

[nickpellatt]

there is a thread here -

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/job/viewtopic.php?t=47954

With an enquiry about joining a volunteer program first - which has been soundly slated from most quarters - Im certainly not ever suggesting it is wonderful value for money, but I am keen to discuss its impact, negative and positive on teaching and teaching standards.

Im sure many people considering moving into TEFL/EFL etc may consider such options to test the water, and this thread could have some interesting points for them to consider?

[ilaria]

It's hard to generalise about volunteers and volunteer programmes, as there are at least four variables that will affect the success of any placement: the recruiter, the host institution (a school, university, refugee charity, etc), the teacher, and the students.

The recruiter needs to be honest. The main aim of the recruiter should be to provide suitable teachers, not to take money from gullible gap-yearers.

The host institution should be genuinely unable to pay the going rate for a teacher. They should not be charging their students fees for classes with the volunteer teacher, then pocketing the money.

The teacher should be altruistic, yet practical, qualified and/or experienced (for the students' sake), and be able to adapt to very trying circumstances. As for hand-holding - in my (limited) experience, some recruiters and host organisations actually provide very little support, and the teacher must be able to cope with some isolation.

The students must be genuinely in need of a foreign teacher and unable to gain access to one in any other way.

Unfortunately there are cases where dishonest recruiters send teachers to exploitative host institutions. There are also cases of disastrously unprepared volunteer teachers expecting to be treated like demigods, running up against willing but baffled hosts and students. And there are cases where everything works reasonably smoothly and everybody benefits.

Kudos to good volunteers everywhere, and to those who organise their placements with honesty and decency.

[coffeedrinker]

I think this is a really interesting topic.

I have lots of thoughts on it but will try to be concise.

First off, I think one thing that determines if it's okay or not is whether there is a real need. I've tried to offer other volunteer skills in different places - and people mainly want English (yes, I'm also a qualified and experienced teachers, so this is a bit different).

There's also the issue of - if there isn't a volunteer, the people won't have any English classes at all. In this case, it does seem good that someone is willing to do it, BUT the danger is that the person may still be unqualified, and the fact that there is a volunteer "teaching" may give the appearance of something being done for a need or of funds being spent appropriately, when actually little is accomplished.

Another pet peeve I have is when some "volunteer" position is offered for a price and the person doesn't investigate it, and it turns out they have paid to be "volunteering" for some for-profit pursuit. Not cool to be misleading.

Finally, while I have no doubt there are committed volunteers... I don't think the fact that people pay necessarily means they will be responsible. If it is a gap year program or some other part of a holiday, it may still be just that, and people feel like they have the money to spend. In this case, someone who is working and presumably reliant on a salary, has more of a built in incentive to stay.

I don't mean this to come across as saying that volunteer teaching is necessarily bad - it's definitely not. Just that there are lots of angles to consider.

Interesting thread and I'm interested in seeing others' ideas.

[NathanRahl]

Of course the OP is missing the point entirely, that if you don't have the talent for being a teacher, no amount of training is going to make you good at your job. It may improve your ability of course, but clearly we have different ideas of what is an acceptable teacher.

Volunteering being a training ground is laughable. You get the same boobs volunteering to come here and teach as you do that wish to get paid well in full time positions. Oh, and volunteers do get paid, just much less then most of us do. That means that not only was the person not smart enough to figure out how to get a good salaried position here, they were actually dumb enough to pay to be here, beyond travel expenses. If you think that says something in their favor, your less of a realist and far too positive in my estimation.

Volunteers, the ones who do harm, are the pin heads who go to colleges and schools who can afford more. Why should they pay more though, these tards are willing to do it for virtually nothing.

I have nothing against those who wish to help others actually doing so, but most volunteers who are in ESL in china are the dregs who were not even able to get into the peace corps, or any other decent volunteer organization.

Or you get the meathead religious zealot volunteers, oh yes, they are always fun. Tier two of the dumbest humans the world has to offer. People so stupid they lack the ability to think for themselves, so they get other people to do it for me. Yes, I want them teaching my kids? Good lord no way.

No, I have to disagree, I do not think volunteering is some good training ground for EFL teachers, that is to say it is no better then getting any other job anywhere else. Your likely to be teaching at the same kind of place you would be were you a regular full time teacher making better money, so whats the difference? And that brings us back to the main topic at hand, is it good for the industry, and the answer is, hell no.

