Parents and their Attitudes towards Foreign Teachers + Problems With their Children

[Confuzius]

How many? over the last 25 years? Hundreds, probably. Certainly many dozens.

Well, looks like my projections were pretty spot on

As I said, one percent of one percent of one percent. Probably less over 25 years.

BTW, I would say the comments I hilighted, do show some contempt for foreign English teachers.

I see more contempt for the system (which I also share).

It does bring people over, sticks them in laughable week long training (if any at all), then lets them loose to "teach."

Now, out of that system, I have seen good teachers grow. I was horrible at it when I got out of the Montessori classroom. But I had to learn how to adapt and chance and learn what I needed to learn.

Will kids be fine in most of these instances? Yes. But we really do have to admit that most jobs are not teaching jobs, but over-paid babysitting with English on the side. That's something most 20-something year olds are qualified for. But I do see most that come over and stay a while as being adaptable and wanting to learn. As the years go by, I am actually finding fewer people that come just to fuck around for a year.

I agree with you. The system is screwed up. However, there are many jobs where you are required to teach and not be a dancing monkey. I have yet to have a teaching job where this is the case. The same applies to most teachers I know.

There are also very highly qualified foreign teachers as well. I know many.

I just get mighty irritated when I see posts calling teachers, the help, the kitchen staff, the help taking kids rollerblading,them not being seen as teachers etc, etc.

To me that's just taking the piss, and shows ignorance and ridiculous assumptions based on seeing a couple of inept teachers in action.

Secondly, if a poster makes certain statements, said poster should have the Jacobs to stand by these statements, and not try to explain them away after the fact.

I think most people who read Sandman's posts here, will get the feeling that he is referring to all, whether he denies it or not.

I enjoy reading Sandman's posts, about 95-98% of the (thereabouts)

much the same way I enjoyed reading sam_wong's posts (where did he go anyway? to thailand to find girl boy?)

I think close to 100% of each of their posts have the same goal: to be entertaining.

[ehophi]

As an insurance policy, I record children on video when they're off task. If a parent wants to ask me why a student is failing his or her tests, I only have to whip out my camera phone. Luckily, no parent ever crosses that line with me. I can also track their study habits online now, so it's easy to graph exactly how much practice amounts to how much success.

Since in buxibans, students pay no real price for failure, and since objectivity in results is not a part of their sales pitch, there's really little incentive for lackluster kids to improve. This stands in contrast with public schools, who can hold children back if they need to review essential material, which directly affects their peer status. My place uses this fake currency system to counteract that, but it's entirely under my discretion, and I don't really put much stock in it, since I reward kids with free time and pepper that fake money on top. I would only endorse a currency system if they could exchange it for a high-demand product. At my place, this does not happen.

The other issue is hardly straightforward. Parents pay to place their students in buxibans for reasons that may have nothing to do with education. I was once told that I was there "to get them interested in the language," to which I said that I could do that by playing English-only YouTube videos on a projector and just letting them ask me whenever they cared to know what someone said or what something meant. That would be a dream job! I could practically do it all from home.

[Katakaio]

I would be the no-experience BA holder that sandman was contemptuously referring to. Three months and counting!

Regarding not being able to bring concerns to the parents when you teach buxiban: The best thing to to is seriously to not worry about it.

Here's the irony:

People like me cause people like you (who is clearly well qualified) to get lumped in with people like me from the parents' perspective. Keep in mind, I'm not here to be an irresponsible jerk, and I make an honest effort to help the kids to learn. But it's true that I don't have the 4 years a teaching degree has in all the methodology and psychology that goes into teaching children. I do my best to love them (in the agape sense of the word, I'm not a nut) and be patient with their flaws so that I can get past the flaws and get through to the kid behind them. I'll admit it can be hard, but I try. Some kids really do need some kind of help as well. The one I have that is really bad, luckily there is a Taiwanese counterpart in my class to help manage him.

Because of inexperienced people like me, (and idiot inexperienced people as well), you just get put in the same category. Sorry. You probably deserve better.

Generally speaking, the screwing around inexperienced people create a bad reputation because they don't care.
So parents quickly learn to leave the foreigner out of the picture, figuratively speaking, except when it's time to take a picture with the foreigner that they can proceed to show to family and friends as a status trophy. I don't consider myself jaded, but this is probably more the honest truth than we'd like.
So, therefore, since your concerns get muffled to the point of near silence by the time they reach parents ears, the best thing you can do is to... well, to not care (about parents responding to/talking to you). Let it go. If you actually stick around for more than two years, the parents might actually start to respect you and get to know you. Turnover is high, for various reasons.

