Are teachers teachers?

this

The mainland takes lots of people to the Philippines to teach English now.

Many taiwanese buxiban teachers are teaching many things too. I donā€™t think all of them have teachers licence.

I would argue he/she is a tutor that teaches your kids. But a teacher as a professional vocation? That he/she is not. And calling him/her that reiterates the stereotype that anyone can teach, when in fact, like medicine, law etc., IT IS A CERTIFIED profession.

I would posit the kids learn a lot from a ā€˜giraffe danceā€™. They need to be motivated to learn, and what better way than a fun song and dance. It creates a strong mental reinforcement of the material.

It certainly beats the current state of education in high schools where the so called local teacher who presumably has a degree cracks out a grammar textbook while simultaneously threatening the kids into answering. We see how far that got them.

These so called ā€˜fakeā€™ teachers generally care a lot about their students, and actually try to engage them in real useful conversations, not just waste of time vocab cramming.

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Iā€™ve seen (even worse: eaten): some aberrations you wouldnā€™t believe. One of the worst ones was in a pasta ā€œrestaurantā€ like a couple of years ago. The base was like this shit they put on the top of the corn soup here, and about the same size. The topping made as much sense as that.

maybe in your country, a buxiban teacher is a certified profession. In Taiwan, it seems not.

I think you misunderstood what I wrote. The person I am replying to is saying her family tutor is a teacher. I am saying they are not. And that using the teacher term too loosely means it waters down the certified profession. I know in Taiwan it is not. That is my point. A buxiban teacher should not be called a teacher. An education promoter, study aid, etc. would be better.

If Iā€™d have a family tutor, Iā€™d call the person teacher 老åø«, regardless of the person is a licenced teacher ꕙåø« or not.

"teacher ĖˆtiĖtŹƒÉ™/ noun
a person who teaches, especially in a school.
å°‡ć€Œteacher怍ēæ»č­Æꈐ仄äø‹čŖžč؀:äø­ę–‡ļ¼ˆē¹é«”ļ¼‰
noun

  1. ꕙåø«
  2. 老åø«"

It says especially, but not limited.

TIT - this is Taiwan

Anybody can be a laoshi or shifu.

And that is why the slogan should be Touch Your Shart, rather than Touch Your Heart. People accept mediocrity and second rate products and services without questioning. This respect/reverance for authority, is a downside of Confucianism. I say this as a person who does not admire Mao in any way (as a Conservative rightist), but he was not altogether wrong in parts of the Cultural Revolution. To truly modernise, China needed, at the time, to do away with large parts of Confucianism. It still does. Part of that is DEMANDING better legislation, especially on education, and being willing to piss off people in your established relationships, whether that is a boss, the government, a family member, etc.

Just as Taiwanese will not do shit about the low wages, they will not do shit about the education probs.

ā€œDaddy, can you teach me how to whistle?ā€
ā€œNo! I am not in possession of the correct certifications.ā€

Seriously though, ā€œteachersā€ are always called teachers as a sign of respect. Of course many of us are incompetent and there needs to be more regulatory controls (perhaps through unions CB? :wink:). It matters not in terms of whether they are called teachers or not - thatā€™s not going to change.

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I am essentially a Poujadist ā€“ prefer Jacksonian populism and the rights of the little guy versus elitism in education or life in general. But on some things, you need strong regulation. Teaching, medicine, etc. To me, that is just common sense. Whistling though ā€“ no need for certification.:wink:

Just put your lips together and blow.

The problem is, if youā€™re involved in any way in teacher training, you will soon see that the ā€œteacher preparation coursesā€ ā€“ donā€™t. They donā€™t prepare anyone to actually be effective in a classroom. So certification is really something to be taken with a huge grain of salt. There is more to teaching than just showing up, but itā€™s generally mysterious across the profession just how some people end up being good at it and others arenā€™t. It doesnā€™t come from the ā€œprofessional developmentā€ thatā€™s shoveled down teacherā€™s throats, nor does it come from the ā€œeducational flavor of the monthā€ thatā€™s the topic of faculty assemblies before school starts. Anyone whoā€™s been in the profession more than a couple of years knows that.

The big factor in Taiwan is that those who actually know how to teach generally arenā€™t allowed to do so (in the buxiban circle, I mean). All the buxibans have their own procedures, materials, and lockstep training, designed to ensure (?) that any yahoo who gets off a plane can take the job, because the conditions they provide mean that theyā€™ll have a lot of churn. So itā€™s a never-ending cycle. Make the job simpler so that you can change workers more often because the job is made so simple it canā€™t be done effectively. But we can just blame the students for not studying enough so itā€™s all good.

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Teachers are not always called ā€œteacherā€ as a sign of respect. I canā€™t count how many times Iā€™ve seen lists of faculty names with ā€œTeacher Chen, Teacher Wang, Teacher Chiang, and Janeā€ on there. Guess which one is the foreigner?

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Many English teachers here I know do have TESL qualifications such as CELTA, this qualifies them to teach English to students as a second language. Therefore, yes many are qualified to teach in such places as Hessā€¦

First of allā€¦stop calling it ESL. Its vastly EFL here. There IS a difference.

If you teach, you are a teacher. Period.
Maybe a good one, maybe a lousy one.

Certification means monkey balls about anything. Experience, dedication and passion trumps certification. As ironlady pointed out, certification hardly prepares you for real world experience. Its the first years of trial and error and building your confidence and passion that makes one a great teacher.

The vast majority of certified teachers I have met here are lazy and demand top dollar for doing the least amount of work possible. They put themselves higher than everyone else in their minds, but donā€™t deliver the goods.

Teachers who came here without certification who had to sweat monkey balls, jump through hoops and put their 100%+ into the job are some of the best teachers I have ever met.

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Do you feel the same about other certified professions? Medicine? Engineering? I am not saying all certified teachers are great or that there are not passionate and well-intentioned people without certification. I am saying they are not truly teachers in the professional term.

Sorry, that is BS.
A piece of paper does not make you an engineer, doctor or teacher. Knowledge of the profession, dedication to the trade and experience make you what you are.

If you get up and teach your heart out in front of a classroom full of students and you enable them to learn, yes, you are a teacher.

Certification means you have adhered to a certain set of competencies and qualifications and this has been officially recognised by a regulatory body. Certainly you want a doctor performing surgery on you to not have walked in off the street? :rofl: