Job Discussion Forums

[Steiner]

Our school is having an inspection by provincial authorities tomorrow and the next day.

The students had to fill out feedback forms about their high school experience.

The teachers dictated to the students what to put on the forms. Every single student is elated to be studying here. There is not a single complaint from over three thousand students.

Students have spent the past few days being prepped for the inspectors' questions. Some students will be taken aside and asked about their satisfaction with the school and their schooling.

The administration has told all the students how they must respond.

The administration has promised that any third year student who criticizes the school or offers negative comments to the inspectors will fail the national college entrance exam.

As one student put it, "Every sentence must contain a hundred lies."

[Kurochan]

Today in my office building, I was accosted by a drunk, shabby-looking guy who reeked of liquor. He was shouting, "Hello! Hello! Sank you!" I almost made some sort of wise-@ss comment, thinking he was a janitor. Luckily, a professor said, at the last moment, "He is our university president." Then I was polite.

[yaramaz]

Reminds me of parent-teacher day here at my high school. I have several students who cause a lot of problems, do no work, speak NO english in spite of 9 years of lessons, who sing and shout and run around the classroom and make it impossible for anyone to work (and this is in TURKISH english classes, not just the powerless foreigner's!). However, these kids usually have very rich parents. The school tends to humour them and pass the kids from grade to grade till they leave. I was told to inform the parents of these little ADHD hellions that their darlings need to study more. That's all. And then my words were translated for the parents, so who knows what they actually heard. It's a farce really.

[dmb]

A student ripped up the register because the teacher had marked him late. He then ran off to one of the managers and suddenly the student was to be marked present. This isn't outrageous, it's an every day occurance.

[Albulbul]

Studnets destroying the register ? I have never had that. Falsifying it yes, but actual destruction, not yet.

Sounds bad. Come and join me in Saudi.

[dmb]

Thanks for the invite Albulbul. But no thanks. 5 months to go and then back to Istanbulbul

[Twisting in the Wind]

I'm currently, um, teaching at two Chinese senior citizen centers in the LA area where I was lucky enough to land after the Calif state budget crisis swallowed up my Adult School ESL job last year.

I have a class at each center of anywhere between 6-20 students on any given day. I must compete with bingo, mahjong, crafts, ballroom dancing, and karaoke singing for my students. Music from the dancing turned up full volume regularly blasts through my "classroom door" while I am teaching. Alzheimers patients constantly wander in and out and try to "participate" in my class. Refugees from the dancing end up in the back row reading the paper to get away from the music. Since the facility does not have the room or the money for a second class, I have total zero English students thrown in with Advanced Beginners. Workers at the center regularly poke their heads in and shriek Chinese instructions at the students about the time of the next activity (which I must, again, compete with). Like another poster observed, not a "this week" outrageousness, but an everyday thing.

[dmb]

If you are in LA are large scale fires a regular thing that you take into account when planning a lesson. Is that an anticipated problem?

No joke intended. But a few years years ago when I was doing my Dip I included things like this

Incase there is a power cut I will not use the cassette and instead resort to ghost stories by torch light.

Thank god I wasn't doing my dip during earthquake season in Istanbul.

BTW, I'm a bit confused by the term Advanced beginner. Isn't that a bit of a paradox?

[Twisting in the Wind]

[Twisting in the Wind]

BTW, several posters have obliquely asked me about the fires here. For the record, The fires are burning north and northeast of Los Angeles, and south down around San Diego. They are in mountain areas, so people who have homes on and around the mountains and foothills are most threatened. They are not threatening Los Angeles proper. A few days ago they were starting to threaten Chatsworth, a northern "suburb," but then the weather changed. It's now cooler and may rain, thank God. What's evil and pernicious about the fires is the smoke that people are inhaling. It's bad for elderly like my students and for people with breathing and heart conditions. A lot of schools in the area have closed just because the air is so smoky. What I find curious about the Chinese in this situaion is that in many ways they seem so health conscious--they eat more veggies than in the avg western diet and exercise every day, yet when you try to tell them about the smoke and how it's so dangerous to be outside right now, they just shrug it off. They seem not to have a clue about air and land pollution.

[FGT]

I, too, did a double take upon reading "advanced beginner" but managed to digest it as meaning 'approaching elementary'.
There is a vast, and often neglected, difference between "absolute beginner", "beginner", "false beginner" and "elementary" student.
I appreciate that there is an even wider gulf between beginner and advanced!

[dmb]

Twisting, a dip is the DELTA. The one I was referring to is by UCLES

[gerard]

The cafeteria!

[Glenski]

Here in Japan, we just finished mid-term exams. I was told to create a section for some of my first-year HS students that I'd been teaching a higher level literature course. That was the only part of the exam suitable to their levels; the rest was far beneath them, yet they were supposed to take it along with the other first year students who were at a lower level.

The kicker came when I asked someone where to put the grades for all of the homework and quizzes I'd been giving my lit students. They said, "Oh, don't bother. We just grade them on that mid-term anyway."

Hmmm, so why am I teaching anything to these kids?

[Roger]

What happened this week is so bad I must keep it to myself - for the time being!
But for the record, and since "regular anomalies" are welcome - please: I can corroborate the claim that grades are NORMALLY ALWAYS TAMPERED WITH.

I taught in a private training centre in Guangzhou during summer recess, with the kids being coerced by their parents to waste their precious holidays taking extra lessons.
SOme did not need them, but they were coopeative and friendly, and at the end of the term asked me if I was vailable again for the next course which they were eager to join.
However, their parallel class was a disaster.
They were rowdy, came late regularly, some used mobile phones in the classroom. I had all sorts of behaviour issues, but at least we were working...
But in China, parents want to see 'authentic' proof of improved performance, read test scores, so these kids all had to undergo a 'test'.
That's when the school mistress decided to take sides with my lazy students: she replaced me with a Chinese teacher at short notice, just so the scores would go sufficiently high for them to pass.
After all, the parents want their money's woth!