And I don't mean that in the sense of, stop doing your job, or stop doing what I mentioned that I try to do when I teach. This is just how it is. There are also other factors like:

1. The babysitting issue others mentioned (although that doesn't seem to be a problem with you- bravo!)
2. Saving face is really a big deal here. Whatever complaint you make to your Taiwanese counterpart probably gets heavily softened and made much more subtle if it is mentioned to the parent at all. This is only intensified because of...
3. The fact that buxibans make money based on how many kids are in that classroom. They generally don't want to discourage kids from attending, and therefore them making money. This is the part of the job that no "foreign helper" likes (because it means a certain particularly disliked pupil who does nothing might return), but then again, I'm not really qualified to teach based on my degrees and experience, so I suppose I don't have too much room to complain. I'm here because the job was easy to get and I can save more than I could in the states.

Right now I'm about 50% cold blooded mercenary who doesn't give a rip that he's a part of an ugly system and 50% actually caring about my work and more importantly the kids. The above are the reasons why the mercenary percentage has gone up (significantly) since I arrived.

Personally, in retrospect if I had to choose between not being able to speak my mind to parents but having to deal with them and not being heard but also not having to deal with the parents... I'd choose the latter. But then again, teacher is not my prime choice of career path. So that's simply a matter of preference.

Cheers,

D

[headhonchoII]

How many? over the last 25 years? Hundreds, probably. Certainly many dozens.

Well, looks like my projections were pretty spot on

As I said, one percent of one percent of one percent. Probably less over 25 years.

BTW, I would say the comments I hilighted, do show some contempt for foreign English teachers.

I see more contempt for the system (which I also share).

It does bring people over, sticks them in laughable week long training (if any at all), then lets them loose to "teach."

Now, out of that system, I have seen good teachers grow. I was horrible at it when I got out of the Montessori classroom. But I had to learn how to adapt and chance and learn what I needed to learn.

Will kids be fine in most of these instances? Yes. But we really do have to admit that most jobs are not teaching jobs, but over-paid babysitting with English on the side. That's something most 20-something year olds are qualified for. But I do see most that come over and stay a while as being adaptable and wanting to learn. As the years go by, I am actually finding fewer people that come just to fuck around for a year.

I agree with you. The system is screwed up. However, there are many jobs where you are required to teach and not be a dancing monkey. I have yet to have a teaching job where this is the case. The same applies to most teachers I know.

There are also very highly qualified foreign teachers as well. I know many.

I just get mighty irritated when I see posts calling teachers, the help, the kitchen staff, the help taking kids rollerblading,them not being seen as teachers etc, etc.

To me that's just taking the piss, and shows ignorance and ridiculous assumptions based on seeing a couple of inept teachers in action.

Secondly, if a poster makes certain statements, said poster should have the Jacobs to stand by these statements, and not try to explain them away after the fact.

I think most people who read Sandman's posts here, will get the feeling that he is referring to all, whether he denies it or not.

I enjoy reading Sandman's posts, about 95-98% of the (thereabouts)

much the same way I enjoyed reading sam_wong's posts (where did he go anyway? to thailand to find girl boy?)

I think close to 100% of each of their posts have the same goal: to be entertaining.

They don't always achieve their goal though. Humor with vitriol, not always appreciated.

As for the parents not approaching you, most are shy and see foreigners as being something...foreign. The language barrier is the main issue there as even educated Taiwanese spoken English is very poor (think they would figure out buxibans don't work by now LOL).

[ehophi]

I guess I don't get the fear with handling parents. Parents are adults like us who popped out kids earlier than most of us did. Most of them are not bright, linguistically insightful people who know exactly how to learn languages (and anyone who claims any supreme insight into language acquisition is deluding themselves), so like uneducated voters, parents pick their children's after-school classes on superficial criteria.

Here's a gem: For a few weeks, one new student's mom (some fat housewife with nothing better to do) was wandering our halls, peering into the classes and giving her opinions on how classes ought to be run. She conveniently said all of this in her Taiwanese-Mandarin mix, not knowing a word of any other language herself, and was miffed when news hit her that her daughter was not skilled enough to be in the harder classes (where most of the kids of her age were). I assume that her student left when her blob mom did, but I never asked about it.

