Jobs Week of April 28, 2013

Good

 Language Link Vietnam

Good, straight forward post with all the pertinent information you need to make a reasoned decision to send your CV. Pay is average range for school in Vietnam. I like how they guarantee you a minimum number of contact hours.

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Bad

Brainsmart Training & Development 

The pay is low, even by Malaysian standards. Usually the range for jobs is between 5-7,000 MYR, which is about 1,600 – 2,300 USD. No mention of a website for you to conduct your own research. I did find a short company bio here. No mention of contact hours. I’m wary of the gmail address. As you know, if the company was legit, or not a start-up, they would've provided a company email address, like someone@brainsmart.com. Just an example.... Not a good post, but maybe it is worth your time to get some answers to your questions.

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International House – San Diego

No mention of pay. No website. Still worthwhile to email your CV if you’re around San Diego.
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Not Worth It

TeachingChile

TeachingChile is a pay service. You should never pay anyone to secure a job. Even for recruiters in Korea, China, or other countries, the applicant is not responsible to pay the recruiter fee. That is the obligation of the school or institute.

 Job details 

English-and-Skype

You can read my previous post about this company here. They’re obviously hurting for teachers, because this is their 7^th post just for the month of April alone. 

In a nut shell, the application is lengthy. They schedule a phone interview to ask you inane grammar questions, some of which you already answered in their online application form. Then they schedule a teaching demonstration via Skype. Then they make a decision on you as a candidate. Why can’t they interview you via Skype and ask you questions about your education and work experience and some hypothetical ‘What would you do if...’ type questions to see how you as a teacher would respond. That’s a normal job interview. Instead of screening applicants with stages, I wish the heads of EAS would just use their head and discern the truth. 

This company is not Cambridge or Oxford. It’s an online company. Stop the bullshit. Change your marketing, interview and hiring tactics. If you want to develop a good relationship with teachers, sincerely listen to them during the interview, make your decision based on what you hear.

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Teacha Language School

The pay is low, but typical for Thai schools seeking candidates with 0-1 year of experience. The kicker is they don’t provide accommodation or a subsidy to help offset the costs. You will be breaking even if you continue to have a western life style. You might save a few dollars if you immerse yourself in Thai culture, living and eating as they do. This job is not worth your time because the post provides no details about the students. Will you be teaching young learners only? Adults? How many in a class? There are better jobs in Thailand that offer better pay, lower contact hours and provide accommodation allowance. Keep looking...

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E-Communication online teaching in Japan

Similar to English-and-Skype. Their application process puts you through the ringer. This company constantly has a job advert on TEFL.com website. They must have a high turnover rate of teachers leaving and/ or quitting. Caution: if you are not Caucasian, this company will not hire you.
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Thailand

1) Prime Teachers Bangkok                                                              GOOD

If you are from the UK, you're in luck! A sweet job awaits your consideration. Despite not mentioning the contact hours, the job package is enough to make me swoon (with envy as I'm not British.)

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2) King's College of English (Thailand) Co Ltd                                   NOT WORTH IT

You want me to teach how many hours and for how much pay?

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South Korea

Week of April 22, 2013

SOUTH KOREA...lookin' damn fine this week!

1) ENI School

GOOD

Low salary for teaching kids. High contact hours. Low vacation time. Good unshared furnished apartment. 

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2) OK Recruiting  

GOOD  

Recruiter. Good variety of jobs. Just be firm with your preferences, as they may try bait and switch.

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3) SeoulESL Inc.

GOOD

Recruiter. Wary they don’t list the school/ institute name, as you can’t research info before the interview. Some contact hours are 120/ month = 30/ week.

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4) YBM

GOOD

Good salary, opportunity for o/time, subsidized language lessons, housing allowance and key money. Good fit for 0-2 years experience. Multi-locales offered in Korea.

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5) Planet People

GOOD

Recruiter. Good range of jobs. Again, specify and be firm on your preferences.  

