1 hour teaching little monkeys (well, that’s what kids ARE) = 2 or maybe even 3 hours working at an office job
Teaching adults is the cushy job of the EFL world. Ask most teachers what age group they’d rather teach and nearly all would say adults. But those jobs are few and hard to come by, and so most teachers in Taiwan are forced to teach the most demanding and stressful age group - children. The fact is, most buxibans and kindergartens demand that every second of every minute that you be actually WORKING, that is filling every moment with fun learning activities to keep the kids from falling sleep, while managing to teach them at the same time. The juggling act between entertainment and education is certainly not an easy one for most people. It’s not like an office job where you can do 10 minutes of work at the computer, then walk over to the water cooler and chat with your colleagues for 10 minutes, then do a little more work for 15 minutes, then spend half an hour pretending to look busy but in actuality you’re surfing the internet…c’mon, let’s be honest here, MOST office jobs I’ve seen are pretty much like that. I’ve worked on construction and road crew jobs where half the time during the workday you’re sitting around in the shade waiting for some truck with the right supplies/equipment to show up - or taking water breaks every 10 minutes under the hot sun (because you can’t do that mean backbreaking physical jobs without lots, lots, and lots of rests and breaks). In the service industry, it’s the same - when you work in a store, half the time is standing around bored out of your skull until a customer comes along. Especially in Taiwan - you see these small shop owners that sit inside their stores from 9 A.M. to 9 P.M., but are they really “working”? Nah, they’re sitting on their ass gossipping with grandma and watching soaps on T.V. most of the time, from what I can see. The only job I’ve had that was harder per man-hour than teaching was waiting tables - man, you couldn’t take more than 4 or 5 hours of that a night, it was so fast-paced and stressful and you had to have a perfect memory for what goes to what table and always on your feet rushing here and there! A waiter must be an octopus in a busy restaurant with a lineful of people waiting outside to get the next table on busy weekend nights.
Personally, I prefer working hard for a short number of hours, as opposed to working not very hard for a long number of hours. It evens out as far as “laziness” is concerned, I guess.
Been doing it for over 2 years now and while it wears me out during the week, I don’t think I would trade my school for any other here. My kids are great, the support staff is cool, my bosses are nice, and it just takes two little words to make up for anything else: vacation time (as in beaucoup).
Amos I think the point you make about the opening hours of shops in Australia is interesting because I actually had a few of my Japanese students come to visit me in Australia and that is one thing they said quite often, that the shops were always closed. They seemed to like it here because for them it was so different and laid back but they couldn’t understand why shops were shut at 5.30pm on most weekdays and that many didn’t even open on Sundays. Personally I think the laws here in Australia restricting trading hours are a bit ridiculous and are certainly not convenient. If you work Monday to Friday from 9-5.30 then when can you do your shopping. On the weekends??, get stuffed!! I’d rather be doing something more enjoyable during that time. But it is true that in Taiwan and Japan shopping is an addiction for many people, they seem obsessed by it. However, personally I definitely prefer being able to go shopping late on weekdays because it allows you to use your spare time much more effectively. I thought the opening hours in Japan were pretty late but I think Taiwan takes the cake. Does anyone know of any country that has longer shopping hours than Taiwan??
Brian I think it is fair comment for you to say that you do not believe that Taiwanese do not think westerners are lazy. Your experience with Taiwanese people may have given you the impression that that they do not regard westerners as slack. My experience living in Japan and also my 3 years with my Taiwanese girlfriend has given me a different impression. I am not saying that this view that I believe many Japanese and Taiwanese have of westerners is justified or accurate. I know of many people in my country including my father who work very long hours but that is bit beside the point. When I was in Japan I talked about this with students and friends because it is somewhat of an issue. Many people would be aware that Japanese have very short vacations compared to some western countries. Obviously young Japanese are not happy that they have such limited holiday time and are keen to change the traditional Japanese work ethic which puts company loyalty before anything else. So while many seem to think we are lazy they themselves would like to adopt the more lazy lifestyle as well. My views concerning Taiwanese come mainly from my girlfriend. She has worked for a couple of private language schools in Taiwan before and she told me that the bosses would continually complain about how lazy the foreign teachers were. It wasn’t just the bosses that would complain, it was also other Taiwanese assistant teachers who would talk about the slack foreigners who were paid twice as much as them. Unfortunately my girlfriend’s parents also have the view that most westerners are lazy. So Brian unless you have a Taiwanese girlfriend who has worked at a language school in Taiwan then I could maybe understand your view that you don’t believe that Taiwanese think westerners are lazy. Of course a Taiwanese boss is not going to say that you are lazy in front of you. However, he or she may be quite comfortable talking to other Taiwanese teachers and expressing opinions. I am not really concerned with what the bosses of Taiwanese schools think. I am more concerned that other Taiwanese assistant teachers agree with their boss even when they are not forced to say so when there boss is around. Can you understand where I am coming from? I am not say all Taiwanese and Japanese think we are lazy but I do think it is quite a common misconception that many seem to have. Erick
Well, as I tried to point out in my earlier comments, long hours do not necessarily equal hard work. And work in and of itself is not any kind of virtue. The ends are more important than the means. The end product of your work is more important than the amount of time you put into it. If workers at factory X can build a car in 3 weeks and workers at factory Y can build a car in 2 weeks, and the cars are the same in quality, does that mean that factory Y’s workers are lazier than factory X’s workers? No, of course not.
