Job Discussion Forums

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

I'm glad you appreciated it seven seas. I was a bit direct with another poster on another thread and am afraid that I hurt her feelings. That wasn't my intent, but I hate taking the time to read a post only to find out that it doesn't relate to the OP in any way or form. I also dislike reading posts by folks who OBVIOUSLY haven't invested the very little time of googling or using search functions. I get enough of that from my students. It bothers me that professionals fall into the same lazy habits!

So, I thought, maybe an attempt at humour might be a good approach. Insha'allah, people will begin to make their own threads on some very good conversations!

NCTBA

[knoxso]

What time do they start and finish work?

[Incedere]

My dear NCTBA, don't think of it as hijacking, but merely a series of natural and polite segues from a polarizing, emotionally charged topic to matters more philosophical and mundane; matters best exchanged over a bit of tea on a Saturday afternoon.

Of course if you or anyone else wanted to wade back in to the thick of it, I'll be sure to dust off a few of my "energizers."

- i

[knoxso]

...erm...so that's long hours then?

[Incedere]

Knoxso, I will presume your question is directed at me.

The hours at IAT are from 7:30am until 4:00pm. While the work day officially ends at 4:00pm, it is not unheard of for a number of staff to head out between 3:00pm and 3:30pm. Whether this practice will continue indefinitely is another matter.

Some like myself will stay until 4:00pm primarily because family life can get a bit boisterous and noisy. When the little one starts tugging on my shirt with an insistent demand to be chased around the house or taken out to the park, pulling out papers to mark, or jotting down lesson plans for the next day tends to fall to the absolute bottom on the list of priorities.

Generally speaking, while the work day is 8.5 hours long, most staff will teach an average of between 3 to 5 periods per day, depending on their schedule. That's 2.25 to 3.75 actual teaching hours. In my department the teaching load varies from 22 to 24 periods (16.5 to 18 hours) per week. Each grade has two 45 minute breaks during the normal school day, and since IAT has security staff stationed in each building, teachers are not asked to take on a supervisory role during the breaks. They are free to do as they wish until they are next scheduled to teach. When classes finish at 3:00pm, teachers are expected to be available until 4:00pm for meetings, if any have been scheduled. If no meetings have been scheduled, you are free to work at your desk, have some tea with colleagues, go to the gym on campus and work out, or relax and do a little reading. Whatever you want, really, until 4:00pm.

While the teaching load may be less at HCT, IAT is still only high school level, and the work load is comparable to or less than what I have had to bear at other places I have worked.

[meteacher]

Incedere, you are only describing the situation in one campus and from what I am aware it is not all sweetness and light - in fact, far from it

Put it into perspective :

1.) 3 principals have resigned or been given the boot
2.) Staff turnover is so high that they are constantly recruiting for teachers because they can't keep hold of them. Rumour has is that they are considering getting rid of all teachers and "starting from scratch!"
3.) Staff are treated like factory workers - sigining in using fingerprints! There is no flexibility as to when you can arrive and when you can leave.
4.) Some campuses do require teachers to supervise during break times.
5.) Some campuses require teachers to teach 4.5 hours per day and provide lesson plans for every class that they teach.
6.) There is little or no support from management!
7.) Salaries are low, housing allowances are low....

Personally, I would advise anyone considering IAT to stay away!

[knoxso]

How about PD? Are most of the PD days 'in house' or do they bring experts from the outside in?

[meteacher]

All PD is done in house. Although, they did try and e-learning thing that no one was really interested in. Anyway, ALL PD FUNDING HAS BEEN FROZEN so there is no access for any PD (even for those wishing to do CELTA training if they don't already have it). Even though they stipulate that all employees should have a CELTA, some still get in without one!

[veiledsentiments]

So, let's try to get this in perspective. How many schools are involved here? Was it 3 out of 5 principals or 3 out of 25?

Right now, it sounds like conditions vary by school... (similar to HCT).

You say that salaries and benefits are low. So, what are they and how do they compare with other teaching jobs at this level?

Is it a place where one can spend a year or two if they have a high tolerance for uncertainty accompanied by the need for a paycheck. Is it better or worse than say... Chouiefat? (never could spell that...)

VS

[meteacher]

There are 5 campuses...3 of the 5 principals have resigned/been sacked.

Salaries vary depending on quals/exp and what subject you are teaching! English teachers are paid less than math/science teachers. Base salaries are roughly 8500 - 9000 dirhams per month (not great) plus a housing allowance which varies depending on location.

If you are a very tolerant person you could probably do 2 years, possibly 3 but it's not a 'sticker'!!!!

[Incedere]

Meteacher, you make a few good points, but most are stated a bit out of context. I can only personally state my experiences on one campus, however I have regular contact with teachers from all five campuses, and correspond with them regularly. I am quite sure that there are those who would agree with your perspective, however I would have to question a few things, or at least contextualize them.

