Job Discussion Forums

[Nexus11]

I've been looking into a position with EF. I see that there are 15 hours a week of office hours. For those that work there, what do you/can you do during this time?

How much of that time is spent doing prep work? If you are finished your prep, do you basically have free time in the office or are you required to pretend to be busy?

In my experience, office hours can go pretty quickly if you are allowed to go out for a bite to eat or mess around on your computer after work is finished. However, if you have to look busy even when you aren't, they can be painful.

[time to teach]

I've taught full time at Wall Street and part-time at Meten and Web, and know people who've worked at EF.

Based on my experience, FTs at the big chain schools are often left alone and can spend their "free" office hours pretty much as they please, including stepping out for a quick bite, coffee break, or some fresh air and also surfing the net, which can easily be justified as looking for new teaching materials.

Much of this freedom to come and go depends on three things: 1) your work and classes are up to par; 2) your direct boss, the person who manages the foreign teachers at your branch, is okay with it; and 3) you don�t abuse the privilege.

Never once has a manager looked over my shoulder to question my online activities or my brief absences between classes from the teachers� room or building. As long as I was doing my job well I was left alone.

[Miajiayou]

I don't like to compare working in China to working back home too often.

But... if I'm going to get paid for sitting in a room and looking busy, I would go back home. I teach, I leave, period.

[landt]

Once you've done your prep and any scheduled meetings/training/project work you can do what you like, and you're not usually obliged to be on site for the whole time. Hours are usually 8:30-6:30 weekends and 1:30-8:00 weekdays (bit later on Fridays).

At my previous EF schools teachers would sometimes plan in the local cafe, or be hidden away in individual classrooms so you never really knew who was there and who wasn't. As long as the work gets done, most schools are fine with it. We'd chat, watch movies, play guitar, eat lunch...

I'm talking about corporate schools here (BJ, SH, SZ & GZ); franchise schools might do things differently.

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

My experience is different schools have different requirements.

I strongly suggest talking to one or more existing teachers there.

[darkcity]

At my particular branch, there were too many different teachers with different schedules that even if the boss had a problem with it, he/she wouldn't be able to keep track of who's in class and who has an office hour.

Leaving early was banned at our branch, not so at other branches. The risk you take is that they might need you to cover a last-minute class, so if you're not there for your office hour, then they would find out.

As for actual lesson prep, they say every lesson only needs 15 minutes. In theory, that's true -- print the handouts, prep the cut-ups, preview the PPT for CCQs, etc. In reality, though, some of the lessons are startlingly, shockingly, unbelievably bad with such glaring mistakes that I can't believe it was ever approved, and sometimes the timing for each stage of the lesson is ridiculous (8-12 minutes for pronunciation of "should/shouldn't"???). In those cases, if you care about delivering a quality lesson, you'd spend a bit of time figuring out how to stretch out the material or developing your own supplementary activities.