OPEN LETTER TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATIONS
This is an open letter to the administrators -- including DOSs, ADOSs, owners, academic managers -- of all the language schools in the world, especially the large chains like International House, Language Link, Inlingua, English First, Nova in Japan, British-American and Nava in Bangkok.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Greetings! It is with hat in hand I approach you as a representative of that vast tribe of your employees, former employees and potential employees.
We must sadly and regretfully tell you that your language schools are miserable, unhappy places, with rotten working conditions and benefits, and demoralized, lack-luster staff.
Please, please. Don't turn away. Hear me out. Surely you have heard these charges before. You scan the message boards to see which of your teachers are griping about you; you have read the damning newspaper articles and websites.
But I approach you not in a spirit of vindictiveness, but of one of reconciliation. I bear the white flag of truce.
Let us talk. Let us bear our souls. Let us negotiate.
We know that we are no angels ourselves, it must be said. We realize that we occasionally drink too much, sometimes damage our flats through carelessness, and often don't prepare thoroughly for our lessons. We occasionally miss classes or run out suddenly without telling anyone we are going.
However, of course, we generally humbly accept the terms of our contracts and do what we are told. For every hell-raising psychopath who trashes his flat and gets on the next train, there are at least ten who show up promptly for class every day and never cause a bit of trouble.
Now, on the other hand, there are some things that you ALMOST ALWAYS do, that make us the unhappy teachers we usually are.
Can I present you with a list of problems, and ways to fix them? Humbly submitted for your perusal.
1) SPLIT SHIFTS NEED TO BE CAREFULLY CONTROLLED TO AVOID EXHAUSTED AND DOUR TEACHERS
You claim split shifts are an economic necessity on your websites, that there are simply too many students who want to study in the early morning or late afternoon. You also often claim something like "every effort will be made to block teacher's schedules, but split shifts may be unavoidable."
Sir or madam, with respect, I say that you bend the truth.
As to the first claim, if they are a necessity, why then have I worked for three years at a school which did not have any, which simply offered classes between 4:30pm - 9:30 pm, and that during those three years we constantly had full classes -- 8 - 13 students -- and three very happy teachers?
And why, if there are so many students in the morning and in the evening, is it not possible to have one set of teachers doing the "morning shift" -- say from 6:00am to 3:00pm, and another doing the evening shift, say from 1:00pm to 10:00pm? Why submit your poor teachers to the agony of working 7:00am to 10:00am and then 6:00pm to 9:00pm?
Do you really think a teacher can work until 9:00 at night, then get up at 6:00 the next morning to do another class? Do you expect a teacher like that to come to class "sober and well-rested" as you demand in your contracts?
You may offer two excuses -- that many young office workers work similar or worse hours, and that split shifts often allow a teacher a lot of free time during the day.
As to the first objection, the differences are many, but the most prominent is this -- young office workers have an opportunity for promotion and advancement, and if they work such hours, they are probably going to achieve them, as well as being paid overtime.
As for allowing a teacher free time during the day, when you count the time spent on buses going home to catch a nap and a sandwich, then you can really not call such time "free" nor can you call it "a lot."
Which brings us neatly to point number two:
2) TEACHERS SHOULD BE REIMBURSED IN SOME WAY FOR THEIR TRAVEL TIME
When you pay us hourly, you include no payment whatsoever for travel time; when you pay us salary, you do not include our travel time in figuring the total number of hours we work a week.
May I respectfully inquire why this is so?
I offer my schedule today as a case in point. I began the day with an individual class, which is approximately a 30 minute stroll from my flat. Pleasant enough way to start the day when the weather is nice, I agree with you whole-heartedly, good sir or madam. I taught for ninety-minutes, then walked back to my flat. In the afternoon at about four, I headed off to another job, a private company job, by car. This takes some thirty minutes. After teaching ninety minutes, I headed back to the premises of our school -- approximately a forty-five minute trip. At the school, I taught for two hours and fifteen minutes, and then took the bus home -- a trip of approximately thirty minutes.
