Jonah, Jonah, Jonah, 
Of course there are people in the world with lower salaries and worse working conditions than TEFL teachers. 
The whole point of the article is that as a CAREER, tefl sucks. The word âslaveryâ was not meant to be taken literallyâŚ
Jonah, Jonah, Jonah,
tisk, tisk, tisk to Jonah! 
Jonah is correct. Action must be taken to protect the working conditions of migrant workers. Watch this space!
[quote=âBu Lai Enâ]Some of the more âcareer-mindedâ people here probably have trouble grasping the fact that âcareerâ is not important to some of us. It has never been important to me, thatâs why I got an arts degree and generally veered away from the path of furthering my career, acquiring marketbable skills etc.
Brian[/quote]
Bu Lai En expresses what Iâve felt since I was a young man. Work is something everyone has to do. The amount of misery you put up with as a result, is pretty much up to you.
[quote=âporcelainprincessâ]
During my first three years it was an adventure, a chance to live abroad, travel, make money, and score chicksâŚ
Then I met my wifeâŚ[/quote]
Wait a minuteâŚYOUâRE A MAN?!
:shock:
Okay, okay. I agree with this article to some degree. I think burnt-out people who get into TEFL are getting into it for the wrong reasons. Now granted, I have only been teaching English for four years now so I guess my comments can be taken with a grain of salt for being a naive, shiny-eyed, little 24-year-old, but I am in TEFL because I love teaching and have wanted to be a teacher since I was in the first grade, plus I am fascinated by language acquisition.
If I wanted to make loads of money, I would have stayed in chemistry and worked for DuPont making horrible chemicals that destroy the environment so you can have a better microwavable dish that gets tossed after one use and spends the rest of the millennium trying to become one with the ground. Er, um, so anyways, when I told my mom I wanted to be a chemistry teacher she told me that I was not about to waste the time and money invested into a BS in chemistry to earn the salary of a teacher. She couldnât get the idea that it could have been any subject area or that I was interested in the money; my only interest was in teaching something I was interested in. Chemistry didnât work out, but I discovered psycholinguistics which turned me on to language acquisition and now here I am. Personally, how much I make has never been that important, even after I learned the difference between the salary of a first-year chemistry teacher and a first-year chemical engineer. I enjoy teaching and have many students and memories that help make it all worthwhile.
Just like the article states burnt-out English teachers tend to have had the following reasons for teaching English initially: meeting interesting women, getting to travel, making lots of money (pay off student loans), low work hoursâŚ
âWell, Mr. Smith, why do you want to work in our legal office?â
âAre you kidding! All that money and rich babes recovering from bad marriages! Plus I can wear Armani to work everyday.â
If you had such shallow goals for any other profession, theyâd laugh your ass right out of the interview. For some reason, though, people who go into TEFL for whom these precise reasons will fail to realize that it is more than just travelling around and meeting new people. You want to live in different cultures and meet new people, then become an ambassador, not a teacher. Personally, I also like the fact that I am seeing the world and making money to pay off debts back home, but those are not the main reasons why I am teaching English.
I have had to observe some English teachers in London which I assume this author is getting her information on English teachers. Some of them are obviously not doing it for a love of teaching which shows from how they conduct their classes. I think those are the ones who are being targeted in this article. And what kind of person judges how successful a career option is by how those who pursue it dress and live? What does that say about those who make religion their careers? I donât remember habits and brown robes being stylish in any fashion circles. The same could be said about authors and painters who have to work their asses off and hope that someone likes their work enough so they can pay off their rentâŚwhat kind of career is writing when you have to do something else to support yourself financially?
As long as English remains the lingua franca of international communication, there will always be a need for English teachers. People just have to come to terms with the fact that itâs not a glamorous job and that you have to be sincerely interested in both parts it entails (the English and the teaching) for it to be a career.
Interesting article, I enjoyed the flavorful discussion, but I think you can find people like this in ANY job, people who have lost their reason for working⌠perhaps.
Disillusion is NOT particular to TEFL in any sense. But it requires something in you that helps you to overcome those periods. I have just quit a job for being disillusioned. I couldnât accept that things never improved much, and I realised that I didnât want to compromise my own values. So I quit.