[ironlady]

Here's a gem: For a few weeks, one new student's mom (some fat housewife with nothing better to do) was wandering our halls, peering into the classes and giving her opinions on how classes ought to be run. She conveniently said all of this in her Taiwanese-Mandarin mix, not knowing a word of any other language herself, and was miffed when news hit her that her daughter was not skilled enough to be in the harder classes (where most of the kids of her age were). I assume that her student left when her blob mom did, but I never asked about it.

Might be contemptuous characterizations like this, and the attitude that goes with them in real life encounters with the people involved, that turns parents off dealing with foreign teachers. Luckily, only a handful of foreign teachers appear to have this level of superiority complex.

[ehophi]

Here's a gem: For a few weeks, one new student's mom (some fat housewife with nothing better to do) was wandering our halls, peering into the classes and giving her opinions on how classes ought to be run. She conveniently said all of this in her Taiwanese-Mandarin mix, not knowing a word of any other language herself, and was miffed when news hit her that her daughter was not skilled enough to be in the harder classes (where most of the kids of her age were). I assume that her student left when her blob mom did, but I never asked about it.

Might be contemptuous characterizations like this, and the attitude that goes with them in real life encounters with the people involved, that turns parents off dealing with foreign teachers. Luckily, only a handful of foreign teachers appear to have this level of superiority complex.

I wonder if they bestow honorary degrees in armchair psychology.

[ironlady]

Here's a gem: For a few weeks, one new student's mom (some fat housewife with nothing better to do) was wandering our halls, peering into the classes and giving her opinions on how classes ought to be run. She conveniently said all of this in her Taiwanese-Mandarin mix, not knowing a word of any other language herself, and was miffed when news hit her that her daughter was not skilled enough to be in the harder classes (where most of the kids of her age were). I assume that her student left when her blob mom did, but I never asked about it.

Might be contemptuous characterizations like this, and the attitude that goes with them in real life encounters with the people involved, that turns parents off dealing with foreign teachers. Luckily, only a handful of foreign teachers appear to have this level of superiority complex.

I wonder if they bestow honorary degrees in armchair psychology.

I could have used a very succinct noun beginning with "a" to characterize that behavior, but that might have been a personal attack under the Rules.

[sandman]

Here's a gem: For a few weeks, one new student's mom (some fat housewife with nothing better to do) was wandering our halls, peering into the classes and giving her opinions on how classes ought to be run. She conveniently said all of this in her Taiwanese-Mandarin mix, not knowing a word of any other language herself, and was miffed when news hit her that her daughter was not skilled enough to be in the harder classes (where most of the kids of her age were). I assume that her student left when her blob mom did, but I never asked about it.

Might be contemptuous characterizations like this, and the attitude that goes with them in real life encounters with the people involved, that turns parents off dealing with foreign teachers. Luckily, only a handful of foreign teachers appear to have this level of superiority complex.

I wonder if they bestow honorary degrees in armchair psychology.

I could have used a very succinct noun beginning with "a" to characterize that behavior, but that might have been a personal attack under the Rules.

Ironlady! DON'T make me like you! You wouldn't like it if I were nice.
Is it at all possible that the lady in question is VERY aware of the qualifications of the person to whom she has entrusted her child? And VERY aware that she, in all her peasant ignorance, has EVERY BIT as much right to question as some 22-year-old backpacker saving for his next trip to Koh Phanang or whatever. Sure, there are MANY good men and women here teaching children, but they ARE the minority. Most of them are one-year or two-year party dudes or trying to scrape up enough cash to repay a bit of their student loans or fund their next jaunt in Laos or whatever. You cannot in all seriousness expect anyone to believe that just because you and a handful of your longterm peers have an actual clue about what they're doing that parents are not entirely aware of the employment pool from which their foreign teachers are garnered? I mean, REALLY?

[bigal]

Who are you to move the kid to the front because of his eyes. Now the idea is to give them eye drops and sit them further back so they can adjust the eye muscles without wearing glasses the rest of their lives. Did you check before moving the kid.

Your filming and recording students without their permission and without the schools permission. Whoa

That's a start for Sandman to say why he doesn't want to have a foreign teacher. One going against doctor's orders and another watching kiddie movies at home.

In this wonderful world of America you would be sued for damaging the kids eyes and watching child porn.

And you think I'm joking????????