How many students do you have?

I’m just checking out english-teaching jobs. Yesterday I interviewed at Hess, and I was surprised to find they expect me to teach 10 different classes each week, each with 15-20 students, for a total of 150-200.

Now I was kind of picturing having a close relationship with my students, getting to know their strengths and weaknesses, being able to tailor my teaching accordingly, and so on. With this setup I don’t even think I’ll be able to remember their names.

Is this a pipe dream? I want to hear from those of you teaching english. How many students do you have, in all?

Hehehe - I teach at a school around 20 hours a week - each hour per day I teach a different class - each class only once a week - each week the same schedule - Been there for three months - still don’t know most my students names - weird I tell ya !

Oh and my students range from between 10 to 25 !!! per class - ages 7 up to 14 !

Imagine having 25 seven years olds in one class as big as your bedroom but I cope -

Once upon a time, I taught in Hess and I had a blast. Incredibly, I did remember all the kids names – took a little time, of course. If you maintain a good relationship with your CTs, you’ll also be in a better position to ‘get to know’ your kids’ strengths and weaknesses.

I also recall that Hess ‘pushed’ us to the limit now and then. In my case, this was the summertime after I arrived. We were unexpectedly short several NSTs to begin with. Normal summers were heavy workloads. But being short NSTs at that time, my Head NST had to do magic to make sure all (well almost all) had an NST at least once a week.

He had us dashing from one branch to the next (Panchiao at the time was a grouping of 4 branches – whew, that was a long time ago, huh?). All of the NSTs worked nearly every single time slot for two months straight – that included the Sunday mornings. And after work, we’d be too tired to go out and spend anything. Besides, morning classes started at 8am. I believe all of us were pulling down nearly 90K just from the Hess work – and this was LONG before Hess matched the market rate for teaching.

Could I remember their names? Well, the extra summer classes were most likely to be N1 classes - - so was able to name most of them anyway

In short, you have 150 - 200 kids a week?
My answer: ask for more. You shouldn’t have a problem

I teach three classes in the same school: two of them are for 18 children, one is 12 children, and part of my job as their teacher is evaluating them. I remember all of their names as well as the names of many of the other children at my school (about 200). I wouldn’t work for Hess if they promised my weight in gold as my salary. There are much better options, you just have to look. I just wouldn’t settle for being the “white” face that pokes into a class and makes the parents happy that their children are being “taught” by a real foreigner.