Principals

You may or may not know this, but IAT was originally an offshoot of HCT. It was founded by HCT faculty, and brought forward to this day by those founding members. The principals you mention did not actually resign, they declined to renew their contracts, which is an important point. Starting and building a school system and multifaceted curriculum from the ground up is an incredible challenge. The experience and achievements of these principals has positioned them well to move on and up, at a point in their careers where they want to transition to very senior positions, and higher salaries. As well, the expatriate HCT faculty were never supposed to remain for long in their positions, as it was within the mandate of the school to have western trained Emiratis trained up over three years, and be in a position to take on senior management positions. You may or may not like Emiratization, but it is a policy the federal government is pursuing avidly, and IAT was founded by the Abu Dhabi government.

Turnover

While it is true that staff turnover is high, it is only high amongst the English teaching staff. For example on the Dubai campus two staff members moved on early in the school year. One, who had a Ph. D, was hired by an Australian university, and the other was hired by the American University of Sharjah. Recently one other English teacher left, of their own volition, wanting to pursue opportunities elsewhere.

Over the course of this year three teachers have moved on. That's out of a total of 23 English teachers, for a turnover rate of about 13%. Is it high? Maybe. I have seen higher, and I have seen lower. However as IAT campuses are fully fledged high schools, English is only one subject amongst many. Of the Math, Science, Arabic, Islamic, PE, ICT, and Vocational staff, turnover has been very low. In fact, in Dubai at least, I do not believe even one staff member from amongst that group has left during this academic year. Regardless, this is an ELT forum, which thereby limits the focus of our discussion to the situation regarding English teachers.

Salaries

You stated "[s]alaries are low, housing allowances are low." By what standard? Compared to HCT? In that case, yes, the salaries are lower. But the two institutions are not at all comparable. IAT is a high school, and HCT is a post secondary institution. That salaries are higher at HCT is simply a matter of course. As that venerable veteran Veiled Sentiments has variously vouched, HCT is just about the best deal going for EFL teachers in the UAE. Which means the whole discussion is about as follows:

*Warning: Dramatic Interlude*

"Hey, man. IAT pay sucks. HCT's is better."

"Why of course HCT's is better. They're the best deal around these parts."

"Yeah, well, IAT pay still sucks."

"Because they're not better than the best?"

"No. Because they suck."

"I see."

*Now back to your regular programming.*

Currently I and my colleagues earn around 15,000 AED per month. If they are not married, the housing allowance decreases, and that drops to about 13,500 AED. Are those exorbitant sums? No. But are they mere pittances? Also no. Would I want to earn more? In a heartbeat. But am I railing at the injustice of receiving a substandard wage? Not at all. Honestly, heated rhetoric, and overuse of exclamation marks aside, can you really make this claim when the vast majority of high schools in Dubai offer salaries that would make Ebeneezer Scrooge blush. Do you know what teachers at Our Own English High School earn?

Granted there very well may be secondary schools in and about Dubai that offer a higher overall package. Who knows, perhaps there really is a high school in Sharjah that offers 15,000 AED as the basic salary plus housing, as testified in a certain hearsay account. What would that be? 20,000 AED? 21,000 AED? It sure sounds like a sweet deal. It sure would be just dandy to have a link to follow for independent verification of this. Alas, we all have our pie in the sky dreams.

Hours of Work

Now let us look at hours of work. Could it be true that some teachers have to teach as much as 4.5 hours in a day? Absolutely. In fact on Tuesdays I teach 6 periods myself. But then on Thursdays I only have three periods. Some days are heavier and some days are lighter. There are eight periods in the average school day, and even if each teacher had to teach for six out of those eight periods, such a load would be in no way different from the workload of your average North American high school teacher.

Supervising Between Breaks

It is not impossible that this might happen on another campus. Last year I was asked to sit in the cafeteria during one break period per week. Of course I bristled at this request and riled at the unfairness of it all. Then there was the two week period when the contract with the security company came up for renewal, and there was a break in service while negotiations were underway, and I was asked to walk through the halls twice a week. Boy that really got my gander up, I tell you.

Submitting Lesson Plans

Next, I guess, would be the contention that on some campuses English teachers are required to submit lesson plans for every class they teach. I fathom from the way you stated this that not only must this requirement be overly onerous, but somehow it must be inhumane as well. Imagine, requiring that teachers demonstrate their preparedness for the task at hand. I mean, honestly? What's next?

