The Teacher's Monthly

[Guest]

One of the most common questions that teachers and would-be teachers ask is ‘How much money do I need to make in order to live comfortably in Bangkok?’

It’s never an easy question to answer – one person’s definition of comfortable is totally different to another’s. In addition, I’ve worked with teachers who earn 30,000 baht a month and forever seem to be spending their weekends scuba-diving off tropical islands, and I’ve worked with teachers who are caning 60K a month and can’t afford a cheeseburger at McDee’s until their next paycheck comes. Teachers who have self-inflicted financial problems are a constant headache to their employers and their academic directors. The teachers who are forever wandering around a staff room trying to cadge 100 baht off their colleagues are in my view, highly undesirable employees – but I’m going slightly off subject here.

I was in conversation with a Bangkok teacher the other day and I’m going to share his weekly schedule with you. Listen to this. He teaches five mornings a week (Mon – Fri) at a kindergarten in Sukhumwit. He gets 600 baht an hour, 3 hours every morning for his services. So that’s 1,800 baht a day x about 22 weekdays per month. That’s 39,600 baht for his kindergarten job alone. In addition, he does 1 corporate job twice a week at a finance company. He works from 6-8pm and gets paid 750 baht per hour. This corporate job brings him another 12,000 baht a month. With his kindergarten work, he’s making over 50,000 baht a month.

My objective is to highlight the amount of free time that this gentleman has. Think about it – he has every weekend free, and on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, he’s done and dusted at lunchtime. And you’re working full-time at a private language school for how much? This is a guy who’s got his act together. He’s been here in Bangkok for a few years (not that that makes any difference) and he’s done his sums. He’s followed Phil’s advice – decide how much you want to make as a teacher in Bangkok and then find the easiest way to earn it. You know it makes sense.

I’m beginning to see more and more teachers ‘juggling’ 2 or 3 teaching positions around, and the trend is sure to continue growing. OK, you may never be in a position to obtain a work permit or some crappy health insurance policy but when you’re getting over 50,000 a month for giving up so little time, who gives a rat’s ass.

People are constantly saying that there’s no money to be made in teaching in Thailand and let’s all bugger off to the Koreas and the Taiwans – rubbish! It’s all about finding the right formula. But one thing is for certain – you’ll have to find it on your own. It can be done – believe me.

The argument goes on about whether the education department in Bangkok wants to see just a photocopy of your degree or the original copy before they issue you with a teacher’s license. Hey man – this is Thailand. If I went into the education department at ten minutes to lunchtime on a Friday, I could show them the top of a f***ing Cornflakes packet and probably get what I’m after. No two days are ever the same in a Thai government department. A smile and a joke to break the ice can still go a long, long way in building up a relationship with a Thai official.

I teach a few hours a week at one of Bangkok’s top finance companies. I teach in one classroom and another teacher (lets call him Alan) teaches next door. All that separates the two rooms is a huge plate glass window. The contrast between our two classes is very interesting. Both groups are at the same intermediate level and all the students have a good rapport with each other. As the lessons progress, I can hear howls of laughter coming from the next classroom and can never resist cocking an ear (I love listening to other teachers). You see, Alan is both a teacher and an entertainer – that irresistible and dare I say essential combination that will ensure your success in Thailand. The students love him. Sure, there are serious moments in his class when students are writing furiously or puzzling over a complex grammar structure, but there are moments that I can hear when it goes something like this,

Students : We think you have lady Thai !!!!!!!!

Teacher : Who me? Noooooooooooo

Students : Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (in that rather annoying way that only Thais and people in lunatic asylums can master) You have lady Thai sure.

I call them ‘You have lady Thai’ conversations and I became piss bored of them about 8 years ago. The novelty wore off – well and truly. Don’t get me wrong, I love a laugh and a joke as much as anyone but I prefer not to get cheap laughs (and I apologize if I make that sound arrogant). But with Thais as we all know – cheap laughs win the day every time. Subtle humor and witty observations just fall on deaf ears. I asked my students if their apartment building had an insecurity guard. By the time I’d explained the insecurity angle, any hope of it ever becoming funny had totally disappeared. And that’s how it is teaching Thais.

