Job Discussion Forums

[Shakhbut]

[veiledsentiments]

Bobby Sue,

Reading the previous two posts will give you a very good idea of the rather surreal educational system you would be stepping into. It is best to go there without any preconceptions that it is like a university program in the country that you are coming from.

Remember that all the posters here are the 'supervised' not the supervisors. Too many supervisory personnel in the Gulf have little or no supervisory training, experience or ability. And often in the best of cases even good supervisors are disliked because of the rules they have to enforce. Then there is the problem that supervising EFL teachers is often compared to herding cats.

HCT is a very bureaucratic organization that has many levels of management that overlap and over-manage. (IMHO, they would do best to cut about half of them) Sometimes people advance through the levels and sometimes they hire from outside. One problem that I could see for those in the management levels is that it is a mix of nationalities who have all brought the idea that their American or British or Australian system is the best and there is this constant tweaking of what it is we are supposed to be doing as teachers in the system. Add to that the often unrealistic demands of the Arab-run education Ministries...

Most managers last a contract or two, and a few have been there forever, but that requires the skin of a rhinoceros and an ability to schmooze with the higher-ups. In other words, just a bit worse than everywhere else.

VS

[globalnomad2]

I've said this often before, and I mean it: At the HCT, faculty are not faculty; they are compelled to be educational contract workers.