Hey, Erick. Turns out I was the only defensive one and everybody else was cool!
I’m not sure about your proposition that ‘larger classes of young children…don’t have the same capacity to learn English in a conversation based learning environment.’ If you really mean a ‘conversation class’ of the type we have been talking about then I feel that the students have to be mature and capable of independent, self-motivated study and review to get the most out of it.
But if you mean that in general children can’t learn English as fast or as well then I must disagree. Elementary-age children have a wonderful capacity for creative language use, the cornerstone of effective second- or foreign-language learning. In classes of up to 15 children I can facilitate as good or faster language learning than is generally possible even with a one-to-one conversation class with an adult.
Re. the laziness thing; I feel that it is just based on hours at work.
KenTaiwan98; as Britain has the longest working hours in Europe, does your mother not feel that continental Europeans are even lazier?
Well that’;s quite a different thing to Taiwanese thinking Westerners are lazy. We’re talking about two things here. One is some bosses or assistant teachers getting worked up and perhaps jealous about foreign teachers who are often unqualified (and admittedly sometimes lazy) getting paid more than them for less hours. Two, there’s Taiwanese workers at the comapny, paid by salary, who playing the Taiwanese way are expected to work every hour the boss asks them to to get that salary, and then there’s a foreign teacher who is paid hourly, has set working hours, and gets upset if asked to come in for an unpaid teaching demo outside of work hours which he’s been given 6 hours notice about. Come to Taiwan and you’ll understand soon enough.
Gotcha. My wife has worked in a langauage school and I’ve got or had loads of Taiwanese friends who also have. Furthermore I worked int he field of English education consultancy for a year and often had to deal with problems between the owners and foreign teachers. To tell you the truth, amongst the many complaints I heard, I never heard that the foreign teachers were lazy. Most bosses understood the cultural differences and work agreements that meant that the teacher wasn’t expected to work outside work hours, and also most ofhe teachers worked very hard when they were in class.
My opinion is that Taiwanese work longer hours, but don’t work too hard when they’re at work. My wifre’s opinion is that Taiwanese think that Asians liek to try and make as much money as they can, but Westerners prefer to have time to relax, and this does not mean that they are lazy.
[quote]My opinion is that Taiwanese work longer hours, but don’t work too hard when they’re at work. My wifre’s opinion is that Taiwanese think that Asians liek to try and make as much money as they can, but Westerners prefer to have time to relax, and this does not mean that they are lazy.[/quote]Excellent point. That’s brings me back to the Australian story I was touching on before. When it’s 5pm on Friday arvo, then everyone pisses off to the pub right? Not in Taiwan. There’s nothing lazy about having a life. I had a mate in Australia who was just the laziest fuck on this earth, but he’d do more overtime than anybody at our school - reason? He couldn’t stand his wife and didn’t want to go home and see her ugly melon. This hits home in Taiwan a bit, most Taiwanese do the long hours because they’re 35 years old and still living with mum and dad.
I thought I would add my voice to this discussion and reply to points made by two other posters.
mod lang wrote: [quote]Teaching adults is the cushy job of the EFL world. Ask most teachers what age group they’d rather teach and nearly all would say adults. But those jobs are few and hard to come by, and so most teachers in Taiwan are forced to teach the most demanding and stressful age group - children.[/quote]
I don’t find this to be my experience. I teach adults, but many of my friends teach kids because they enjoy it.
About jobs teaching adults being “hard to come by,” that may be true in other cities, but here in Taipei the shortage seems to be of qualified applicants for positions teaching adults.
As for planning, what amazes me is that many applicants think comments like the following will make a good impression on a school director.
Erick Morillo wrote: [quote]Personally I don’t really like preparing too much for classes. I would rather go into a class with some kind of aim and a few ideas but just go with the flow and allow for a bit more spontaneity. I think too much prepartion turns you into a robot and doesn’t really test your abilities as a competent teacher.[/quote]
The competent teachers I have met understand that some preparation takes place at home, in the evenings, on weekends, etc.
Erick Morillo wrote:[quote]I taught for 8 hours a day with very short 5 minute breaks in between lessons so there really was no time to plan.[/quote]
BTW, I am down to teaching just nine hours a week after spending most of the day in an office.
If Taiwanese adult students spent as much time actually trying to learn English as they do complaining about teachers, classrooms, materials etc., I might go back to teaching adults. They could learn a lot from mainlanders in the sticks who have learnt English with nothing but a radio and an old dictionary. (But of course they would have to complain about the radio and the dictionary…)