Job Discussion Forums

[eha]

We are here as goalies and fall guys when teams are short of a man or two ... and as ball boys otherwise ... we are not invited here to play ...


Ain't that the truth. I've always defined our role in the Muddle East as: To stand in front of the fan when the **** hits it.

[kiefer]

I began this thread curious about HCT's practice of not necessarily making you an offer but assigning you to the school not of your choosing.

What particularly puzzled me was their assigning me to a place I'd specifically mentioned during the interview as a place I would not accept--adding my own question to the interviewers, "Would that be a problem?" They said "No." It turned out to be not "a" problem" but "the" problem.

Then, later in the thread, I told the story about how my "offer" was rudely, patronizingly, unprofessionally withdrawn in a tersely worded Email which bordered on a personal attack. Then the theme of the thread began to move in a direction similar to that of so many other threads.

The Glory Days might well be over.

Jebus! OK. 'Nuff said.
We ELT's purpose for being here has always been and remains to become obsolete.

In the early 90s, in the days when TV reception was limited to the local airwaves, before the P.C.s and the Internet became standard household apppliances and necessities, when English language magazines were found only in airports, there was indeed a huge market for gulf citizens to learn passable conversational English--and the classroom was vital, and back in the good old days some attempts were made to retain teachers as opposed to this current air of our expendibility.

Now, it seems apparent that the focus on retainment has been replaced with a system which has crunched the numbers and deduced that retainment means certain perks and privileges with a side order of respect for the ELT professsion.

Retainment perks simply do not outweigh the benefits of downsizing staff, adding more hours to those who stay on, swelling classroom sizes and if necessary just keep on recruitin'; there ain't no shortage of CVs piling up high in H.R. offices.

The market hasn't quite tapped itself out, and overall life as a teacher in the gulf still has more to offer than being a teacher "back home".

For the citizens here who need to know English with varying degrees of fluency (depending upon their career tracks), there seems to be less a need to rely solely on the classroom; its importance does not now seem to be on par with the way things were 15- 20 years ago.

Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman--same same (does anyone still use that phrase "same same?")

It seems that no matter what subject is brought up in the M.E. forums, eventually many tend to veer into how bad the conditions are "here" and a lot of folks, like me, seem to be asking whether or not I should stay "here" because maybe "there" "the living is easy, fish are jumping and the cotton is high."?

[Stephen Jones]

There is more demand for ELT teachers in the Gulf than ever before.

[veiledsentiments]