I wanted to get onto the subject of what corporate students expect from a language lesson. OK, their personnel manager wants them to study advanced report writing but at 6pm in the evening he’s on his on his way to the pub and his junior staff are all locked in a room with an eager-to-please teacher and a frankly dull textbook. I wonder if in their heart of hearts they really want to or even need to study business report writing. Wouldn’t they rather be screaming “Naaaaaaaaaa, you have lady Thai sure” in unison and wasting the company’s education budget not to mention the teacher’s time.

There are certain questions that you never ask a Thai class and you become familiar with them as you become more experienced. Why don’t you ask these questions? Because they die on their arse that’s why.

“What did you do at the weekend?” I never ask it. Not even as a classroom warm-up. Never ever ever. Twelve years of hearing “I sleep”, “I go to shopping” and “I go look movie” (but I can’t remember the name of the movie I saw) can do terrible things to a man. But I did actually wise up. I give students wonderful pictures of mountaineers climbing mountains, Mexicans painting sombreros and giraffes sweeping majestically across the Serangeti – OK class this is what you did at the bloody weekend. Tell me about it!

Other questions I hate to ask in the classroom are “what does your father do for a living?” (once I know that the person is still alive) because it invariably gets the response “He’s a merchant”.

Where do they pick up this stuff? It’s more than I can do to stop myself coming out with “oh really and where’s he moored his f***ing galleon?” A merchant. Really.

Marking student’s writing can be a lot of fun (most of the time). I spent valuable moments explaining the concept of a ‘box bedroom’ only to have the student produce a piece of written work about her house that contained the line ‘my sister has a small box’.

Another student wrote ‘I live in my sister’. I wrote at the bottom of the essay –‘If they ever think about making Alien 4, is there a number we can contact you on?’

Student reports for corporate students – I suppose many of us have to write them. Don’t you just love ‘em.

“ Khun Saraporn has assimilated the textbook material and her syntax and lexicographical awareness have become extensive within a ….zzzzzzzzzzz”

Who are you writing the bloody thing for?!?! Most of these reports are read (and I know I say that hopefully) by personnel managers and training managers whose command of English while certainly better than that of their Thai staff, is not that much better. I wonder if they have to sit there with the Concise Oxford Dictionary while they plow through these things?

‘ Khun Saraporn was a wonderful student in the class. She always did her homework. Her listening is very good. Her spoken English could do with some improvement. Her writing is awful”

What could be easier? Why do teachers feel that they have to stick a dictionary up their ass when they write student reports? Just curious.

I had a phone call this week from an ex-pat wife looking for some part-time teaching work. She’s one of those lucky people who after employing the services of a maid, a nanny, a butler, and a gardener to water the window-boxes has suddenly found herself with bugger all to do. Well, apart from the twice weekly sojourn to Villa supermarket to see what ridiculously expensive items she can fill a basket with.

“Do you have any vacancies for a part-time teacher” she said “I can teach English and Latin dance”

“Oh…er….maybe” I replied enthusiastically “When are you available?” (big mistake)

“Obviously I don’t teach at the weekends (I loved her use of the word ‘obviously’ and on Mondays I help out at the CSB coffee mornings and Wednesdays I visit the slum kids at Klongtoey. Actually Thursday can be a funny day because I sometimes study Japanese and fruit carving”

It did cross my mind to put the phone down there and then but I stuck with it. “Well if I have a student who’s looking to study grammar mixed in with a bit of Flamenco at 5 in the morning, I’ll give you a bell”

“Oh please do” she said.

Over her head or what!

And finally (and thank God I hear you say). I guess the mobile phone dilemma has not gone away now that DTAC are producing mobile phones that everyone can afford. Do we as teachers allow students to use these dreadful things in the classroom? The short sharp answer is NO.

Students should be told to turn them off while they are in the classroom, or if they are expecting a call from the President of the United States (and only that is a valid reason in my book) they should be made to leave the room. This rule generally applies to in-school teaching. Corporate students can do what the hell they like. I’ve tried asking them to leave the classroom once the first bars of Waltzing Matilda make us all jump out of our skins – but it’s all been to no avail.

[colonel Kurtz]

Another interesting thread for us would be teachers.