All you need to do is look at what mexicans have done to america to see what I mean. There are millions of americans out of work. Yet, if the government had the balls to track down and boot out all of those inexperienced underpaid scabs who are in america illegally, there would actually be a surplus of jobs in america. Instead we have 3 million homeless people.

Similiar here, they take jobs away from more qualified people, and do it for peanuts by comparison.

Will it stop, of course not. American business like mexicans, and the government won't militarize the border for that very reason, they are just too damn cheap.

The volunteers who actually go to the worst parts of china, where they can't afford a regular teachers salary, great. How often is that realy the case though, rarely. Lets face it, these volunteer organizations are making money in the form of kickbacks, and giving the scraps to their volunteers, all the while the schools are saving a heap of money. Don't kid yourself, people doing your job virtually for free is never a good thing, and china is not Kenya.

[Glenski]

Some volunteers cause "damage". So do some trained teachers.

[Justin Trullinger]

I work for an organisation that places volunteers of all descriptions, and many teach. We try to prepare them as well as we can, but there are limitations. They go to places that wouldn't have teachers otherwise.

We also have a highly professional, paid department of English teachers; they often help out the volunteers, but are mostly involved in other teaching projects.

I don't see the damage potential, really.

Best,
Justin

[nickpellatt]

[Justin Trullinger]

[nickpellatt]

I have asked the question simply as I have seen lots of negative feedback about volunteers, and I am wondering if the only negative feedback is that a volunteer teacher affects a paid teachers ability to negotiate a higher salary.

In other areas of volunteering, short term volunteers can do as much harm as good in terms of long term goals, but I wonder how often this can be the case in the world of TEFL / EFL.

IMO, if the only negative suggested is it affects salary - then I personally will remain in favour of such programs, assuming they attract the right type of people and arent abused by schools and colleges.

[Justin Trullinger]

I can only speak for Ecuador- but the volunteer teaching programs I've seen here really don't affect the salaries of other teachers (Salaries are low all over, but unaffected.), because volunteer teachers usually teach under completely different circumstances than paid teachers.

I guess another concern is how programs are run and managed, and who all the fees go to.

Another thing to consider is how much good they do, though. Some kinds of volunteer programs, as far as I can see, do a great deal of good. (There's a great organisation that works with street kids here in Quito- they have a core staff of "real" teachers, ably assisted by enthusiastic young people from all over the world. And the fees these keen youngsters pay are what keeps the whole thing working!) But I've also seen a lot of "teach English for free" situations where no training is provided, and it turns into a zero sum equation. No harm, except for the wasted time, but no particular use either.

Best,
justin

[NathanRahl]

The damage Justin, is done to full time "paid" teachers in china who work in this industry as a living, and are being undercut by unqualified, pay to go to china "volunteers". These folks lower the overall payscale, since many schools won't hesitate to have some teach for next to nothing, rather then "pay" a professional. You have just been schooled Justin

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

Volunteering should be limited to people doing a practicum to meet the requirements of a training course. That's how it is in most other industries. You don't spend a year training to be a teacher in Canada after you finish your degree in order to teach at a school full time for free. Why should it be expected of people who do exactly the same amount of training to become teachers of the English language (this is the amount of time it takes where I'm from)?

Part of the reason why there are so many Canadians teaching English overseas is because they can't get a job doing it that pays them enough to survive in Canada. And the reason they can't get one is that both language schools and goverment run programmes use volunteers to keep themsleves afloat and use that as a way to bring down the wages ("we will offer you minimum wage, because we both know that I could easily just get some retiree or some upper middle class exec's wife to do it for free"). At least in Ontario, it's the situation in a lot of communications industries as well- advertising, public relations, publishing etc all use volunteers (and, of course, arts companies in Canada couldn't survive without them). It's the result of having one-year programmes offered by community colleges in the area- people need experience so they do a practicum. The company likes getting trained labour for free so they offer more practicae (?) and offer additional ones to the people they like to get them over the hump when the colleges don't have people available to work for free. Failing that they will offer limited contracts to avoid paying health etc and let them just get rid of buddy as soon as they can get a newbie for free.

[Justin Trullinger]