I do have alternatives nowadays, though. I was excited by those alternatives: book writing, private tuition, my own business, etc⌠I didnât see it as a dead end, but as an opportunity to try things that are a little bit out of the ordinary. I chose TEFL because the career path was open. For me that was freedom. For others, perhaps, it might be easy to lose sight of the meaning.
Also, Iâm not currently financially dependent on my job. Havenât been for a while, because I saved a bit of money. My wife still works, too.
I would urge those who are disillusioned to make sure their finances are in order, and make sure that the finances they have arenât the cause of the disillusionment. I used to feel that way, until I took control of my finances more surely. But it took 8 years or more, and I started with nothing. I could have done it much faster, Iâm sure, and definitely much wiser. But it can be done.
IMHO.
Kenneth
There are also those folks who have become very wealthy in the ESL business. Success (whatever that means) depends a lot on what you put into something. I got the impression that those teachers mentioned in the article didnât have much get up and go.
I think the same could be said about any âcareerâ. Itâs all in what you make of it. Who gives a toss what anyone else thinks. Be successful in what you want to do and forget about what other people think, surely they should have better things to do than worry about the careers of English teachers⌠perhaps not.
I think we have to remember that the article was written by a Brit.
This cold weather reminds me of a âsummerâ spent in England in 1997. The high cost of living was such that I had to find work. I got an EFL job in Reading (about 45 minutes west of London) teaching English to European students (read: obnoxoius French). I earned just under nine pounds an hour but the job required a lot of work outside of classroom hours. I could live because I was staying with my sister. If not, Iâd have been living in poverty (poverty defined as not being able to afford large quantities of alcohol on a daily basis).
So EFL work in England pays the same as here, but the cost of living there is at least double. Also, much of the work in England, and Europe, is seasonal.
Another problem for British teachers working abroad is that the pound is so strong. Luckily, the New Zealand dollar - despite making great strides in the past year - is still a weak currency.
Cheers,
John.
Go around the world teaching English, or work for nothing as a skivvy in some shitty provincial newspaper (and be bloody grateful for it) in the hope that one day youâd get one of those coveted
[quote=âBu Lai Enâ]Some of the more âcareer-mindedâ people here probably have trouble grasping the fact that âcareerâ is not important to some of us. It has never been important to me, thatâs why I got an arts degree and generally veered away from the path of furthering my career, acquiring marketbable skills etc. I donât enjoy the sort of work that sort of thing leads to. I have no ambition to go work in an office again. If you want a career crawling your way up the corporate ladder, then yes, English teaching is not for you, but that kind of argument just doesnât apply to me.
Brian[/quote]
Well said. âCareerâ is absolutely unimportant to me. Climbing the ladder of âsuccess?â Been there, done that, had enough thanx 
. I spent a number of years at Boeing and saw the light (took voluntary layoff and came back to Taiwan). The interesting thing is that my previous 6-7 years here is what got me the job in the first place. Their comment was âAnywone who can adjust to a foreign culture and thrive there for that long should be okay in our corporate re-engineering program.â What a hell hole. Miss it even less than I miss being prodded for possible hernia.
AJ, twice as much? Hell, a one-way ticket on the Underground was over 10x as much as an MRT ticket. For one night, I paid as much to stay in a 6-bed dorm room (no breakfast included) in a London hostel as I can pay for a two-night double bed hotel room in Kenting and not have to worry about some lame-ass backpacker puking in the shower. Give my Taipei over London any day.
Well, except for the sandwich shops and all that Indian foodâŚ
I came to Taiwan rather than go through a teaching program in France because I was aware of the difference in the cost of living. I think if I had gone to the UK to teach English right out of school (ha, an American teaching English in a country full of native British English speakers), I may have risked being at least worn out if not so much as burnt out. I think having to worry about where your next meal is coming from could do that to anyone. Donât get me wrong. But I think this person knows diddly squat about teaching. Maybe I am just bothered by the out-of-style etc, comment made in the article⌠Who gives a flying fuck how a teacher dresses? As my mother said, âItâs school, not a fashion show.â