Dealing with Poor English Language Teaching Conditions

It is important for freelance teachers to unionize and protect themselves against employer harassment and undo stress at the workplace.Sometimes the schools are forthcoming with lessons and other times you could find yourself kicked out of a course because a student thought you were impatient. That can be understandable on the part of the school wanting to keep the contract but the teacher should be warned and if not somehow compensated for the lack of income. That would be the case if he could were to take his complaint to a labor board.I am referred to experienced and trained teachers of course.If union representation cannot be had, then the teacher should think of getting more private lessons for himself or organizing a pool of lessons with another teacher who has the same problems. Besides the way profits are being divided between private schools and teachers if the teacher can think of an approach to get company contracts than that would be a solution.

What happens when the manager exhibits some behavioral problems on the job?Well the less you get involved in the management process the better for you. I heard hair-raising stories of how the owner of a school would lie on the couch of the only common room for teachers and students during break outside the hallway and that was the small kitchen she had. Naturally one day she decided to prop herself on the couch in the room with her feet over the edge and then as one of the teachers approached the door to get a coffee she kicked the door shut in his face without any warning. I never had that experience, instead I had several unsettling examples of erratic behavior. Once when I passed the owner on the road in her car she refused to pull down the window and speak. Then she drove off. She wouldn't remember that later when I brought it up. Other occasions involved her sending me to another teacher's class to monitor it without having warned him or myself of the schedule change. What prompted her rash behavior was that there was a reduction in the number of students so she decided to use my expertise in that sense rather than send me home.

The other teacher sensed my distress and didn't rock the boat by sending me back to the office which he could have. Then came a time when I finished one lesson and was about to go home when upon handing in my class folder, I found a second one with my name on it in the school office. I asked what it was about and the secretary said that I had a lesson, which I didn't. The director blamed the secretary for the mix-up. I ended up doing the class because I was free but the poor teacher who was scheduled to come in was called and told that the lesson was being given to someone else. There was the mistake.So it was good to get the supply lessons but not being told your class has been canceled the last minute.There may have been a secretarial mistake, but if the school director called to cancel the class for the other teacher while I was in the office than it looked as though she had done the folder switch on purpose.

In another school one of the students canceled his lesson and that was blamed on me. Years later Today I am not getting employment from the school even though I had taught well at a company they sent me out to.Another school interviewed me before the end of last year and informed me that I could carry on with my freelance teaching elsewhere. After calling in the new year I was informed that I would have to have a new interview, the old manager had gone and that I could not teach elsewhere if I were hired. That is unheard of in this world of courses offered at a premium and everybody wanting lessons between 5 and 7. I understood the philosophy of the school was in hiring anybody who had a good command of the language, so the school didn't really care whether you had experience or not.

So all said the teacher has to think of himself in this cut throat world of language teaching employment. Perhaps the best thing is to organize a business plan with friends especially if you know you can pool your resources and contacts together to get a new start in teaching a language.Ideally you have a central location but as long as you have a quiet room with a table, some chairs and a few books then you have a head start.