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[BindairDundat GotdaTshirt]

This forum is excellent at revealing just what an unpromising challenge teaching ESL in Poland can be. I have always been kept at arm�s length from those who turned a deeper shade of purple at the thought of being cheated, shortchanged or out-and-out challenged.
It comes as no surprise to find that language schools in Poland are desperately trying to become the next snake charmer. In reality, however, they churned away the horizontal sentiment of ESL teachers, wafted by the mediocre management in most cases.
I�m not saying anything new, but� There are just too many schools. Substandard, unrecognized and I-don�t-know-how-near thousand actually swindling. Some even franchise a name to compete, or downright hustle, just to rival all those rolled together. Not one will escape from being exposed.
For once, one can almost feel sorry for the owner/outsider as he/she slithers in the marketing mud of this cutthroat business. It is always maliciously amusing to home in on their grubbiness, thanking the third teacher twice removed without whom such-and-such school (any name will do) could not possibly have been successful.
Emerging in this case as a surly character is the overly employed DOS or manager who is more often than not regarded as well-dressed and lives in a cupboard. I refuse to believe that it takes persistent delight from his/her part in interviewing prospect teachers without having the slightest idea what to do in that respect.
Despite the fact that the bottom has dropped out of the world of several school and school owners in this forum, professionalism is often shown the door along with being short of an open-vowelled accent, a CELTA, or having other interfering skills. Even if your CELTA diploma was held up to the light, things would still reach a pretty pass for you.
If you, the casual teacher, happen to entertain an interview in which they ask you to take a test (it has become special province in few), let others know. This is the sort of bone-headed profligacy and idiotic tunnel vision which hits me for six, causing thunderbolts throughout this country�s ESL fold that has just learned to open its doors again.
Needless to say, DOSs/managers/obenfuhrers naturally they all fall in line with those who look at the CELTA diploma as the first and last word in teaching qualification.
Thankfully, I am a planet away from them and underwhelmed by their lack of knowledge and views on the right qualifications for the job. Once, I had a moment. It was a she, at a school in Poznan. Clearly it did not occur to my interviewer check my resume to find in bold letters M.A in American English Language and Literature, such a blunder that it was too late to extricate herself from her niggling. Let this be a serious measured lesson that in any interview, the right qualifications are often taken for granted or completely ignored.
It would be snide of me to say: �Man, now I'd like to have accepted that job�, and quit in the middle of it. For the type of insouciance they play on the students and its teachers.
In this forum, the same topics are often taxed beyond the bleary-eyed comments. The awful truth and the downright lies wax and wane like the moon. Sometimes, innuendo is the order of the day. There is pap aplenty for the monstrously oversized egos and tiny minds. Let�s give each other�s a favor. Just name the names. Which school and where. If something goes down in your language school where you are currently employed but misrepresented, we should all know. And if I happen to inflame the Brahman bull of your life, the noli me tangere types, then let your words tap the core.

[dynow]

OK.....

Then where SHOULD I apply in Poland? I want to start teaching in February and don't want to quit my job in the states, only to find out I'm working for a bunch of swindlers.

Jesus Christ, sometimes reading this forum is so incredibly discouraging.

I'M TRYING TO QUIT MY JOB AND MOVE TO POLAND, DAMN IT! LIGHTEN UP PEOPLE AND TELL ME SOMETHING, ANYTHING GOOD ABOUT THE SCHOOLS THERE!

[Wild Bill]

I don't know what that other guy dealt with, but on my end I was treated fairly, gave a good day's work for a good day's wages ( by Polish standards) and was treated like a professional. Actually, it was a great year teaching with great people in a country I learned to love. If it wasn't, why would I fly back every summer to teach in the school's summer camp? Then again, ESL is a crap shoot anywhere. Caveat Emptor!

[Grrrmachine]

Dynow, a simple point to take on board would be: why is a school hiring in February? After Christmas, January and the two-week February holidays, it's hardly as if there's a sudden influx of locals eager to learn (they simply don't have the cash at that time of year) so it's very likely that the position is there because a teacher has left. Why would he leave? That's for you to decide.

Poland DOES have its good schools, but the people with enough cash to set up a school very rarely got that money together through legitimate means; business loans at 25% interest were not uncommon even in the 1990s (apparently), evolving three types of school. The first is the honest, open, professional and therefore successful which has managed to get some serious business contracts and keep them. These are few and far between. The second are small enterprises run out of old converted apartments or houses - under-resourced, a bit flaky in terms of professional conduct, but pay on time and with easy work because the students are all locals who know the owner in some way. The third type are generally the ones Bindair is on about - the ones who through unscrupulous business practise have slimed together enough cash to tart up an old office suite and make an aggressive marketing ploy to sucker in students with promises of an easy fix to their language problems.

Its a pyramid. Theres far more of the third type than the first type, but you won't know which is which until you get here.

[dynow]

grrrrrmachine.........thank you.

Poland.....here I come!

[Lavaboy]

Bindair: I am completely shocked that you have a master's in American lit. and have not read A Confederacy of Dunces yet! Do read it.