For what we teach, a lesson plan only really takes five to ten minutes to make, if one is required. Currently we use the Terry Phillips Skills in English series. Each lesson in each book has been arranged to correspond to the classic CELTA lesson format (Hence the requirement that IAT English teachers have CELTA certification). The lessons are all preplanned, and as the curriculum, up until recently, was entirely textbook driven, writing a lesson plan required little more than stating what your lead-in might be, what supplementary materials you might use, and which activities in the textbook you were going to use. It is in no way an onerous requirement. Further, the curriculum development unit (You know, "upstairs," TPTB, etc) does not require any lesson plans at all. Now, they do ask that all supplementary materials used in classes be filed with the appropriate Academic Coordinators, but that is only a recent requirement. As IAT transitions away from a textbook driven curriculum to an objectives/outcomes based curriculum, the Board of Directors required at least some sort of pro forma oversight mechanism to ensure that culturally offensive materials were not being used in the classroom. Again, that is for supplementary materials only, not lesson plans. On the campuses where lessons plans are required, that requirement would only have come from middle management, and as we all know, in any large institution the expectations of middle management often vary from location to location.

Signing In

Yes it is true that we sign in using a fingerprint scanner. This is a recent requirement, replacing the sign in sheet we had used in past. While I would prefer not to have to sign in this way, I can understand why I have been asked to do so. Last year there were teachers who would not show up at 7:30 like the rest of us, they would instead arrive just before their first class of the day. So if they had three periods off in the morning, they would come in at around 9am or 9:30am, just in time to teach. When the sign in sheet was instituted at the beginning of this year to forestall this practice, apparently (I did not personally witness this) some staff would get around the requirement by signing in in advance, or having a colleague sign in for them. When I would walk in at 6:45, it always seemed strange that there were so many people apparently already on campus, from as early as 5 am. And yet the halls were curiously empty... In any event, the next day's sign in sheet would be left on the front desk at 4pm when the executive assistant left for the day, so naturally some staff might have made sure that, regardless of when they actually arrived, they were officially on time.

I know what you're thinking. So what if someone has violated the school's trust? Why should everyone else suffer? While I would have preferred that these scofflaws had been dealt with individually, I can understand the reluctance to single people out with accusations and recriminations. But why a fingerprint scanner? Why not just swipe a card? Simple - availability and access control issues. Biometric security is quite mainstream today, and the reason for that is it bypasses the security control issues inherent with swipe cards. A staff member can lose a card, keep one after their employment is over, or lend it to a friend. Short of snipping off an index finger, it is hard to do that with a fingerprint. Plus all it takes to program yourself into a fingerprint scanner is you punching in your code, and you putting your finger on the pad. Simple, low maintenance, requiring no great infrastructure of tech support staff to implement.

But still, a fingerprint? Like you said, are IAT teachers no better than factory workers? Lord. They very thought of being compared to such lowlife plebes. *shudder*

Well, actually, I have worked in a factory, and a couple warehouses, and had to sign in using eight digit alphanumeric codes (hated those), swipe cards, and fingerprints. I also worked in office environments where I had to do the same. These sorts of security precautions are standard in any knowledge or finance industry office environment. That they would be used for attendance purposes here is perhaps just a sign of the times. After all biometric security is pretty standard on most business laptops these days.

Flexibility

Is there really no flexibility in regards to leaving early or arriving late? I sure am glad you pointed that out. I mean, I know I arranged to leave midday one day last week to take my wife to the hospital, and arranged for colleagues to cover the necessary lessons. But now that my inability to do this very thing has been so clearly and unequivocally stated, I guess that any such arrangements are a foregone conclusion now.

Sorry, I have a habit of getting a bit tart when I'm irritated. A bad habit I suppose.

Finally...Firing All the Teacher and Starting from Scratch!

Hey, nothing is outside of the realm of possibility in this part of the world. I haven't heard this rumor myself, but it does seem a little far fetched. Perhaps I should get my resume in order.

Yours,

Incedere

[mishmumkin]

[Incedere]

I don't see a problem w/ teachers coming in a few periods late if they don't have classes or meetings scheduled.

While I do agree with you Mishmumkin, the problem is that when another teacher calls in sick, and yon late riser has yet to put on his pants, a situation can arise, and has, where other more conscientious colleagues are unduly burdened with requests for substitution.

[knoxso]

7.30am - 4.00pm, that's a bit of a long day for a secondary school, isn't it? Do they have a break every 10-12 weeks like other normal secondary schools? To recharge the pupils' and teacher's batteries, and such?

[Incedere]

There are a few breaks. School starts in September and usually in January or the end of December there is a two or three week break. Then on until May when the students head off for the summer. From mid May to mid June we hang around our desks, catch up on the latest movies, or sharpen our solitaire skills. Last year during this time the hours were relaxed and people could mosey in by 9am, and if there was no pressing business, could mosey on out between 1 and 2pm. From Mid June to mid August were off to Whereverland.

Our schedule is dictated by the MoE, so it's just like any other government school