So you have lady Thai?

[Guest]

That's food for thought alright about juggling teaching jobs, I hope I can land something half as well paid for the hours put in. 50 000 baht a month, weekends off and finished at lunch time 3 days a week- he's got it made!

Great information and a good read, is this going to be a regular monthly column now or what?

[Guest]

DJ

I'm hoping to turn it into a monthly thing.

It will certainly go on my site and I'm hoping that Ian puts it on ajarn.com.

There's always plenty to write about where the teaching profession in Bangkok is concerned.

I'll keep you posted

[Flashermac]

What you make depends on how much you want to work. I have a colleague at the uni who makes well over 60 K baht a month. He does it by teaching in 3 different faculties. Thus he may end up teaching from 8 AM to 5 PM most days. Plus he works extra in the evenings and on weekends to bring his salary up to close to 100 K a month. But is it worth it? Who needs to work that hard? If I needed money that badly, I'd go home and work in the west. He hardly has time to enjoy himself, but I suppose he just enjoys making money.

[Guest]

Here's September's load of old wank.

 

I got a lot of feedback from the last column in which I wrote about a teacher who juggles around 2 jobs and makes an effortless 50,000 baht a month.

Here’s another excerpt from Bangkok Phil’s ‘wonderful world of numbers’ and it concerns DTT and ATT - DTT is dead teaching time and ATT is active teaching time.

Let me tell you a story about a guy who teaches a very ‘lucrative’ corporate class on an industrial estate, a 2-hour bus ride from Bangkok. The company pays him 800 baht per hour for 2 hours of teaching and puts 400 baht in his pocket for travel expenses. So if my math is correct, he makes 2000 baht from the gig.

Does that sound like good money to you? It sounds like good money to him. But he hasn’t thought about it carefully enough. He spends 2 hours getting to the job and 2 hours getting back. Oh let’s not forget the half hour at each end getting to and from the bus station - a whopping 5 hours of DTT – time when a teacher is stuck on a bus, a motorcycle taxi or whatever – earning absolutely nothing. What this teacher actually earns is 2000 baht for giving up 7 hours of his teaching day. That’s peanuts!

700-800 baht an hour for a corporate job may sound very attractive but you have to weigh up the ATT and the DTT and see what figure you arrive at. How long does it take me to get to the job and how long does it take me to get back?

If this all sounds like common sense to you I do apologize. But you wouldn’t believe how many teachers don’t take all this into consideration and just see the job as an attractive 800 baht per hour.

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Had a nosey around the English language textbooks recently?

It seems like every time I go to the Media Book Center in Siam Square, there’s a whole new series of course-books been put on the market to compete with the Headways, the Rewards and the Interchanges.

Choosing suitable textbooks for your classes can be a real headache. Many times, I made the mistake of choosing a book that I liked the look of, without considering it from a student’s point of view.

The ‘True to Life’ textbook series is my own personal favorite at the moment - simply because of the imagination and thought that the writers have put into it. Sadly, it’s far too challenging for many Thai students and many of the tasks and exercises are met with blank looks.

Just to give you an example of how True to Life teaches a certain grammatical point – consider the past tense ‘used to’.

True to Life asks the student to choose 3 teachers from their high-school days and describe their unusual quirks. I had a real blast thinking of my examples. There was Mr Whitehouse, the Math teacher, who used to make a noise like a seal when he laughed at a joke. Then there was Mrs Hodson, my English teacher, who used to wear a fake leopard-skin coat and used to sit on the desk in a mini-skirt. And let’s not forget Mr Sellars, who used to go bright red with anger when he was giving students a rollicking. Isn’t that just a wonderful way to teach ‘used to’ and have a few laughs at the same time? Far, far more enjoyable than the bog-standard grammar-book fayre of ‘he used to smoke but now he doesn’t smoke anymore’. We’ve all taught that crap a million times. Or at least I seem to.

Unfortunately, in most Thai classrooms the True to Life method of teaching ‘used to’ will fail because a) it’s culturally insensitive to take the piss out of your old Thai teacher, and Thai students simply lack the imagination to think of funny examples or are just too damn lazy.

