Job Discussion Forums

[pak1789]

I need some advice from impartial people so I am posting this here.

I am from the USA and have been in Ankara, Turkey since August 2007. I am here on a teacher exchange program. I am teaching at a private high school here. A Turkish teacher from the school here is taking my place back in the US, where I teach ESL at a public high school. The exchange program is just for the 2007-08 school year and we will return to our own jobs in the fall.

To make a long story as short as possible, I am miserable teaching here. The students at this private school are horrible. They are by far the worst I have ever encountered in my 13 years of teaching. I cannot teach, but am just a babysitter, and a very ineffective one at that. To make matters worse, I have a horrendous schedule. I teach 25 hours a week, 5 different levels, and 10 different classes of students. Although most of the other English teachers at the school here have about as many teaching hours, nobody teaches as many levels or classes of students as I do. I guess they wanted as many students as possible to "benefit" from a native speaker.

Back in early November, I had tearfully told my department chair here how unhappy I am. She said she would think about what could be done to help me. I have discussed my problems with her at least twice more since our initial conversation. Well, nothing was ever done. I had thought she would set up a meeting with the principal to discuss my issues, but no.

I had also talked with S., the person in charge at the exchange program's office here about my terrible schedule back in September, and she said I would get used to it. Then a few weeks later in October, when I went to the office again to pick up some reimbursement money, I was hoping to discuss my problems with S. but she left as soon as I came. (She had known I was coming that day, by the way.) Then on December 14, I went to the office again to participate in interviewing the Turkish candidates for next year's exchange program. I told S. everything and how I was thinking about terminating the exchange and going home. She said that she would arrange a meeting with my department chair and principal to discuss all the problems and see about getting my teaching load reduced for the second term. Well, five weeks have passed and still no meeting has been held.

This past Thursday was really the breaking point for me. I'm ashamed to admit that one class got me so upset that I cried in front of them. In thirteen years of teaching, students have never made me cry in front of them before. I went home Thursday afternoon and cried some more, and stayed home Friday and cried even more. I think I've been having a nervous breakdown! And I'm ashamed to go back to school next week after crying in front of students there.

Since I have not received the support I need from either the school or the exchange program's office here in Turkey, I have been contemplating terminating the exchange, since the first semester here is just about over, and returning to my job and home in the US. Thursday night I contacted the exchange program's office in the US and they told me to think it over this weekend and be sure it's really what I want to do. Since it is an exchange, my exchange partner in the US would most likely have to return here, and I'm almost positive she won't want to do that. I had set up things very well for her at the American school, finding many people to support her. Unfortunately she did not reciprocate for me here.

I also want to stress that homesickness is not the issue. I have lived abroad before, both studying in France and also volunteering in sub-Saharan Africa for two years. I like Turkey well enough, but the teaching conditions here are awful.

I'm normally not a quitter, but I really am overwhelmed and don't know if staying here through June would be good for my mental health when I have been feeling so miserable ever since I started teaching here.

The one benefit of finshing the exchange and staying here through June would be saving some money. I get paid my US salary from my home school. But here I do not have to pay rent, as the school provides me with a (not very nice) apartment and they take care of utilities too, except phone and Internet. My exchange partner is living in my apartment in the States, and we had agreed to split the rent for it and she pays the utilities there. I'm definitely not spending as much in Turkey as I would at home, and have been paying off my credit card debt. I'm almost finished with that and would be able to save up some money during the last few months here. But, the question I ask myself, is saving up some money worth the crap I have to deal with here and what it's doing to my mental health?

Thank you so much for reading this. I wanted the opinions of people who don't have a personal interest in either keeping me here or having me come home.

pak

[spiral78]

Wow. Sometimes things just don't work, and you can't necessarily make them.

If you'd been there a short time, I'd be less sympathetic, but you've obviously given the situation a very fair chance.

But I do wonder whether one final request to the Turkish school admin, maybe in writing with a follow up meeting ASAP would be a useful step.

Some slightly more formal version of what you've written here, with a notification that if you don't receive the support and changes in your teaching situation that you need within the week, you feel you must terminate the agreement and return to the US.

I'd possibly consider calling in sick on Monday - it's not chicken not to want to face the particular class that upset you to that extent. When it's teenagers, they aren't necessarily civilized or socialized enough to realize that they've gone too far. Even though it would be a sick day, I'd go to the offices to make the last appeal in my case.

Good luck, whatever you decide to do. I'll be interested to hear how it works out -

I'm sure there are others on the forum with more insight into Turkey in particular who will also want to respond to your story - I'll be curious whether they see things differently than I do

[ghost]

Your experience in the Turkish Private school is typical for many foreigners, and it is very tough to put up with. I have been there and done that, and was glad to actually be fired from a certain prestigious Private High school in Antalya in 2003 - they were doing me a favor, because there is no way I would have lasted out the year with those grade 4-5 savages, and that is being kind.