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6) Chonnam National Uni. Yeousu Campus 

GOOD

Excellent package on offer for Native Eng Speakers with 1 year experience and Bachelors Degree. But location is out in the boonies, if you don’t mind. 

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China

Week of April 22, 2013

1) Wall Street: English                                                                   GOOD

Reasonably passable, except weekend work; do you have 2 consecutive days off, or will you only have 1? Not specified. 35 contact hours is huge for that kind of money when part of that pay has to go towards housing. 
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3)Asia Experts Network Limited (aen)                                          BAD

Recruiter. Fair job details, however, what turns me off is ‘In some cases,’ give a range or define the parameters. This makes me think everything is up in the air, and decided on a whim. Under what terms would you not receive your ‘bonus?’
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4) Shanghai Euroway Training Centre                                            NOT WORTH IT

Quality of the post is bad. Misspellings, incorrect grammar. The pay is way too low, as you are expected to use part of your monthly pay to rent a flat. Hours good, but 7 days unpaid vacation...please.
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5) Nanjing English First Training School                                         NOT WORTH IT 

No mention of salary, contact hours, visa reimbursement, or severance pay.

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6) Disney English                                                                           NOT WORTH IT 

Pay is moderate, but should be higher if teaching children. Contact hours include nights and weekends. No mention of days off in a week. ‘Deliver private lessons as required.’ This sounds to me like unpaid teaching that is scheduled during your down time. The license for Rosetta Stone Mandarin is a joke. IF they are using Disney’s name legally, they should be able to provide free onsite face-to-face Chinese classes, or at the very least subsidized. No mention of the number of vacation days that are paid. No mention of severance at the end of the contract. Return flight is calculated in your monthly pay, which is bananas. ‘Robust academic training’ means they will put you in a fishbowl and micromanage your teaching. Observations constantly.

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7) Prime Teachers (Recruiter)                                                       NOT WORTH IT

No mention of number of vacation days, contact hours or flight pay or reimbursement.

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8) Ba Zhou Petroleum No. 1 Middle School                                 NOT WORTH IT

Terrible pay, similar to local pay, but you’re a foreigner with foreign bills to pay, massive class sizes, ridiculous statement about 7 years and no ‘accusations of abuses.’ 1 foreign teacher currently. Worked with 20 foreigners, but of course, 19 of them were not retained. Airfare reimbursement, but what about outward, or return flights? Travel allowance is 30, 000 RMB which has to be a typo. No mention of number of hours you must be on campus (40 hour work week?)

With such a sloppy presentation in a job posting, what else is sloppy about this job?

Job details

Why I hate the forums on Dave’s ESL Café

I was doing some research about writing a blog posting about BKC-International House (IH) Moscow, when I came across this retarded forum on Dave’s ESL Café.

For what started out as a straight forward post about this noob chronicling her honeymoon period at the said organization, the other members quickly lambasted her, and the forum became nothing more than a back-and-forth that was the equivalent of ‘You’re a liar!’ ‘No, YOU'RE a liar!’ for 6 goddamned pages that spanned 2 f&^king years.

Someone glued my hands to my face and it hurts!

Mysteriously enough, at the beginning of the post there was a mention of a lawsuit filed by the member against BKC IH Moscow. When I clicked on the link to the blog where I could read more about the context of the lawsuit, I saw the following picture.

This is why I hate the job forums on Dave’s crap website. Not only does he let any crap employer post any crap job advert that may prove to be misleading or downright false, the members to the site do not know how to control their emotions. Rather than getting ticky-tacky, remember you are there to share information. 

Other than the pettiness, I was struck by the candidness the member expressed in detailing information about her first impression at BKC-IH Moscow. Usually members only get specific in private messages (PM), which leaves other members who might have the same questions in the dark. Transparency people, it’s what’s for dinner…every goddamned night of the week. And that’s a good thing. 

