Job Discussion Forums

[bedouinteacher]

!!!!!!UCJ-Even lower UCJ!!!!!!!!!!
Prospective applicants, before you entertain an offer from the Royal Commission (RC) to teach at UCJ for 8400SAR per month, before you get on the plane, before you get all your documents authenticated, before you realize there is a drastic shortage of �family status� accommodation, before you realize, that due to an unwillingness from RC to recruit teachers (they actually want native teachers to work for 8000-9000SAR! Per month), before you realize you WILL be expected to teach overtime (in excess of 10-15 hours per week) for a degrading rate of 60SAR per hour�read these instructions below regarding the �quality� of exams. Apparently, from the Deputy Director of Academics or something like that, so definitely from someone who knows their stuff�mmm. Oh, apparently, students at UCJ are taught English listening, reading, writing, and �wait for it..grammar! And did I mention each textbook is roughly 200 pages in length!
 Faculty members must stick to the teaching material � textbook. In the exam creation, faculty members are not allowed to replace textbook content with summaries of chapters or ask students to focus on any other extra-textbook supplementary learning material(including dictionaries, I ask myself).
 Supplementary learning materials can be given to students as a learning enhancer, but can never be used as the sole source of testing.
 Exams have to be of high-quality. Before exams are approved for use, they have to be reviewed to ensure they are relevant, reliable, accurate and meet the needs of our students.(Just exactly who approves examinations? Correct! The management.)
 It is not acceptable that students finish a two-hour exam before 30 minutes and leave the exam venue immediately after that. (Everyone knows Saudi students are not remotely interested in actively participating in a forced pre-year just to keep them off the streets! Also, students (in Saudi) are either very good learners or have no idea/interest whatsoever!)
 Students evaluation of teachers is not the sole determinant indicator of the faculty performance. It is, instead, the teacher's dedication towards his work, his command over the subject matter he teaches, his classroom and time management skills which determine his performance. (Who gives a monkey�s ar#* about evaluations anyway).

Oh yes, I have been reliably informed, that an extremist teaches at JUC. Although he has called for a Jihad in a teacher�s meeting, he is still employed because they (JUC/RC) need teachers!

*WAIT UNTIL JANUARY-THERE WILL BE PLENTY OF JOBS AROUND

[Gulezar]

I don't know if things have changed, but I once questioned a Writing exam question. It was a list of sentences which had to be placed in an order which would create a paragraph. There were any number of acceptable combinations. I asked why there was only one correct answer and I was told that the correct answer could be found in the Reading textbook on such and such a page. Hadn't I told my students to read that page ... and "Welcome to Saudi Arabia."

Maybe things have changed.