I have a female friend who studies at an adult cramschool, and tells me that she doesn’t like the way her teacher tries to flirt. She’s not the first to say that it’s inappropriate.
Slapping them first might make them more receptive, I suppose, but I’m not going to try it. Well, I suppose I could spank a few of my high school girls. But somehow i don’t see me keeping my students (or my reputation) if I do that.
It’s rare for me to get a student under thirty so my idea of “flirting” may represent a somewhat more subdued affair than what you guys are talking about. Of course you can’t flirt with high school girls, even though you can be sure they will flirt with you. My compass may be broken but my moral compass is just fine thanks. Anyway, what seems absolutely certain to me is that a lot of students are looking for an experience of English that feels real. They want to build an actual relationship with someone and they want all the emotional entanglements that that involves. This may not be entirely advisable but I for one admire them for being open enough to try and establish some sort of connection to a total human being. Part of this involves sorting out the male/female thing. At some point it has to be resolved whether or not there is any chemistry there even if you have no idea of acting on that chemistry.
There may be a larger population of applicants these days, but the quality of the applicants has not increased. I just went through a few dozen resumes from an ad our school placed last week, and there were only four which did not contain serious spelling and grammar errors. This is not new to me, of course. Most people who come to Taiwan to teach English are not qualified to teach English to non-native speakers.
It seems to me that if you are capable of putting together a sentence in English, you are personable, and you can convince a hiring manager that you can act professionally, you can quite easily land a job. Apparently, most applicants can’t do these things very well.
How many times have you seen this thread in the past three years?
For those of you with no people skills, fear not. There’s a version of people-skills here known as “get online, learn 50 games and 20 songs”.
Whenever you notice one of the kids fall aslee,’ play a game. Also, call kids to the board and have them teach to the rest of the class.