No one likes pettiness for dinner every night

BKC International House (IH) Moscow

I’m not one for cold weather, but hey, it’s Moscow. It’s Mother Russia. It’s shit money, but a helluva cultural experience nonetheless. Visiting on vacation is one thing; living there is quite another.

You can read the entirety of this job post here, at Dave’s ESL Café. You can also read another post here that through my research brought about my own understanding of why I hate Dave and his nipple-twisting-annoyance-of-a-café.

Anyways, not all International Houses – despite being part of the same franchise – are not created equal. Director of Studies (DOS) have different personalities; some are curmudgeonly, others are as happy as Richard Simmons. 

Bedazzler will do that to people

What I cannot say is that this BKC-IH is not great and not bad; I can only lay claim to what I know. And that only comes by analyzing the job posting.

The things that scare me, yet I can live with: the salary, the shared accommodation, the contact hours and the contract length.

I researched the cost-of-living index for Moscow on the website Numbeo. I was floored with how expensive the city is. When I researched the BKC-IH website, I found this nice, little tidbit that charmed the panties right off of me.

This pleases me outright as a manager of an educational institution. This organization is addressing the critiques head-on and offering another interpretation to the perception of the expensive European city. It all depends on life style. Frugality allows one to save; luxury…well, you get the picture.

I need your address Jonny to send you my panties.

The shared accommodation? Well, it is Russia – land of extremes where you get beautiful people and those who suffered a tremendous beat down via the Ugly Stick. You could get lucky and get a roommate that looks like this.

Learn me English cowboy!

Or this guy.

This could be your roommate and your DOS. 

Either way, you’ve got to share your living space with her/ him. I’m not a fan of sharing anything…not even with my husband or child. Are you like me? Then flee from this job possibility…look elsewhere.

The contact hours and the contract length are not generous by any means. 30 hours for $1150 and only for 9 months? No paid summer vacation? Trick, please… Ditto for the 24 hours and 6 months...

However…

I would gravitate to this job either as a fresh noob teacher, or someone who wants to experience the Russian culture. If you need to pay off student loans, look to Japan/ Korea. 

For 6 months, maybe saving a few hundred dollars each month, or simply drinking my money at the club, then yeah, I would go for it. If you're just starting out, be poor. It will teach you the value of hard work. You will appreciate the money you slaved for. At the end of the contract, you can always find another job to stock-up on the cash flow. Who knows you might actually enjoy working at an International House school. You could get transferred to another country that’s not as godforsakenly cold as Russia in the winter time. 

Maybe I’m partial because Russia has always transfixed me with its perceptive writers, natural beauty, frigid weather, communism and its bad-ass Kalashnikovs. After all this guy comes from Russia...

And he beat up this giant Korean...

Respect...

Gold Star TEFL Recruitment - Wall Street Institute Saudi Arabia

Oh the lovely sand dunes! Oh the boredom!

Living and working in Saudi Arabia is not for the feint of heart. One must throw expectations to the wind and prepare for a soul-trying time teaching the students English.

'But these students are motivated,' you claim after reading the job advertisement here.

Motivated or not, Saudi students are a handful. The reason being is their lack of study skills. Throughout their high school experience, they've been accustomed to a traditional classroom format. There is not much discussion in class, and there is only one answer for each question on exams. No essays where justification/ explanation is involved to highlight a student's deep understanding of the content. Students cram before tests so they can hold the information long enough to regurgitate it onto the multiple choice answer sheet. Review material is created by teachers who don't value the learning process, which means the answers to the exam are printed on the review material. So what happens when it's time for the final exam? Students regurgitate (the good ones) or the students purchase the answers from their overworked, underpaid and underappreciated teachers. This is the typical high school experience of a Saudi student.