As most of you are obviously not much with math, I submit to you that I spent 2 hours and forty-five minutes in transit today, and spent five hours and fifteen minutes working.
Can you honestly tell me some intelligent reason why I should consider this "my" time, rather than yours? Do you think I enjoy sitting on buses, that I can be taking care of my personal affairs while sitting on the bus? I suppose, were I immune to travel sickness, I could read or something, but unfortunately that is not the case. They are generally too crowded to allow one to sit, anyway.
I can, perhaps understand that it should not be equated with teaching in terms of salary, but you could AT LEAST consider it as part of my salaried hours. Oh, of course, I don't expect you to pay for me going from the institute where classes are to my home -- but to some company or private apartment to teach? I certainly do.
Yet still my boss will claim that I did not work a full day today, because I didn't teach for six hours. I will be forced to work an extra hour on some other day because of it.
Sheer madness, you must admit.
Which brings us neatly to point number three:
NUMBER THREE: TEACHERS SHOULD NOT BE PUNISHED WHEN STUDENTS CANCEL CLASSES, NOR SHOULD THEY HAVE TO DO SUBSTITUTIONS WITH LESS THAN 48 HOURS NOTICE.
We understand that individual students and corporate clients are an important part of your business. And why not? They pay through the nose for their lessons. Corporate clients are pure profit for you -- all you have to provide is a teacher, they provide everything else. Your overhead does not even include electricity.
So why then, when these individual and corporate clients of mine cancel so many of their lessons because they're busy, am I the one who suffers for it?
I suffer in many ways. Often the students (or you, the administration) don't bother to inform me of the cancellation until the very last minute. This leaves me with several hours to kill, and more useless travel time; see above.
If they cancel in advance, I receive no payment or even credit towards my salaried hours. If I am under salary you then have the nerve to criticize me for being "under hours" and try to find me extra work to do.
I stand aghast.
What earthly problem is it of mine, if the students cancel? Since I am working for you, for a small portion of the money they pay YOU, their cancellations are YOUR problem, not mine.
If you don't want them to cancel, then force them to pay every time they cancel. Cut off hours every time they cancel. Something. Don't force ME to pay every time they cancel.
You might respond with talk of economics, of bad business acumen -- well, is sending unhappy and exhausted and angry teachers into class GOOD business acumen?
Then there are the substitutions. Whoa to the teacher who happens to hang around the staff room to long, or answer his phone without checking the caller ID, for he will inevitably be shanghaied into teaching one lesson of someone else's class, often at less than an hours notice.
I'm sorry, but is it only me that sees the lack of logic here? My students cancel, and I suffer. Another teacher cancels his classes, and I suffer. My few free hours are further whittled away.
How about forcing the DOS or ADOS to substitute last-minute cancellations? How about hiring a teacher whose only job is to do cancellations, or having teachers be on call only at some times, so that they could plan their day around their gruelling split-shift without fear?
How about just letting the students go home if their teacher is sick, since they probably wouldn't mind anyway? How about paying extra for substitutions?
* * *
We of course have other complaints, most likely -- the low, and seemingly ever-declining, salaries, the shoddy and badly-maintained accommodation, the "plane fare reimbursements" that don't remotely cover the actual cost of traveling to and from your country -- but might I with all modesty and respect suggest that these three issues would be an excellent way to begin cleaning up the shoddy reputation of your schools? Of ending the spiraling vortex of negativity surrounding the trade?
Wouldn't you like to have some teachers who didn't write ugly things about you on the Internet, who didn't run out on their contracts at the last minute, who enjoyed their jobs and wanted to excel in them? Who wanted to renew their contracts with you, instead of simply working until they find enough private clients to support themselves?
Well?
We anxiously await your answer.
With kindest regards,
English Teacher X