Lazy Ass Teachers

[Antonio]

Sorry for the strong title of this thread, but after today, I really got peed off with some of the other teachers I work with. Don't get me wrong, the majority of teachers are great and do an excellent job. But there will always be a small handful that treat their job:

- as a joke
- as a means to support their lifestyle of drinking
- slacking off
- picking up
- disobeying the rules

I try hard to help my students learn, assigning homework, checking on progress, making notes of weak points for each student and bringing variety into the classroom. My students are allowed to try their hand and to make mistakes in order to develop their own criteria of rightness, correctness and adequacy. However, some of the teachers at my school are more interested in allowing their students to do as they please, run a ruckus and really at the end of the day, these students don't learn a thing. Mainly it happens with the younger students around 10 years of age, as they wont complain about teacher quality. In fact, they will love a teacher more if that teacher is easy on them and resorts to lazy games in the classroom.

I pity the parents of these kids, as they don't know their hard earnt cash is going to waste on a lazy English teacher. It's very wrong, and the management of your school should be alerted to the lack of teaching quality if it occurs.

[kdavid]

Unfortunately, I think there are more teachers as you've described above than serious ones. Also unfortunately, this is the nature of the beast (the beast being the TEFL/TESOL career). Many younger teachers (right out of university) going into this field are only in it for a short time and often for the reasons you described above.

So, it's up to us serious teachers to do our best and make sure our students get the most out of the classroom.

[Boke]

it sucks but its a supply/demand thing, there are a fixed amount of native english speakers, but people who want to study increases everyday, they have to find someone

[samantha24]

It is too bad that there are teachers like these in the profession. If they don't want to teach then they should find something else to do.
I have only been a teacher for one year but I really like it and hope to teach in a few more countries.
Some day it would be great to teach in Japan or Korea.

Just set the best example you can for the lazy teachers and perhaps they will change. If it is their first year teaching, I can understand how they feel. Some experience culture shock(real feelings) and don't know what is happening to them.

[kellyd]

I don't know, that Mary Kay Litourneu was keepin' pretty busy....

[AdvantageEnglish]

I agree with the sentiment - to many foreigners, teaching English overseas is just a cushy holiday job...

But I think the onus is on the school to ensure that they provide quality education.

Many schools are set up by opportunistic entrepeneurs who have no interest in English per se, but see it as an opportunity to get a slice of the pie. They (the directors) may have no educational training, speak little English, have no interest in foreigners.

They may hire staff further down the line with English abilities and interests but if management doesn't have QUALITY ENGLISH EDUCATION as their main goal, how can they expect their staff to ? Management wants more money, so they push for more enrolments and larger class numbers... They often place very little emphasis on an increase in educational quality as this is more likely to cost more money in the short term.

These businesses are very common. Teachers in these schools can often recognise the lack of quality and may take advantage of the apathy of management, and in doing so, take advantage of the students and their parents by providing substandard teaching.

If you're in this kind of company, there's very little you can do to improve matters, except to do what YOU think is right and provide the best service YOU can. If your company isn't providing you with resources and isn't helping you to provide quality education... maybe it's time to look around for something better, just so that you can be proud of what you're doing.

[zielwolf]

I agree with AdvantageEnglish: It's all a matter of supply and demand I think. In so many places the ESL market is totally unregulated and nothing more than a money making machine. Schools and institutions run by incompetent administrators who wouldn't know a TESOL qualification if it kicked them in the butt hire incompetent, unqualified teachers whose motivations for working in the ESL field may in fact have little or nothing to do with actually seeing students learn English. I know of cases in China where people have gotten jobs by cutting and photoshopping TESOL certificates they downloaded off the net! (Just search Google images for "TESOL certificate".)
As long as the market is so unregulated but so big, the lazy ass teacher will have a niche.

[JackSparrow]

There certainly are a lot of people who think teaching is a chance to make easy money. They do not have the ability to be teachers, yet they get hired since the job agencies will place anyone as long as they get paid.

There is this teacher at my hagwon, "John" who can't even read, yet he is trying to be a teacher. John misreads the books and dictation tests. The children and mothers can hear him making mistakes as they read along. John can't read the words of simple 1st grade stories correctly, and the students have to correct him. He can't correct simple spelling tests because he can't see the mistakes. He had to have his wife come in and write on the board for him and he wanted her to correct his tests for him.

John was fired after only a few weeks of trying to teach. Funny that he was able to be an assistant teacher for a public school for a year. He complains that the Korean teacher never let him teach alone. It's no wonder, she knew he couldn't read!

Now, John can't get another job in Korea, so he's looking for a job in Japan. There should be a teacher blacklist to warn the Japanese.

[exported_kiwi]

Yes, all too often I've worked with, and heard of such people who like to pass themselves off as teachers but are, in fact, lazy ass boozers and womanisers. My advice to them is to go home, and my request for those of us who legitimately work hard and try to create an impact in students lives, is to make them feel so damned uncomfortable with themselves, that they leave of their own accord. This industry already has enough negativity to allow more.