In the classroom orientation - progressive, as opposed to the traditional one - described by Wall Street Institute's job posting, where experience and sharing is prioritized, can be quite frustrating for Saudi students because such an environment runs contradictory to their previous educational experience. Their expectations may not be met; they may not feel like they are learning. When they get frustrated, they don't come to class. Or, if they do go to class, they disrupt the other learners and make teaching damn near difficult to cover the target language appropriately. They need to learn the basics of study skills like note-taking, how to create and use study material, how to actively listen in class, and how to interact with a text efficiently and how to be respectful to the teacher, the other students and the learning process. As well, many students look upon teachers as servants who must provide them with the answers to pass. Quite a tall order for any teacher. Re-orientating students is quite a challenge and even more so for inexperienced teachers.

Why do I bring up this issue of Saudis and motivation and their learning experiences? Because the job advertised does not require teachers to have any - ANY! - teaching experience.

If you are a noob teacher, please don't jump head-on into a 2 year contract in such a difficult educational scenario as Saudi Arabia.

Do yourself a favor and apply elsewhere to get your experience. Japan, Korea, China or Taiwan are good places to start. Those countries offer government sponsored work for native English speakers.  Do a Google search for 'Gepik' (Korea) 'NET' or 'JET' programs in Japan, China and Taiwan.

You need to find out if you've got what it takes to be an effective teacher, which means you need to learn the basics of planning engaging lessons, how to pace your lessons, how to deliver them, and how to manage a classroom of students. Yes the job advert says you don't need to plan lessons, but having a solid foundation of how to do so will help you deliver the lessons more effectively. I'm an experienced teacher (a nice euphemism for being so old!) and still I need to prepare my lessons on teaching the past simple verb tense. Why? Because all classes are different, and all students don't have the same needs/ interests. Lesson preparation ensures you make yourself aware of how the lesson will go. You have a chance to predict and anticipate possible problems and curtail the information to coincide with students' interests/ learning styles.

You might find you don't like teaching in general. In an environment such as those previously mentioned countries, you can cut your teeth, so to speak, much better than in Saudi Arabia. I'm not saying all people are the same, I'm just saying you run the risk of being knee-deep in a possible worst-case scenario. Classroom management - even if it's a class of two or three students - is always an issue in the teaching context of Saudi Arabia. If you go to Saudi with zero experience, you'll face a steep learning curve.

Most people choose to teach in Saudi for the money. If you're Muslim, then it's for the experience of living in the birth place of Islam. Attending the mosques is always a spiritual experience, even for me who is not a Muslim. Yet, I could not be bothered to teach for Wall Street Institute in Saudi Arabia for such low pay.

My advice if you've got zero experience: learn the art of teaching before going to Saudi. Even for teachers that have many years of experience, Saudi learners can be quite difficult to manage.

If you've got at least two years of teaching experience, apply to Saudi universities because they offer a much better employment package than the one offered by Wall Street.

There's no mention of contact hours. Are you teaching 30 hours per week? If your contact hours drop because not many students are enrolled, does that mean your salary drops as well?

2000 Riyals is not enough to rent a furnished hotel-apartment. The going rates in Riyadh were around 2,500 -3,500 per month. Maybe you will be working out in the boonies where rates are lower. But ask yourself, can you handle the boredom?

Also: the visa fees are paid by the teacher! Extraordinary. No teacher should pay for the visa, which is required for them to work in that country. I can't believe Wall Street would be so petty.

Remember: before applying to any job, ask yourself a few important questions.

What are my expectations for the culture and/ or work?

What is my personality like? Will I be bored without having many social activities? Or do I like to spend my time doing solitary activities?

What if I don't like the culture and/ or work? Do I have a contingency plan? (like finding another job in the country, or fleeing in the middle of the night? Fleeing in Saudi is nearly impossible, especially if your employer keeps your passport. As well, if you flee, you are blacklisted in Saudi at least for one calendar year).

Do your homework, research, and ask lots of questions if you are interviewed. In short, leave no stone unturned.