Teachers Monthly - January

[Guest]

I trust that everyone had a good Xmas and new year and is now ready to make some decent money in the coming months. It’s always nice to see the back of December because it’s without doubt the worst month of the year for teachers as regards earning potential. Private students cancel lessons like there’s no tomorrow. Corporate students get involved in end of year meetings or annual company vacations. It’s the time of year when a teacher’s salary can plummet. And it’s the time of year when teachers like a bit of extra in their back pocket for a few days break on a tropical island and to get the beers in at New Year parties.

If you’re thinking of coming to Thailand to teach English, then now is the time to do it. Look out for all those job ads in the Bangkok Post, which should be appearing shortly.

 

In one of my last corporate classes before Christmas, a group of eight accountants, I decided to play a present continuous memory game. It’s really quite simple and involves handing out a sheet of paper depicting lots of people doing different activities. They have one minute to study the picture and then as a class, try to recall as many activities as possible. In this particular picture there were some 25 activities or more, but in the bottom left-hand corner, there was a man pulling a cork from a wine-bottle. This proved to be the action that everyone in the class was struggling to remember, all except one girl, the miss innocent of the group.

“Teacher” she said, “There was a man in the corner. He was pulling his cock”

As I always fear in these rather delicate situations, one bright spark knew exactly what that meant and took great delight in informing the rest of the class. The result was that every student fell about laughing and miss innocent went the color of crimson. I probably blushed an even darker shade.

Deciding to bring a little humor to the situation, which I usually find is the best approach, I could only utter the words “Well, if you’ve got a picture of a man pulling his cock, then oh boy, have I given you the wrong picture”

 

I keep hearing the words “Don’t come and teach in Thailand because it has no future” from well-meaning souls who really haven’t thought about things carefully enough. Ask yourself a question – what exactly is a job with a future anyway? Is it a job that you’ll still be doing 30 years from now and then retiring with a nice little pension plan and financial security for the rest of your days?

Then why is it that I’ve interviewed so many top engineers, financial advisors, sales reps and accountants over the years. And before you all e mail me and state that the root causes are alcoholism and the search for sexual gratification, let me say that those are two reasons to change career in your mid-30’s or 40’s yes, but in most cases it’s because there is rarely a job for life these days. Even the biggest and best companies go belly up from time to time.

At least teaching in Thailand gives you the opportunity to work and be ‘appreciated’ well into your 60’s and 70’s provided that you stay in reasonable condition.

I’m 37 years old. What would I do if I went back to the UK? Clean toilets at Heathrow airport for minimum wage? Work as a security guard? Would you like an egg mcmuffin with that sir?

Even if your love affair with Thailand is at a low ebb, there’s always the option of moving elsewhere in SE Asia to the Japans and the Koreas. It doesn’t matter if you’re 20 or 60, if you’re in decent health you can always find work as a teacher in Asia.

 

The story is doing the rounds of an academic director at a well-known Bangkok language school who was recently given his marching orders for showing favoritism towards his friends when it came to employment. While I don’t know the guy in question that well, he does seem a very decent fellow. What made me angry when I heard the story was that yet again this smacks of double standards. Thai companies are notorious for having staff that employ their cousin to do the accountancy and their next-door neighbor’s grandmother to be the new cleaner. That’s how the system works here. And we’re talking big multi-national companies in many instances.

I’ll be the first to admit that there is something of an old boy network in Bangkok. It’s easier to get a job if you already know people and enjoyed a good working relationship with them at a previous school. I’m sure it’s the same situation in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Taipei.

I’m as ‘guilty’ as anyone else, if guilty is the right word, of giving jobs to teachers I’ve worked with in the past who happen to be drinking mates as well. What’s the problem with that? If I already know that teacher X is a professional teacher who gets the job done with a minimum of fuss and supervision, isn’t that a lot better than hiring a totally unknown quantity?

 

I recently placed an ad in the Bangkok Post and the Nation looking for Thai teachers to teach a basic Thai language course for beginners. I decided that rather than interview each applicant individually and hear them waffle on about their degree and where they got it (which I’m not interested in anyway) I would opt for the walk-in interview and speak to the applicants in groups. This would give me the opportunity to see how they interacted in front of a group of strangers and helps to ascertain which people simply lack confidence or equally, which applicants hog the limelight and don’t let other people speak.

I set aside two interview days – Thursday and Friday, and told would-be teachers that they could come anytime between 10.00am and 4.00pm. Nothing at all prepared me for the response that I got and ended up interviewing 127 applicants in two exhausting but interesting days. I didn’t know whether to feel sympathy for these unfortunate victims of the Thai economy or elated at the thought that so many people wanted to enter the teaching profession.

Thais astound me with their attitude to teaching – they consider it the noblest of professions. Although I did wind up each interview session giving out information about pay rates, I don’t think it really mattered judging by the looks on their faces. The opportunity to walk into a classroom and teach was reward enough. A bit like us farangs eh people?

What a pity it is then that Thais are generally very poor teachers – and I firmly believe the vast majority of them are. Of the ten teachers I finally employed, not one single person had teaching experience. The applicants with teaching experience just couldn’t cut it. They didn’t have the first clue about effective methodology or how to make the learning environment lively and enjoyable. I also doubted their willingness to accept new teaching ideas (at least to them) and they would certainly need to do so.

In short, I ended up with a bunch of teachers who were a mix of ex air-hostesses, fitness instructors, and tour guides. One person had recently returned from the States where she had been working at Walt Disney world for 18 months. Thai people like these seem to have a sparkle, a magic. They are totally at home in the company of foreigners and act confidently without being over confident. They were the kind of people I would want to teach me a language. The experienced teachers were the total opposite – nervous, edgy, unsure of their ability, and dare I use the words totally incompetent.

Is it any wonder that so many farangs take up studying Thai only to drop the course before the first week is up.

 

After careful deliberation, I’ve decided to make this the last teacher’s monthly for a while because I wanted to call it a day while things were still relatively fresh in my mind. I’ll post topics up from time to time on the ajarn.com notice board as I always have, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day at the moment and I have to cut back on the working at home somehow. Thanks to all the people who have e mailed me with their comments and questions and who knows a special version of the TM may appear sometime in the future. I just didn’t want to reach the stage where I was beginning to waffle on and on in order to fill space. I’ve got a few ideas for the ajarn.com website (nice to see the discussion board a better place to post) and I hope to implement them soon.

[ January 12, 2002: Message edited by: Bangkok Phil ]

[CosmicSurfer]

Phil...

Thanks for all the great info in this and past "Monthlys" ... I certainly will be looking forward to reading your posts on Ajarn.com... and I really do hope that they get that board into a less confrontational place. It gets "old" real quick otherwise.

About giving job preference to your Drinking buddies... I'll have my TESOL Cert from TEFL Int'l at the end of May... I'll meet you at Woodstock... Just how many beers will it take to get that job? ... Ok... Ok... I know you were only joking.

But I owe you one anyway, just for all the encouragement and helpful info.

See You soon

CS