I think there's something about the Polish language, some fundamental ambiguity, that keeps a majority of those Poles fortunate enough to learn fluent English in a state of semi-consciousness when it comes to actually interacting with a so-called native speaker, especially when one happens to work for them.

I'm not at all bragging, but for illustrative purposes I'll say that I have a B.A. in English literature from an Ivy League university and you can be sure I made it my business to show every DOS I had an interview with the website with the current rankings of American universities. As you can imagine, this was met not with "Wow, we better hire this guy cause how often does someone like this walk through the door!" but rather with a look of narrow-minded skepticism, the same kind of a look a believer gives you when you try to explain to one the concept that religion is mass delusion.

I would be immediately suspect of any place that hires you or shows interest in you sight unseen (the old joke from Freud about not wanting to be in a club that would have you as its member applies here). If you must teach English in Poland (stare at yourself in the mirror long and hard over this one), buy yourself a plane ticket, swallow some start-up costs, and, yes, hit the dad-blamed pavement.

[spiral78]

I'm not at all bragging, but for illustrative purposes I'll say that I have a B.A. in English literature from an Ivy League university and you can be sure I made it my business to show every DOS I had an interview with the website with the current rankings of American universities. As you can imagine, this was met not with "Wow, we better hire this guy cause how often does someone like this walk through the door!"

Lavaboy, it's not clear whether you yourself actually possess the qualification described above, but, quite honestly, if this candidate came through my door, I'd respond the same way you describe the Polish DoS.

A degree in English lit (regardless of prestigious source) is not directly related to teaching English as a second language. In fact, the two weakest teachers in my current department are holders of MAs in English language - they have plenty of knowledge about the language, but not about how languages are learned/taught.

And Ivy league...well, there are some pretty famous C students who've done little to enhance the rep of an Ivy league degree these days.

By the way, I've read A Confederacy of Dunces - one of the greats of American lit which certainly hasn't had the recognition it deserved. Bindair, you've missed a real treat!

[svenhassel]

Any Dos worth their salt isn't going to bat an eyelid at some freshly graduated Master of Literature, what I look for is Experience and personality in prospective teachers. As for qualifications someone with a hot off the press CELTA certificate is definitely more desirable than someone with a masters and certainly more than someone with a masters who hasn't even heard of �a Confederacy of Dunces".

Too many times I've seen Masters of literature swagger around the TEFL planet expecting schools to bend over backwards to appease them as if they were masters of the universe when in fact all they're really qualified to do is discuss literature. Show me a master's with a teaching qualification and then we can talk big.

As for the second issue raised here, I don't think the picture is at all as bleak as it has been painted on this website, is every Tefl teacher in Poland represented on this forum? I think not, in fact you newbie�s out there, most teachers in Poland wouldn't have time to sit around posting stuff here. I suspect people only write in when they have something negative to say, the best thing to do, is come to Poland at an appropriate time of the year and hunt around, more often than not this results in a nice position in a small but respectable school with decent colleagues. This Forum is useful at times but it�s far from being the sum of all knowledge as far as working in Poland is concerned.

Swan

[BindairDundat GotdaTshirt]

Not other book has been more reviled by our professors than this piece of fiction. Not even as a surprise treat you will find this fable on any college required reading list. And I was usually incapable to read outsiders so far left of the academic Richter scale that they practically disappeared.
Our department's jackboot recommended enough books to keep us busy and to entertain this high-octane mouth of a book in that please-me-or-forget-it school of sensitivity they would have eyed you askance. And reading a book no matter how popular might be to some avails me nothing.
At any rate, thanks for not missing it.

[BindairDundat GotdaTshirt]

[joshsweigart]

Unless teaching a university course in literature or composition an M.A. in Lit. or anything outside of education is pretty much only good for background knowledge/character enhancement. Without knowledge of teaching methods and learning styles it is difficult to transfer or evoke students' interest in English. For lower level students, especially, it's probably a much better idea to keep your language use only slightly above their level. Faulknerian rants would probably only confuse most students.

I'd have to say that an enthusiastic 20-something recent college grad with a decent four week course and a desire to improve their skills is in a much better position to be a successful teacher than someone who is really really smrt and holds a libary in their head.

[Alex Shulgin]

While the ability to analyse in great detail what Hemmingway really meant is no doubt a superb talent to have, most students want a teacher who knows what the present perfect is and can explain when to use it.

Why is it that a google on "American English Language and Literature" (i.e. what one poster apparently has an MA in) produces only 13 hits?

[svenhassel]

Calm down Mr Bindair.

I'm glad you have finaly heard of this book but please keep the rude remarks away from this forum or you'll have this interesting thread locked too.

As for my qualifications, I am not in the habit of disclosing such personal information to unknown characters on the internet, but I can say that being experienced in the employment of TEFL teachers I am well qualified to express an opinion on this matter, and that is that CELTA and TESOL trained graduates make better teachers than someone without teacher training.

S

[BindairDundat GotdaTshirt]

[BindairDundat GotdaTshirt]