Even teachers with decent class management skills have been reduced to nervous wrecks in Turkey, and the basic problem comes from the Turkish management which does little or nothing to curb the problem of Turkish students' disrespect for 'yabanciler' �gretmenler teachers. As long as that continues, then there is nothing much that can be done.

Under your present conditions in purgatory, there is no way I would accept working under those conditions. Either the management of the school does something to help you, or takes steps, or you walk. It's as simple as that. Why should you have to put up with the nonsense that goes on in class? The fact that management is not doing anything speaks volumes about their lack of interest in your plight.

Life is short, and my advice would be to leave this position for medical reasons which are legitimate. I also presume you were never really told you would be entering a battelfield in the classroom before you came here.

When will Turkish management in the schools wake up and smell the coffee?

Ghost in Korea (www.gifle.go.kr)

[scot47]

Go home. It is a question of your sanity.

[pak1789]

ghost said:

I also presume you were never really told you would be entering a battlefield in the classroom before you came here.

ghost, you presume correctly. Although I had read on this forum about how awful private kolej students were, no one from the school had warned me. I had met my exchange partner at the orientation program last summer in DC, and had told her what I had read here on Dave's. She told me that the students at this school were very eager to learn, were excited to have an American teacher this year, and that they really cared about their grades. Turns out none of that was true.

I have since found out that the school has had a huge turnover in (Turkish) English teachers in recent years. Teacher morale here is very low. We just had a department meeting last week and after the principal left, it turned into a b*tchfest. Although I don't speak or understand much Turkish, I got the gist, and someone filled me in later. One of the complaints is that the school owner has decided that the children of teachers can no longer receive free tuition if they don't keep a 4.5 (out of 5) grade average. I wonder if the school owner was ever an educator himself.

I still haven't decided what to do. Another factor I didn't mention is my residency permit. Mine expires on March 18th. It's a long story, but the school never applied for a work permit for me. The police headquarters said I needed a work permit in order to get a residency permit. However, they did grant me a residency permit for only six months to give me time to get a work permit so I could extend it. Well, the school never did apply for the work permit. I asked the department chair about it last month and they said it was the exchange program's responsibility. Back in September the exchange program told me she had told the school that it was the school's responsibility to get one for me. I don't think anything has been done yet, and as you probably know, these bureaucratic things take time. So my legal days are numbered here anyway if someone doesn't do something soon.


Thanks to everyone who responded. I value your advice. I will keep you posted.

pak

[ghost]

So the Kolej in Ankara, which sounds like it might be 'Ted Kolej' which I am well familiar with, did not even have the decency to get the proper papers for you during the time you were there. That is absolutely pathetic, and no excuse from their end is valid. The school knows what to do, and the fact that they did not even bother to take care of that is a signal that they really don't care at all, so why should you?

The Kolej has not fulfilled their part of the deal, so in a legal sense, you should be free to 'walk' at this time.

As for references, I would just cancel out that school from your experience, and look at it as a learning experience and what to avoid in the future. You are not the first, and nor will you be the last.

Ghost in Korea

[pak1789]

No, ghost, I am not at TED Kolej. I prefer not to say the name of the school where I am, but it is much smaller than TED and not as well-known. Actually, there is another American teacher from the same exchange program who is at TED Kolej in Ankara, and fortunately she is having a much better experience than I am. And TED started processing her work permit even before she left the States; they had asked her to fax them her papers last June.

The school where I am has had other American teachers in the past, and even has two this year in the primary school, but they have never had one through my exchange program. They had claimed that since they are not paying me (I receive my salary from my home school in the US), that they were not responsible for getting me a work permit, that the exchange program was. The exchange program claims the opposite. So I've been caught in the middle. At any rate, the other American teachers in Turkey through the exchange program (the one at TED Ankara and two others at schools in Istanbul) all had their work/residency permits taken care of by their schools. But all of their schools had participated in this exchange program before, whereas mine had not.

pak

[spiral78]

I hope your school won't be eligible to participate in the exchange program in future, after they way they've treated you!

[Nmarie]

[FGT]

My sympathies are with you!

As to what you should do now....

1) Having broken down in front of the class, do you think you could ever face them again/recover any authority with them?

2) Have you spoken to the organisers of the programme back in the States about the work load, perceived pressure etc? Have they made contact with the school?

I can imagine that it would be difficult to get this sorted out locally but surely the school can see that if you go or if you grit your teeth and stay, while the problem remains the same, they will never get another teacher on that exchange programme.

If you want to be a hero, you will try to sort out the problem, not just for yourself but for any future exchange teachers. If you are a sensitive, normal human being you will run like hell and tell the exchange programme not to touch that school again.