So what textbook do you use? Well…AUA aren’t stupid. They’ve been in the language business for years and they religiously use the Interchange textbook series. I personally hate this series of textbooks – I think it’s totally out of touch with student needs and introduces too many annoying Americanisms, however; it does have several advantages - It’s a book that requires minimal preparation on the teacher’s part and it’s a book that ‘holds the student’s hand’ – they don’t really have to do a great deal of thinking and of course it’s full of funny pictures and cartoons, which always makes textbooks worth studying….doesn’t it?

For those of you who are sick and tired of using Interchange for lower level groups and using Madonna and Micheal Jackson as examples of just about everything – check out a series of textbooks called Let’s Go. Although currently offering only a beginner’s and pre-intermediate book, Let’s Go has geared its textbooks to appeal to the Asian student. How refreshing to see pictures of Jet Li and Cho Yun Fat instead of washed-up American has-beens.

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Getting briefly back to the topic of student interaction. It’s amazing how many teachers get irritated by their students knowledge of Thai culture….or complete lack of it.

Why the f*** don’t my students know anything about the Ayuthaya period or why can’t they tell me about the achievements of King Rama 4? I have to admit that it annoyed me for a while until a student asked me about morris dancing and St George’s Day – 2 things which every Englishman should know about. It then dawned on me that I have possibly as little knowledge about my culture as Thais do about theirs.

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During my teacher orientation sessions I spend at least 20 minutes on one of my favorite subjects – photocopying.

Has Phil finally lost it? I can hear you say. Maybe yes, but I’ve always had a hard-on for photocopying because I believe it makes or breaks a lesson and I bet they don’t teach you that on a TEFL course.

Before I go any further I’d like to apologize if your institute is one of those places with a photocopying machine that would look more at home in the British museum – feed it six sheets of A4 paper and it starts to make unhealthy gurgling noises before disappearing into clouds of black smoke. Either that or it’s under the supervision of a Thai member of staff who guards the photocopier even more closely than she guards her virginity.

Good photocopying lifts a class and lifts the teacher.

I’ve seen teachers give out all manner of poorly photocopied pages complete with gray edges, text cut off, and the ultimate sin – page and exercise numbers showing. Very often we all need to photocopy a page of a grammar textbook such as Azar, Murphy, or Swann. See the difference in your own attitude if you spend a little time photocopying just one page of the book and then trimming off page numbers and other unnecessary stuff. Spend just a few seconds ‘doctoring’ the photocopy with liquid paper and a pair of trusty scissors and it becomes an exercise that you created especially for your students. Imagine if you were taking a course and the teacher gave you a photocopied sheet with exercise 5 on it. Wouldn’t you want to know what happened to exercises 1-4 and why you didn’t get to see or do them?

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I recently received a very nice e-mail from a Swedish gentleman who is planning on coming to teach in Thailand at the end of the year. Like many other non-native speakers of English, he’s concerned that schools in Thailand will frown upon him because he doesn’t possess an English or American accent. There’s very little that provokes more argument than the native speaker vs non-native speaker debate. Years ago, I wouldn’t have considered employing a non-native speaker but with good teachers (native or otherwise) in very short supply, I’ve had to re-think my ideals.

What exactly were the reasons that I favored the native-speaker? A non-native speaker will struggle when faced with a class of advanced students who are studying the subtle nuances of the English language? Maybe I suppose, but when was the last time I taught a class of advanced Thais studying the nuances of the English language? – a bloody long time ago.

Oh yes, non-native English speakers have accents that are difficult for students to understand. But then again I’ve worked with English speakers from Scotland and London whom I’ve had terrible difficulty comprehending, so why should that argument stand?

So if employing non-native speakers to teach English is a sin, then I have a few confessions to make. But let me say one thing – non-native teachers are often very grateful for the employment you give them and they can be more loyal, more hard-working and more dedicated than their native-speaking counterparts.

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A month or so ago, I interviewed a teacher who couldn’t give me a single copy of a resume, a degree certificate or a passport. When I requested the aforementioned items he simply said “I didn’t think it was that kind of interview” I apologize if this gentleman’s statement sounds perfectly logical to you but just how many kinds of interview are there? The only kind I know is where you attempt to create a favorable impression in order to get a job. Teachers let themselves down badly at interviews by refusing to go along with interview etiquette just because it’s easy to get a teaching job in Bangkok. They approach the interview in a half-arsed, half-witted manner that endears them to no-one and then a week later have the nerve to ask why they didn’t get the job.

