Job Discussion Forums

[matador]

http://education.guardian.co.uk/tefl/teaching/story/0,,2098603,00.html

[Currawong]

Shotgun thoughts:

The lessons I teach for <3yos are only 25 mins each. This they can handle. They sit with their mums who help out by singing along with songs etc. This works out well.

I suspect that the company he worked for was run by conservative Japanese businessmen, who are the most useless when it comes to eikaiwas. They don't have a clue in hell what the students want, such as the case of one school i worked at where we weren't allowed to organise parties with students. The students came to the school to meet foreigners and have fun, not to learn English seriously, but this wasn't obvious to the owners.

I sympathise with his feeling that he was deceiving students. The whole eikaiwa industry is a scam, in a sense.

[cornishmuppet]

Probably true for about 80% of the industry.

One of the dumbest things I ever had to do as an eikawa teacher was a 45 min class with an 18 month old baby and her mother, who incidently had lived in America for several years and spoke perfectly good enough English to do anything I could have done. In the end I told her to stop wasting her money and buy some cartoon videos in English and sit in front of them with the kid. Of course, the school were mortified to lose the 'student'. Nothing to do with money, of course.

People will argue that kids learn most at any early age, but I don't see how one 25, 45, or even 60min class a week is going to make much difference.