If I were you, I'd probably run.

[ghost]

[mongrelcat]

so sorry you are going through this.
but rest assured, like Ghost says, your situation is not uncommon. I worked at three different schools in Turkey, K-12, and all of them were the same, except one wasn't as bad as the others.

I did have a nervous breakdown at the last school in Istanbul. These schools will never learn why they have such high turnover rates. Or perhaps they do know, and don't care. Turkey is still laboring under the impression that foreigners are just dying to come there, and that the schools will never lack for applicants. Although, each time I applied at a new school they wanted me to sign the contract at first meeting right away. They throw millions out the window every year, paying for flights, permits, visas (if and when they do decide to do it) etc. But it is always th same, once they've got the FT, they leave you to your own devices, don't listen, don't care, on and on.

The only reason these schools hire FTs is because they make a lot of money from having them. Parents pay through the nose just for the privilege of having a foreigner babysit their children 5 days a week.

You most likely don't have to test or evaluate your students. My advice? Play a lot of games and entertain them. Don't give a second thought to actually trying to have them learn anything. You've been teaching for a long time and are used to actually teaching. This is why you're so ill and heartbroken. You feel like you've failed. You haven't. As a former co-teacher and friend told me once, if you can get these kids to learn enough English so that they can one day lead tourists around downtown and point things out to them, they'll be able to make a buck. And that will be a success.

By all means go, and don't fret about anything after that. But I managed to stay for 5 months after my breakdown, only because I had nowhere to go if I returned to the US. If you can possibly stay and save your money, do it and don't fret.

Take care.

[Otterman Ollie]

Read your story for the first time,I think you have been given plenty of the right advice. You have given plenty of reasons to go and I would like you to state one good reason to stay, if you can think of more than one then perhaps you need to reconsider your position. What will you lose if you stay ? What will you gain if you leave? Which is more precious to you, only you know the answer to that. What ever you do,please don't judge the whole of Turkey on this place.

[asgerd]

I really feel for you too. I don't disagree with the good advice here but you seem to be reluctant to go - maybe it's just the money and the sense of responsibility and what people who don't hear the full story might think.

All I want to say is, if you feel you do have to stay, it doesn't have to be damaging, imo. I've been in a horrific situation (not teaching, as it happens, and not in Turkey, but comparable) where I really thought I was being permanently scarred, my confidence destroyed and all that, and in the end it really did make me stronger and wiser. The key here I expect is coming to terms with it in a way that doesn't make you feel that you failed and ran away (even though, as everyone here says, you're completely justified in leaving and there's no question of failure on your part). Can you negotiate a slight improvement on your conditions (first, dropping that demon class! have you tried specific requests, rather than a general request to improve things?) and make yourself be more sanguine about it all - considering it an anthropological study, or be less of a committed teacher, or whatever works for you. Difficult I know when you're in the midst of the emotional stuff but I believe that you need to not let your whole self be at the mercy of the school and its pupils: you can be in the classroom as an observer of the madness, rather than the victim of it. (Maybe I'm talking out of my ***...)

However as the legal issues may force your departure earlier - there may be something in hanging on until both organisations' failure to get that sorted out means you have no choice. Can you last until then? You certainly don't have to stay, but if you want to, I think you might be able to manipulate circumstances so it's bearable, you even get something out of it, and then you leave because they've messed up your visa. And you report it all to your exchange organisation. Good luck, whatever you do.

[pak1789]

Jerrymcb said:

I must say, you are getting the best advice imaginable

Indeed! All of your posts are more than I could have hoped for. It helps to have points of view of so many. I can never thank all of you enough.

I think I will email the exchange program guy in DC again and ask him to call me tomorrow evening, as he had suggested in his email to me on Friday. And then we'll go from there. Today was a holiday in the USA (Martin Luther King Jr. Day), so their offices were closed.

Oh, I've never been good with decisions! You're right, Jerrymcb, I do think too much! Part of it may come from being a Libra, the sign of the scales - we have to balance everything out and weigh our decisions carefully! The other part is because on the Myers-Briggs personality test, if you're familiar with that, I am right in the middle of the Thinking vs. Feeling continuum, which is what governs decision-making.

mongrelcat said:

You most likely don't have to test or evaluate your students.

Unfortunately, yes, I do, and I should be working on that right now! That's part of the problem too. Creating three listening/writing exams per term for 5 different levels, then administering them to all the cheaters and then grading them too - it's a lot of work! Plus I have to calculate what they call "oral" grades too, which aren't necessary oral, but it just means grades for all of the stuff that isn't exams, such as classwork, homework, projects... Anyway, grades are due tomorrow and I am way behind, so I should go work on them. I'll touch base again tomorrow. Thanks again!

pak