Many teacher application forms ask teachers to answer in no more than 100 words what makes a successful teacher - or a question of that nature. There are a million different answers, but what is important to the potential employer is how you fill the answer in, or how much effort you put into it. The teacher who answers the question with two barely legible sentences or asks if there is a need for them to answer it (why wouldn’t there be for heaven’s sake) is telling you a lot about their attitude to work. This is also probably the teacher who fails to fill in student attendance sheets, marks tests badly - if at all, and never does a lesson plan for substitute teachers. Take my advice – no matter how tedious those application forms are (and the question How long do you intend to stay in Thailand? still makes me grit my teeth) – fill them in to the best of your ability. Just because the Thailand teaching profession has a crap reputation doesn’t mean you have to make it any worse.

I’ve often wondered why schools don’t insist on new teachers completing a 3-month probation period instead of forcing them to sign one-year contracts the minute they walk through the door. Probationary periods are a wonderful idea because they give the teacher enough time to see how their institute operates (or doesn’t) and it gives the employer the chance to see the teacher in action once the interview ‘façade’ has become a distant memory. Have I ever worked with a teacher who has started a job looking the epitome of professionalism only to find that 2 months later I’m substituting most of his lessons because he’s out on the adult pop every night? – dozens of ‘em!! Bloody dozens!

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My girlfriend is/was a bargirl and she would like to study English. Can you recommend a good language school? I’ve been asked this question a few times and my short, sharp answer is no. I can’t.

Everyone deserves a shot at learning a language if they have the desire to, but in class-conscious Thailand, the bargirl or student of extremely low education will often feel out of place amid a group of ‘educated’ Thai students.

I’ve taught several classes which have contained an obvious bargirl and I’ve reached the conclusion that there are two types of bargirl student. The first type sits quietly in a corner and looks ashamed of what she is or has been. She fears that classmates are making moral judgements about her (very often they aren’t). I always feel sorry for this type of girl and work extra hard to make her fit in with the rest of the group.

The second type, who for some reason struggle to separate the world of the bar from that of the classroom, are loud, crass, and uncouth and quite frankly I would rather they were not there. Some years ago, I taught a simple conversation class of 7 graduates and an ex-bargirl. After we’d broken the ice in the first lesson and chatted among ourselves everything seemed to be going well. However, in the second lesson when I walked into the classroom, the dark-skinned girl in the corner greeted me with “How are they hanging dude?”. The room fell silent and you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. I went straight into my lesson plan too embarrassed to even pass basic pleasantries.

After the lesson I kept the student behind and explained to her that this was a totally inappropriate way to greet a teacher (especially in a country where teachers are supposedly held in such high esteem). She lost face and never came back.

I guess there are many teachers who would have ignored the situation but I believe you have to stamp this out right from the start or the student becomes even cockier. It wouldn’t have been too long before she was saying “Did you get your leg over last night teacher?” It’s OK for the bar but not for the classroom.

Take care chalkies.

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[Des]

quote:

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Bangkok Phil said:

I think [the Interchange textbook series is] totally out of touch with student needs and introduces too many annoying Americanisms.

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They may be annoying to you Phil, but many Asians these days prefer American English. Of course, as we all know, there is absolutely nothing annoying about the British way of speaking, do you know what I mean?

[ September 10, 2001: Message edited by: HongKongBoy ]

[Guest]

I'm talking about 'Gee Whizz', 'Shucks' and 'Oh Boy'. How many Thais do you hear using these expressions? (thank goodness)

If any of my students said 'Gee Whizz' in a lesson, I'd cut their bleedin' jacobs off.

[Des]

Phil, now that’s something I’d love to hear – a bunch of Thai kids who just stepped out of an episode of “Leave it to Beaver”. The examples you just gave, if in fact they are real examples, aren't Americanisms so much as they are anachronisms.

[Guest]

OK I stand corrected.

They are in fact a bunch of annoying American anachronisms.

Thank you and laters.